Absolutely agreed. Magnificent film. The opening sequence is one of the best opening sequences ever filmed. That song was perfect, nothing more needed to be depicted. The lyrics of Chad Gadya, and the swelling, ocean-furious orchestration of Albertstein's version - hypnotic with its ebb-and-flow ambiance - embody and emanate the entire history of Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and Humankind in general.
All three women are symbolically the same woman....Israel...trapped and destroyed by men and tradition and future progress/modernity.
Rebecca's father is Jewish [tradition, the past], but not her mother. Her father raises her in the Judaistic tradition, yet apparently failed to inform her (and she failed to learn from her studies) that many Jews, including Israeli Jewish officials, would not consider her Jewish because her mother was not Jewish. This traditional doctrine destroys her identity. Then her fiance [the future, the modern Jew, the new Israel], the man she wanted to marry, and Israel, the country she wanted to live in/marry, who appears to hail from an affluent and sophisticated family, destroys her when he relates to her his rape of a Palestinian refugee [metaphor for Israel raping/destroying Palestinians].
This is also a metaphor: she wants to marry Israel, she wants to live in Israel and absorb Israel's history and culture into her soul, she wants to belong in Israel, she wants to belong to Israel. But the Tradition and the Modern destroy her. Israel destroys her.
Hanna's father was a German who fled from Hitler-era Germany to Palestine pre-1948. He had a choice between Palestine [Tradition] and the United States [Progress/Modernity], and selected Palestine. She married Moshe, a Jewish Israeli like herself, but instead of living in Israel "proper", he opted to live in Sinai and the Negev, then Jerusalem. The life he created for his wife and children was Modern/Progressive, Hanna is clearly independent and sophisticated, but their life had been exhaustive and gruelling and lacking financial stability until he began illegally producing armoured vehicles for Arabs. The Tradition, the Past, forced her to be born and raised in Israel at a time when the country was suffering economically and entrenched in wars, and the Future, the Progress, her husband, the metaphorical Israel, forced her and her husband from home to home to home and job to job to job, then crime. The Tradition and the Progress, Israel, destroy her.
Leila, a Palestinian residing in Jordan [Modernity, Industry]. Her husband is a traditional Palestinian once again living in Jordan, after decades of exile. His own Tradition - comprising Palestine and Israel - destroyed his massive farm before his exile. Palestinians destroyed his farm, then the IDF destroyed his farm and forcibly exiled him to the United States. His son, Leila's stepson, like herself, is a Modern Palestinian. And he detests her because she is modern [ironic], she is an independent Palestinian woman who does cover her head and body, and she willingly works with Israelis. Tradition has destroyed Palestinians, especially Palestinian women, and Leila has clearly wrenched herself away from that, at the risk of alienating herself from her own people. But her modern stepson torches the family farm and surrounding village in retaliation against his father [too traditional] and stepmother [too modern] and against Israel [nearby refugee camps]. She is destroyed by Tradition because her stepson wants her to be a traditional Palestinian woman, which requires her to stop living the life she wants to live, she is destroyed by modernity because her modern stepson destroys everything she and her husband worked to create, and she is destroyed by Israel, because Israel was the prime reason for her son's anger.
The woman who loves Israel and her history and religion and culture, and wants to marry into Israel, is destroyed by Israel. The woman who has married into Israel is forced by Israel into a fringe life on the outskirts of Israel, suffering years and years and years of labour, and is destroyed by Israel. The woman who has never been to Israel but desperately desires to return is destroyed by those who want to return and by Israel.
There is also the "Rebecca is America and Hanna is Israel and Leila is Palestine, America supports both sides for its own interests than refrains from supporting both sides when both sides battle" symbolism, but that is surface symbolism.
I hate director Amos Gitai, yet I keep subjecting myself to his films, and finally, after years and years, discovered two brilliantly rich jewels of his - Kadosh and Free Zone.
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