Our Music (2004) Movie Script
1
And so, in the age of fable...
after the floods...
KINGDOM 1 HELL
there appeared on earth...
men armed for extermination.
They're horrible here...
with their obsession for cutting off heads.
It's amazing that anyone's survived.
"Forgive us our trespasses...
"as we forgive
those who trespass against us."
As we forgive them and no differently.
As we forgive them and no differently.
We can consider death In two ways...
the impossible of the possible...
or the possible of the impossible.
Now, "I" is someone else.
KINGDOM 2 PURGATORY
Are you here
for the European Literary Encounters?
I thought you made films.
I was asked to give a talk to the students.
On what?
The text and the image.
So, what's going on?
The flight from Zagreb is late.
If your father was an Egyptian Communist...
he must have known Henri Curiel.
They even followed the same itinerary.
Your father died?
He died, yes.
Not the way Curiel did.
Not a violent death.
So, same itinerary, meaning what?
Egyptian, middle-class background.
Happy childhood. Jesuit education.
Then, exposure to Egypt's poverty...
and the same revolt
against rabbis, king, parents....
Is that when he came to France?
He was partisan.
He got arrested.
He spent a year and a half in prison.
And your mother?
She was more a Zionist.
I'm going to go see what's happening
with Air Bosnia.
She took the last Cairo-Jerusalem train.
She arrived in Jerusalem in 1948 by train?
And those on the Exodus, by boat?
There's exodus and Exodus.
So you went to school in Israel?
No, we left Israel very early on.
My father loved France.
I went to school in France.
And your military service?
I did it in Israel.
- You went back?
- Yes.
- With your mother?
- No, alone.
And after your military service?
Strangely, during my service
I realized how French I had become.
So I went back to France.
You found work?
Interpreter.
French, Hebrew, Russian,
Spanish, Portuguese.
What brings you here?
I'm working for the Literary Encounters.
But also checking up on my niece.
Her mother, my sister,
asked me to check on her.
I think they're here.
Are you sure Mr. Darwish is here?
You are in the same hotel.
Mr. Goytisolo wants to see the library.
Speaks French, Russian,
Spanish, Portuguese.
Before his talk.
What's it about?
The forest of writings.
Who are those people?
The SFOR.
Germans today. Americans tomorrow.
Next week: Russians, French, Italians.
So, Miss Lerner, ever been stung
by a dead bee?
That's enough.
I was wondering...
why aren't revolutions started
by the most humane people?
Because humane people
don't start revolutions.
They start libraries.
And cemeteries.
When Mr. Goytisolo was here in 1993...
the Serbian front lines were here.
And they shelled from up there?
It was easy.
Killing a man to defend an idea...
isn't defending an idea, it's killing a man.
When it's all over, nothing Is the same.
Violence leaves a deep scar.
A trace of the oblivion always remains.
The trust in the world
that terror destroys is irretrievable.
To see your fellow man turn on you...
breeds a feeling of deep-rooted horror.
Violence severs the lifeline.
A survivor is not only changed,
he's someone else.
The dream of survival becomes a nightmare
for he who Is on the journey.
Each of us can become a danger for others.
The body is a potential weapon.
Knowing where we can be harmed,
each of us can harm another.
I know him!
It's Pierre Bergounioux.
We went to school together.
Show him into the manager's.
Yes, Mr. Ambassador.
it's Mr. Bergounioux.
The ambassador wants to see him.
The Israeli journalist is waiting.
They've been waiting for 8,000 years.
And you?
I'm presenting my book:
From Homer to Faulkner.
Tell me.
Do writers know what they're talking about?
Do they really know?
Of course not.
Homer knew nothing about battlefields,
slaughters, victories, or glory.
He is blind and bored.
He has to settle
for recounting what others did.
Possibly.
There's a contradiction.
Those who act never have the ability...
to say or think adequately
about what they do.
Conversely, those who tell stories...
don't know what they're talking about.
Remember Mao Zedong.
The President.
Grivas, the car.
Where's my scarf?
What about me?
A letter from my grandfather.
Not for the ambassador, for the man.
I don't understand. Tomorrow, miss.
Which "man"?
Lyons. 1943. The Gestapo.
Come with me.
Let's go.
Why Sarajevo?
Because of Palestine,
and because I live in Tel Aviv.
I wanted to see a place
where reconciliation seemed possible.
They may hot run my article.
Possibly.
Anyway, it's for myself.
Who's that next to Kafka in your office?
Someone like you, maybe.
Hannah Arendt.
Her friend Sholem said
she looked like 12 synagogues.
Under the Ottoman Empire...
the sitting room was rented to what
wasn't yet called the Jewish Agency.
When I arrived,
they hung her portrait in homage.
You should read
the articles she wrote in the 1950s.
They're enlightening.
Your grandfather....
In 1943, when you were a student,
you hid another young man...
and his fianc.
They were wanted by the Vichy police.
My mother was born in your...
in your garret in 1945...
then they emigrated.
Later, you were awarded
the title of "The Righteous."
But you turned it down.
You were applying to Normale Sup'...
and you said it was normal.
Possibly.
Now we want to organize a meeting.
Not with the French diplomat,
but with a free man...
if you've remained one.
Not a just conversation, just a conversation.
No military or political solutions.
Just basic problems.
No military or political solutions.
Just basic problems.
Psychology and ethics, nothing else.
Even if I live in New York most of the time...
I have constant nightmares.
But a friend from Haifa says,
when he dreams...
he dreams not about the enemy,
but about himself.
Not about Israel, but Palestine.
Can we start there?
With the land...
with the promise...
then the atonement.
Just a conversation.
- Good luck.
- To you, too.
In the Resistance,
did the Germans inhabit your dreams...
or only France and the French?
And that dead language
we brought back to life?
Is it really living?
And your French,
which you're slowly losing...
grammatically, anyway.
Then we publish the conversation.
Even Haaretz won't run it.
- It's not a bad paper.
- They won't run it.
I'm just a stringer. But I know them.
They want to, but they can't.
They dream of Palestine, not Israel.
It's too late.
My grandfather has a rich friend.
We can print 100,000 copies, a million...
to hear a simple conversation
between two friends.
A dialogue no one has,
not even in his heart...
because that heart is alone.
A young German Catholic woman
said in 1943:
"The dream of the individual is to be two.
"The dream of the State is to be one."
They cut her head off.
Forgive the confusion. The letter is clearer.
I'm at the Holiday Inn.
Tomorrow I photograph the Mostar Bridge.
Grandfather's friend has a private jet.
It wouldn't take long.
- I'd have to resign.
- Why not?
I'll have to think it over.
That's normal.
The world in which we live...
desperately needs, in order to subsist...
the existence of the contemplated...
and poets...
like Valente and Lezama Lima.
Light and darkness...
and the revelation of hidden meaning...
should have attained in our times...
a remarkable identity.
Nature is a temple
where living colonnades...
sometimes let out confused phrases.
Man wanders among symbols
in those glades...
which watch him...
with familiar gazes.
As our age has endless destructive force...
it now needs a revolution...
of a comparable creative force...
that reinforces memory...
clarifies dreams,
and gives substance to images.
...that reserves for the dead a better fate...
gives ephemera a splendid
sense of its transparency...
and escorts the living...
on a safer,
more serene crossing of darkness.
Light...
is the first visible animal of the invisible.
You never answer.
But I will say nothing.
What I say is nothing.
See to it that I can speak.
Any idea how I can go about it?
Convince me that you hear me.
Talk to me.
How can I talk if you don't hear me?
Mahmoud Darwish...
you once wrote
that he who writes his story...
inherits the land of that story.
Do you not believe in the connection
that the Israeli people have with this land?
You say there's no more room for Homer...
and you are the Trojans' bard...
and you love the vanquished.
You're talking like a Jew.
Nowadays, that's seen
as something positive.
Truth has two faces.
We heard a story.
Sometimes we also heard
the Trojan victim speaking...
through the mouth of the Greek Euripides.
I'm looking for a Trojan poet.
Troy didn't tell its story.
I ask myself...
does a land...
that has great poets...
have the right to conquer a people?
Is the absence of poetry...
sufficient reason to defeat them?
Is poetry patriotic?
Can a people be strong...
without having its own poetry?
I was a child of a people...
that had not been recognized until then.
And I wanted to speak
in the name of the absentee...
in the name of the Trojan people.
There's more inspiration and humanity...
in defeat than there is in victory.
Even in defeat there is poetry.
And probably better poetry.
If I belonged to the victor's camp...
I'd demonstrate my support for the victims.
Do you know why
we Palestinians are famous?
Because you are our enemy.
The interest is in you...
not in me.
So we have the misfortune...
of having Israel as an enemy...
because she has strong allies.
SO many we can't even count.
And we have the good fortune...
of having Israel as our enemy.
Because Jews are the center of interest
of the world.
That's why you've brought us
defeat and renown.
You defeated us.
But you gave us renown.
We are your propaganda ministry.
The world is interested In you...
not us.
I have no illusions.
In Palestine as a Metaphor...
you write: "If they defeat us in poetry...
"then it's the end."
There was probably an error,
for it to be this way.
But there's another meaning:
Neither a victim nor a defeat...
can be gauged in military terms.
The Turkish Prime Minister...
once compared minarets to bayonets.
I bear the obedient language like a cloud.
Communism existed once.
Communism existed once,
for two times 45 minutes...
at Wembley Stadium...
when Budapest's Honved
beat England 6 to 3.
The English played individually...
the Hungarians played together.
Where do you think this photo was taken?
No, Richmond, Virginia. 1865.
The American Civil War.
North against South.
It was a peasant girl
during the Second Empire...
who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary.
They asked what she looked like.
Bernadette said: "I can't describe her."
So the mother superior
and the bishop showed her...
plates of great religious paintings.
Raphael's Virgin, Murillo's.
Each time, Bernadette said:
"That's not her."
And suddenly,
the Virgin of Cambrai came up.
An icon.
Bernadette fell to her knees:
"It's her, Your Grace."
No movement.
No depth, no artifice.
The sacred.
Yes, the image is joy.
But beside it, lies the void.
All the power of an image
can only be expressed through it.
They say our language...
arbitrarily divides up things in reality.
And they say this as If it were our fault.
You may have studied
Racine's Phaedra in French.
"When you have learnt my crime,
my fate, my shame...
"I'll die no less but with a guiltier name."
Try to see.
Try to imagine.
In the first case, you say: Look at that.
In the second, you say: Close your eyes.
The shot and reverse shot
are basics of film grammar.
But look closely at these shots
from the Hawks movie...
you'll see that it's the same thing twice.
That's because the director is incapable...
of seeing the difference
between a man and a woman.
That are alike.
For Instance, two pictures...
of the same moment in history.
Then you see that truth has two faces.
In my opinion...
it's because those who do the books
are mere accountants.
Besides, Balzac writes...
about entries in the Great Ledger.
The Tables of the Law.
The Holy Scriptures.
The People of the Book.
jew
muslim
For example, in 1948...
the Israelites walked in the water...
to reach the Holy Land.
The Palestinians walked
in the water to drown.
Shot and reverse shot.
The Jews become the stuff of fiction...
the Palestinians, of documentary.
We say the facts speak for themselves.
But Celine said:
"Sadly, not for much longer."
And that was in 1936.
Because the field of text...
had already covered the field of vision.
In 1938...
Heisenberg and Borg were walking
in the Danish countryside...
talking about physics.
They came to Elsinore Castle.
The German scientist said:
"Oh, there's nothing special
about this castle!"
The Danish physicist said:
"Yes, but if you say 'Hamlet's castle'...
"then it becomes special."
Elsinore the real, Hamlet the imaginary.
Shot and reverse shot.
Imaginary: certainty.
Reality: uncertainty.
The principle of cinema...
go towards the light
and shine it on our night.
Our music.
AND DELIVERANCE ?
AND VICTORY ?
THAT WILL BE MY MARTYRDOM
TONIGHT I WILL BE IN HEAVEN
Can the new little digital cameras
save the cinema?
Yes, they all died very young.
The bridge was designed
under the Ottoman Empire...
in 1566...
by Hajrudin,
a student of the great architect Sinan...
in the time of Suleyman the Magnificent.
The city of Mostar was named after it.
In Slavic languages, "most" means "bridge."
We called it the "Old Man"...
as we would a friend or a father.
We would meet on the "Old Man."
The more daring among us...
would dive off the bridge.
The greenest water in the world.
It's not a question
of re-establishing tourism...
between the banks of the Neretva.
We must at once restore the past...
and make the future possible.
Combine the pain...
and the guilt.
Two faces and one truth: the bridge.
It seems difficult.
"If the face symbolizes 'Thou shalt not Kill'...
"how can we make a face with stones?"
The relationship between me
and the Other isn't symmetrical.
At first, the Other matters little...
with respect to me.
That's his business.
For me, he's the one I'm responsible for.
Here, a Muslim and a Croatian.
We are all guilty...
for everything and for everyone.
And myself more than others.
The stones were salvaged in two phases.
In June 1997 and August 1999.
Each stone was identified on a card...
on which each detail was noted.
Its position in the water,
its position in the structure...
and a description of each face...
on which clamps were attached.
It was like rediscovering
the origin of language.
You know that before writing
was invented at Sumer...
they spoke of the past
using the word "after"...
and for the future the word "before."
No, I didn't know.
It is...
like...
an image...
but a distant one.
There are two people side by side.
I'm next to her.
I never saw her before.
I recognize myself.
But I have no memory of all that.
It must be far from here.
Or later on.
I don't give a damn!
The state of our poverty is clearer.
The landscape is strewn with wire,
the sky is red with explosions.
As this ruin didn't spare
the very notion of culture...
we must boldly dismiss it.
We have to make do with very little.
If the house Is already on fire,
it's mad to try to save the furniture.
The lucky ones are the defeated.
I don't feel like speaking Russian.
I distrust the Russian language.
In fact, I only regret...
that the powerful notion
the Russians have of evil...
alienates them from conscience.
This is due to Russian syntax.
It was in case someone was listening.
There are still microphones.
If anyone understands me,
then I wasn't clear.
"But she didn't feel like she was falling.
"On the contrary, it seemed...
"as if the ground was rising toward her
with appalling speed.
Suicide is the only truly serious
philosophical problem.
You saying that as a Jew,
or as a Frenchwoman?
I don't quite know.
Two things hold me back:
one minor, the other major...
but the minor one is major, too.
What's the minor one?
The pain.
Is it that important?
Can't you kill yourself without pain?
And the second reason, the major one?
The next world.
That's nothing.
Just the next world.
Aren't there people
who think about the next world?
They can only judge for themselves.
There will be total liberty
when it's the same to live or die.
That's the goal.
Funny goal.
But then it might turn out
no one wants to live.
No one.
Anyone can act as if there's no God...
there is nothing...
but no one has ever tried yet.
Not true.
Millions have been killed
or killed themselves.
Yes, but always for other reasons,
always out of terror...
never to kill that terror.
Do you love children?
Then you love life.
Yes, I love life. Why?
But you want to kill yourself.
What's that got to do with it?
Life is one thing, death another.
Life exists and death doesn't.
I see you know your lines.
In Hebrew, too?
We're not tourists.
- What does Akhim think?
- He will help me.
Will he go to Jerusalem with you?
No, he'll stay here. We don't agree.
But he'll help me.
I go back to Paris Wednesday.
The meetings are over.
Good luck, Olga.
Yes, Uncle Ramos.
Call when you like.
Yes, that's the definition.
We are incapable of liberating ourselves.
We shot a video, if you want a copy.
Where're you staying?
Give it to Rusmir, he'll get it to me.
I stay till Saturday.
Champagne.
We're incapable of freeing ourselves...
and we call that democracy.
For Claude Lefort,
since modern democracies...
instituted politics as a separate
activity and field of thought...
modern democracies
are prone to totalitarianism.
I'd say the same.
I only believe stories whose witnesses
would have their throats cut.
Victim or criminal, there's no other choice.
One can always avoid
being tried as a criminal...
by accusing an ever bigger one...
a monster you're actually the victim of.
The life of man is but a battle for existence
with being vanquished the only certainty.
Without getting so cynical.
It's virtually intolerable...
to hear victims without anger
or disgust be reduced to this.
Due to, or despite, oneself.
That's why we give the floor to victims...
who are invited to speak as victims.
The world Is how split in two...
between those who line up
to voice their misery...
and those for whom this public display...
provides a daily dose of moral comfort...
to their domination.
We always discuss the key to the problem,
never the lock.
What lies ahead of us now...
is like a story without thought...
as if bequeathed by an impossible will.
More than ever, we're faced with the void.
I wanted to say goodbye, and thank you.
Thank you and goodbye.
She has something to give you.
From Olga.
The film she made with the little camera.
That's nice.
Thank her for me.
I'm calling from Paris.
Ramos Garcia.
Sure, three weeks ago.
Sarajevo. I was translating.
I'm in Paris. Did you watch TV last night?
Hostages were taken in Jerusalem.
In a cinema.
A French Jewish girl of Russian descent.
She wanted to blow herself up.
It was Olga, I'm sure of it.
You met her one night.
She wanted to give you a DVD. It's her.
How do you know?
I'm sure of it.
She gave the audience
five minutes to get out.
She said if there was one Israeli
who'd die with her...
for peace, not for war, she'd be happy.
Then what?
Everyone left, leaving her alone.
She had a big red shoulder bag.
The marksmen arrived and killed her...
before she could open her bag.
It contained only books.
KINGDOM 3 PARADISE
There are two people, side by side.
I'm next to her.
I never saw her before...
but I recognize myself.
It is...
like...
an image.
But a distant one.
Street of No Return
It was a fine, clear day.
You could see a long way off.
But not as far as Olga had gone.
And so, in the age of fable...
after the floods...
KINGDOM 1 HELL
there appeared on earth...
men armed for extermination.
They're horrible here...
with their obsession for cutting off heads.
It's amazing that anyone's survived.
"Forgive us our trespasses...
"as we forgive
those who trespass against us."
As we forgive them and no differently.
As we forgive them and no differently.
We can consider death In two ways...
the impossible of the possible...
or the possible of the impossible.
Now, "I" is someone else.
KINGDOM 2 PURGATORY
Are you here
for the European Literary Encounters?
I thought you made films.
I was asked to give a talk to the students.
On what?
The text and the image.
So, what's going on?
The flight from Zagreb is late.
If your father was an Egyptian Communist...
he must have known Henri Curiel.
They even followed the same itinerary.
Your father died?
He died, yes.
Not the way Curiel did.
Not a violent death.
So, same itinerary, meaning what?
Egyptian, middle-class background.
Happy childhood. Jesuit education.
Then, exposure to Egypt's poverty...
and the same revolt
against rabbis, king, parents....
Is that when he came to France?
He was partisan.
He got arrested.
He spent a year and a half in prison.
And your mother?
She was more a Zionist.
I'm going to go see what's happening
with Air Bosnia.
She took the last Cairo-Jerusalem train.
She arrived in Jerusalem in 1948 by train?
And those on the Exodus, by boat?
There's exodus and Exodus.
So you went to school in Israel?
No, we left Israel very early on.
My father loved France.
I went to school in France.
And your military service?
I did it in Israel.
- You went back?
- Yes.
- With your mother?
- No, alone.
And after your military service?
Strangely, during my service
I realized how French I had become.
So I went back to France.
You found work?
Interpreter.
French, Hebrew, Russian,
Spanish, Portuguese.
What brings you here?
I'm working for the Literary Encounters.
But also checking up on my niece.
Her mother, my sister,
asked me to check on her.
I think they're here.
Are you sure Mr. Darwish is here?
You are in the same hotel.
Mr. Goytisolo wants to see the library.
Speaks French, Russian,
Spanish, Portuguese.
Before his talk.
What's it about?
The forest of writings.
Who are those people?
The SFOR.
Germans today. Americans tomorrow.
Next week: Russians, French, Italians.
So, Miss Lerner, ever been stung
by a dead bee?
That's enough.
I was wondering...
why aren't revolutions started
by the most humane people?
Because humane people
don't start revolutions.
They start libraries.
And cemeteries.
When Mr. Goytisolo was here in 1993...
the Serbian front lines were here.
And they shelled from up there?
It was easy.
Killing a man to defend an idea...
isn't defending an idea, it's killing a man.
When it's all over, nothing Is the same.
Violence leaves a deep scar.
A trace of the oblivion always remains.
The trust in the world
that terror destroys is irretrievable.
To see your fellow man turn on you...
breeds a feeling of deep-rooted horror.
Violence severs the lifeline.
A survivor is not only changed,
he's someone else.
The dream of survival becomes a nightmare
for he who Is on the journey.
Each of us can become a danger for others.
The body is a potential weapon.
Knowing where we can be harmed,
each of us can harm another.
I know him!
It's Pierre Bergounioux.
We went to school together.
Show him into the manager's.
Yes, Mr. Ambassador.
it's Mr. Bergounioux.
The ambassador wants to see him.
The Israeli journalist is waiting.
They've been waiting for 8,000 years.
And you?
I'm presenting my book:
From Homer to Faulkner.
Tell me.
Do writers know what they're talking about?
Do they really know?
Of course not.
Homer knew nothing about battlefields,
slaughters, victories, or glory.
He is blind and bored.
He has to settle
for recounting what others did.
Possibly.
There's a contradiction.
Those who act never have the ability...
to say or think adequately
about what they do.
Conversely, those who tell stories...
don't know what they're talking about.
Remember Mao Zedong.
The President.
Grivas, the car.
Where's my scarf?
What about me?
A letter from my grandfather.
Not for the ambassador, for the man.
I don't understand. Tomorrow, miss.
Which "man"?
Lyons. 1943. The Gestapo.
Come with me.
Let's go.
Why Sarajevo?
Because of Palestine,
and because I live in Tel Aviv.
I wanted to see a place
where reconciliation seemed possible.
They may hot run my article.
Possibly.
Anyway, it's for myself.
Who's that next to Kafka in your office?
Someone like you, maybe.
Hannah Arendt.
Her friend Sholem said
she looked like 12 synagogues.
Under the Ottoman Empire...
the sitting room was rented to what
wasn't yet called the Jewish Agency.
When I arrived,
they hung her portrait in homage.
You should read
the articles she wrote in the 1950s.
They're enlightening.
Your grandfather....
In 1943, when you were a student,
you hid another young man...
and his fianc.
They were wanted by the Vichy police.
My mother was born in your...
in your garret in 1945...
then they emigrated.
Later, you were awarded
the title of "The Righteous."
But you turned it down.
You were applying to Normale Sup'...
and you said it was normal.
Possibly.
Now we want to organize a meeting.
Not with the French diplomat,
but with a free man...
if you've remained one.
Not a just conversation, just a conversation.
No military or political solutions.
Just basic problems.
No military or political solutions.
Just basic problems.
Psychology and ethics, nothing else.
Even if I live in New York most of the time...
I have constant nightmares.
But a friend from Haifa says,
when he dreams...
he dreams not about the enemy,
but about himself.
Not about Israel, but Palestine.
Can we start there?
With the land...
with the promise...
then the atonement.
Just a conversation.
- Good luck.
- To you, too.
In the Resistance,
did the Germans inhabit your dreams...
or only France and the French?
And that dead language
we brought back to life?
Is it really living?
And your French,
which you're slowly losing...
grammatically, anyway.
Then we publish the conversation.
Even Haaretz won't run it.
- It's not a bad paper.
- They won't run it.
I'm just a stringer. But I know them.
They want to, but they can't.
They dream of Palestine, not Israel.
It's too late.
My grandfather has a rich friend.
We can print 100,000 copies, a million...
to hear a simple conversation
between two friends.
A dialogue no one has,
not even in his heart...
because that heart is alone.
A young German Catholic woman
said in 1943:
"The dream of the individual is to be two.
"The dream of the State is to be one."
They cut her head off.
Forgive the confusion. The letter is clearer.
I'm at the Holiday Inn.
Tomorrow I photograph the Mostar Bridge.
Grandfather's friend has a private jet.
It wouldn't take long.
- I'd have to resign.
- Why not?
I'll have to think it over.
That's normal.
The world in which we live...
desperately needs, in order to subsist...
the existence of the contemplated...
and poets...
like Valente and Lezama Lima.
Light and darkness...
and the revelation of hidden meaning...
should have attained in our times...
a remarkable identity.
Nature is a temple
where living colonnades...
sometimes let out confused phrases.
Man wanders among symbols
in those glades...
which watch him...
with familiar gazes.
As our age has endless destructive force...
it now needs a revolution...
of a comparable creative force...
that reinforces memory...
clarifies dreams,
and gives substance to images.
...that reserves for the dead a better fate...
gives ephemera a splendid
sense of its transparency...
and escorts the living...
on a safer,
more serene crossing of darkness.
Light...
is the first visible animal of the invisible.
You never answer.
But I will say nothing.
What I say is nothing.
See to it that I can speak.
Any idea how I can go about it?
Convince me that you hear me.
Talk to me.
How can I talk if you don't hear me?
Mahmoud Darwish...
you once wrote
that he who writes his story...
inherits the land of that story.
Do you not believe in the connection
that the Israeli people have with this land?
You say there's no more room for Homer...
and you are the Trojans' bard...
and you love the vanquished.
You're talking like a Jew.
Nowadays, that's seen
as something positive.
Truth has two faces.
We heard a story.
Sometimes we also heard
the Trojan victim speaking...
through the mouth of the Greek Euripides.
I'm looking for a Trojan poet.
Troy didn't tell its story.
I ask myself...
does a land...
that has great poets...
have the right to conquer a people?
Is the absence of poetry...
sufficient reason to defeat them?
Is poetry patriotic?
Can a people be strong...
without having its own poetry?
I was a child of a people...
that had not been recognized until then.
And I wanted to speak
in the name of the absentee...
in the name of the Trojan people.
There's more inspiration and humanity...
in defeat than there is in victory.
Even in defeat there is poetry.
And probably better poetry.
If I belonged to the victor's camp...
I'd demonstrate my support for the victims.
Do you know why
we Palestinians are famous?
Because you are our enemy.
The interest is in you...
not in me.
So we have the misfortune...
of having Israel as an enemy...
because she has strong allies.
SO many we can't even count.
And we have the good fortune...
of having Israel as our enemy.
Because Jews are the center of interest
of the world.
That's why you've brought us
defeat and renown.
You defeated us.
But you gave us renown.
We are your propaganda ministry.
The world is interested In you...
not us.
I have no illusions.
In Palestine as a Metaphor...
you write: "If they defeat us in poetry...
"then it's the end."
There was probably an error,
for it to be this way.
But there's another meaning:
Neither a victim nor a defeat...
can be gauged in military terms.
The Turkish Prime Minister...
once compared minarets to bayonets.
I bear the obedient language like a cloud.
Communism existed once.
Communism existed once,
for two times 45 minutes...
at Wembley Stadium...
when Budapest's Honved
beat England 6 to 3.
The English played individually...
the Hungarians played together.
Where do you think this photo was taken?
No, Richmond, Virginia. 1865.
The American Civil War.
North against South.
It was a peasant girl
during the Second Empire...
who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary.
They asked what she looked like.
Bernadette said: "I can't describe her."
So the mother superior
and the bishop showed her...
plates of great religious paintings.
Raphael's Virgin, Murillo's.
Each time, Bernadette said:
"That's not her."
And suddenly,
the Virgin of Cambrai came up.
An icon.
Bernadette fell to her knees:
"It's her, Your Grace."
No movement.
No depth, no artifice.
The sacred.
Yes, the image is joy.
But beside it, lies the void.
All the power of an image
can only be expressed through it.
They say our language...
arbitrarily divides up things in reality.
And they say this as If it were our fault.
You may have studied
Racine's Phaedra in French.
"When you have learnt my crime,
my fate, my shame...
"I'll die no less but with a guiltier name."
Try to see.
Try to imagine.
In the first case, you say: Look at that.
In the second, you say: Close your eyes.
The shot and reverse shot
are basics of film grammar.
But look closely at these shots
from the Hawks movie...
you'll see that it's the same thing twice.
That's because the director is incapable...
of seeing the difference
between a man and a woman.
That are alike.
For Instance, two pictures...
of the same moment in history.
Then you see that truth has two faces.
In my opinion...
it's because those who do the books
are mere accountants.
Besides, Balzac writes...
about entries in the Great Ledger.
The Tables of the Law.
The Holy Scriptures.
The People of the Book.
jew
muslim
For example, in 1948...
the Israelites walked in the water...
to reach the Holy Land.
The Palestinians walked
in the water to drown.
Shot and reverse shot.
The Jews become the stuff of fiction...
the Palestinians, of documentary.
We say the facts speak for themselves.
But Celine said:
"Sadly, not for much longer."
And that was in 1936.
Because the field of text...
had already covered the field of vision.
In 1938...
Heisenberg and Borg were walking
in the Danish countryside...
talking about physics.
They came to Elsinore Castle.
The German scientist said:
"Oh, there's nothing special
about this castle!"
The Danish physicist said:
"Yes, but if you say 'Hamlet's castle'...
"then it becomes special."
Elsinore the real, Hamlet the imaginary.
Shot and reverse shot.
Imaginary: certainty.
Reality: uncertainty.
The principle of cinema...
go towards the light
and shine it on our night.
Our music.
AND DELIVERANCE ?
AND VICTORY ?
THAT WILL BE MY MARTYRDOM
TONIGHT I WILL BE IN HEAVEN
Can the new little digital cameras
save the cinema?
Yes, they all died very young.
The bridge was designed
under the Ottoman Empire...
in 1566...
by Hajrudin,
a student of the great architect Sinan...
in the time of Suleyman the Magnificent.
The city of Mostar was named after it.
In Slavic languages, "most" means "bridge."
We called it the "Old Man"...
as we would a friend or a father.
We would meet on the "Old Man."
The more daring among us...
would dive off the bridge.
The greenest water in the world.
It's not a question
of re-establishing tourism...
between the banks of the Neretva.
We must at once restore the past...
and make the future possible.
Combine the pain...
and the guilt.
Two faces and one truth: the bridge.
It seems difficult.
"If the face symbolizes 'Thou shalt not Kill'...
"how can we make a face with stones?"
The relationship between me
and the Other isn't symmetrical.
At first, the Other matters little...
with respect to me.
That's his business.
For me, he's the one I'm responsible for.
Here, a Muslim and a Croatian.
We are all guilty...
for everything and for everyone.
And myself more than others.
The stones were salvaged in two phases.
In June 1997 and August 1999.
Each stone was identified on a card...
on which each detail was noted.
Its position in the water,
its position in the structure...
and a description of each face...
on which clamps were attached.
It was like rediscovering
the origin of language.
You know that before writing
was invented at Sumer...
they spoke of the past
using the word "after"...
and for the future the word "before."
No, I didn't know.
It is...
like...
an image...
but a distant one.
There are two people side by side.
I'm next to her.
I never saw her before.
I recognize myself.
But I have no memory of all that.
It must be far from here.
Or later on.
I don't give a damn!
The state of our poverty is clearer.
The landscape is strewn with wire,
the sky is red with explosions.
As this ruin didn't spare
the very notion of culture...
we must boldly dismiss it.
We have to make do with very little.
If the house Is already on fire,
it's mad to try to save the furniture.
The lucky ones are the defeated.
I don't feel like speaking Russian.
I distrust the Russian language.
In fact, I only regret...
that the powerful notion
the Russians have of evil...
alienates them from conscience.
This is due to Russian syntax.
It was in case someone was listening.
There are still microphones.
If anyone understands me,
then I wasn't clear.
"But she didn't feel like she was falling.
"On the contrary, it seemed...
"as if the ground was rising toward her
with appalling speed.
Suicide is the only truly serious
philosophical problem.
You saying that as a Jew,
or as a Frenchwoman?
I don't quite know.
Two things hold me back:
one minor, the other major...
but the minor one is major, too.
What's the minor one?
The pain.
Is it that important?
Can't you kill yourself without pain?
And the second reason, the major one?
The next world.
That's nothing.
Just the next world.
Aren't there people
who think about the next world?
They can only judge for themselves.
There will be total liberty
when it's the same to live or die.
That's the goal.
Funny goal.
But then it might turn out
no one wants to live.
No one.
Anyone can act as if there's no God...
there is nothing...
but no one has ever tried yet.
Not true.
Millions have been killed
or killed themselves.
Yes, but always for other reasons,
always out of terror...
never to kill that terror.
Do you love children?
Then you love life.
Yes, I love life. Why?
But you want to kill yourself.
What's that got to do with it?
Life is one thing, death another.
Life exists and death doesn't.
I see you know your lines.
In Hebrew, too?
We're not tourists.
- What does Akhim think?
- He will help me.
Will he go to Jerusalem with you?
No, he'll stay here. We don't agree.
But he'll help me.
I go back to Paris Wednesday.
The meetings are over.
Good luck, Olga.
Yes, Uncle Ramos.
Call when you like.
Yes, that's the definition.
We are incapable of liberating ourselves.
We shot a video, if you want a copy.
Where're you staying?
Give it to Rusmir, he'll get it to me.
I stay till Saturday.
Champagne.
We're incapable of freeing ourselves...
and we call that democracy.
For Claude Lefort,
since modern democracies...
instituted politics as a separate
activity and field of thought...
modern democracies
are prone to totalitarianism.
I'd say the same.
I only believe stories whose witnesses
would have their throats cut.
Victim or criminal, there's no other choice.
One can always avoid
being tried as a criminal...
by accusing an ever bigger one...
a monster you're actually the victim of.
The life of man is but a battle for existence
with being vanquished the only certainty.
Without getting so cynical.
It's virtually intolerable...
to hear victims without anger
or disgust be reduced to this.
Due to, or despite, oneself.
That's why we give the floor to victims...
who are invited to speak as victims.
The world Is how split in two...
between those who line up
to voice their misery...
and those for whom this public display...
provides a daily dose of moral comfort...
to their domination.
We always discuss the key to the problem,
never the lock.
What lies ahead of us now...
is like a story without thought...
as if bequeathed by an impossible will.
More than ever, we're faced with the void.
I wanted to say goodbye, and thank you.
Thank you and goodbye.
She has something to give you.
From Olga.
The film she made with the little camera.
That's nice.
Thank her for me.
I'm calling from Paris.
Ramos Garcia.
Sure, three weeks ago.
Sarajevo. I was translating.
I'm in Paris. Did you watch TV last night?
Hostages were taken in Jerusalem.
In a cinema.
A French Jewish girl of Russian descent.
She wanted to blow herself up.
It was Olga, I'm sure of it.
You met her one night.
She wanted to give you a DVD. It's her.
How do you know?
I'm sure of it.
She gave the audience
five minutes to get out.
She said if there was one Israeli
who'd die with her...
for peace, not for war, she'd be happy.
Then what?
Everyone left, leaving her alone.
She had a big red shoulder bag.
The marksmen arrived and killed her...
before she could open her bag.
It contained only books.
KINGDOM 3 PARADISE
There are two people, side by side.
I'm next to her.
I never saw her before...
but I recognize myself.
It is...
like...
an image.
But a distant one.
Street of No Return
It was a fine, clear day.
You could see a long way off.
But not as far as Olga had gone.