If the saga of Omar were a wine, it would have to be described as "Shakespearian, with notes of Dante, Orwell, Golding, and Sartre." Omar is a basically decent, seemingly uncomplicated young bakery worker who is inexorably drawn into the violent political warfare of the West Bank through his love for a girl, his increasingly radicalized circle of friends from childhood, and Israeli injustice. Right up to its unexpected, yet expectable, ending Omar is more victim than protagonist.
Clearly anti-Israeli in tone, the film explores the many reasons why Palestinians maintain an abiding antagonism toward Israel and Israelis. A driving metaphor in the film is the 25 foot high wall that Omar scales regularly to visit Nadia, his intended. Although The Wall was ostensibly designed to separate the Jewish West Bank settlements from Palestinians, it even more effectively separates Palestinian towns, families, and friends from one another--and from their water supplies in many places. To visit a neighboring town along is course has often become virtually impossible for having to detour long distances around the wall's tortuous path and passing through multiple checkpoints. Similarly, the Israeli military and police strive to divide and isolate individuals and groups psychologically just as the wall does physically. It's a classic use of divide-and-conquer strategy, which is one of the film's principal plot threads. Whatever your views of the Israel-Palestine situation, this thoroughly absorbing film will challenge them.
