For a lot of Americans, words like “West Bank,” “Palestine,” and “Israel” exist more as political ideas rather than actual places, denoting a struggle that transcends a particular location. To understand this region and the reasons people live the way they do there (behind walls, passing through checkpoints, in the midst of one’s fiercest enemies) takes a nuanced understanding of history spanning World War II, conflicts in 1948 and 1967, and a series of accords over the last 20+ years.
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Even so, those in the region can attest to the fact that people live in this area and exist outside of the geopolitical conversation, raising kids, cooking meals, and struggling with the burden that the whole world has placed upon this small patch of land. How folks contend with this duality is what director Ameen Nayfeh is interested in with his film, “200 Meters,” which follows a man trying to cut through the high-stakes politics of his neighborhood to see his son.
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When the audience meets Mustafa (Ali Suliman), he’s getting a massage from his wife Salwa (Lana Zreik), yet it feels more like a date than a casually intimate moment between partners. It’s revealed that this is due to the couple’s estrangement, which sees Mustafa living inside the walled-off West Bank and Salwa/the kids residing on the other side of Israel’s checkpoints. Mustafa desperately wants Salwa and the kids to move back, yet his wife’s work provides for the family in a way that her husband’s scattershot construction work cannot.
Mustafa could live and work with Salwa and his children, but his obstinance against getting an Israeli identification card keeps the family apart and is driving a wedge between the family right when a crisis hits. Salwa calls Mustafa one morning to let him know that their son has been in a serious accident and is in a hospital on the other side of the West Bank wall. Unable to get through the security checkpoints due to a recently expired I.D., Mustafa must explore smuggling routes to travel the paltry 200 meters that may as well be two million for him. To navigate the checkpoint out of the West Bank, Mustafa pays his way into a black market caravan filled with an assortment of people trying to get to Israel, where his barely-contained panic about his son’s condition runs hard up against the slick operators casually moving people in and out of Israel.
A film constructed from dozens of quiet moments, “200 Meters” uses what appears to be a modest budget well, keeping the action tight and contained within Mustafa’s headspace. This is a film about physical barriers, to be sure, yet as things progress and the caravan keeps stumbling towards its destination, one begins to realize this is a story more interested in the invisible walls inside of these people.
Why Mustafa never got his Israeli identification card (which would allow him to pass the checkpoints without delay) is left unsaid, but it seems wrapped up in some level of pride that appears less important now that he’s a father in need. It’s a big reason the film works as well as it does, for it’s enough to know that Mustafa could have gotten it; the chaos of the day and the exhaustion on his face reveals that ideas and prejudices the panicked father once thought were important mean nothing on this day. Reminiscent of something like the O. Henry’s “Gift of the Magi,” “200 Meters” forces its protagonist to reexamine what he thinks is important by juxtaposing it against a more pressing demand that makes the previous one obsolete.
The film does a fine job setting itself up within the context of the time and place, never using title cards or deliberate dialogue, but instead carefully constructed conversations, props, and background noise like newscasts to inform the audience when and where they are. It’s all very skillfully done and is a credit to a script (also by Neyfeh) that knows how to unpack all of its important particulars with minimal screen-time and maximum effect. The same goes for the conflict of the picture, which is significant and a driving force of the narrative, yet never needs a flashy explosion or an elaborate set-piece to set the stakes.
Suliman is at the center of what works for “200 Meters,” however, for the film rests almost entirely on his shoulders and is communicated largely through his posture and the handful of lines he’s provided. The friendship that builds between Mustafa and another member of the caravan, Anne (Anna Unterberger), goes a long way towards developing not just the larger world of this region’s reality, but Mustafa’s reexamination of which barriers actually matter. It seems like a simple narrative journey, but like the film’s eponymous 200 meters, it’s a gulf that’s deceptively wide. [B+]
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