Switching back and forth between the mid-20th century and the early 21st, Elle Flanders’ sensitive, award-winning documentary, Zero Degrees of Separation, is a meditation on Zionist history, the toll of the Israeli Occupation on both Palestinians and Israelis, and the inevitable regulation of the personal by the political. Though the film ultimately falls short of its promise of a comprehensive social critique, it is an intelligent and vital contribution to an intra-Jewish discourse about Zionist history and the possibility of a just and peaceful future.
As grainy Technicolor frames flash across the screen, we bear witness to the early days of the State of Israel. Men and women in tweed jackets and headscarves pass suitcases from hand to hand as new immigrants step onto the Haifa docks for the first time. The shaky title frames, accompanied by a haunting experimental soundtrack by David Wall, reveal that the archival footage is from Flanders’ grandparents’ trip to Israel in 1950.
Inter-spliced with the unedited historical footage is a contemporary story of two same-sex couples, each a union of an Israeli and a Palestinian.
Aside from Flanders’ behind-the-lens direction, our main narrator is an animated middle-aged Israeli man named Ezra, who talks us (and himself) through Israeli checkpoints and Palestinian villages with snappy remarks and a dry sense of humor. When questioned, he tells one soldier he’s going to an orgy, and later warns two others not to blindly follow their orders to evict and humiliate the Palestinians under their control.
The contemporary footage goes from the West Jerusalem apartment Ezra shares with his partner, Selim, to Palestinian-inhabited caves near Hebron to joint Israeli/Palestinian anti-occupation protests with Israeli social worker, Edit, and her Israeli-Palestinian partner, Samira. The archival footage keeps apace, implicating us, the North American viewers, in its outsider gaze. The grainy footage places us in a spectator’s position similar to that of Flanders’ grandparents, naively observing the kibbutzniks with their hoes and farm machinery in the fields, then using the shared icon of the bulldozer to transition to current Palestinian home demolitions and olive grove destruction. Though some visual/musical juxtapositions feel decidedly melodramatic, the minimalist artistry of other shots, such as an extended journey through an underground Israeli “bypass” beneath Bethlehem, make up for the overwrought moments.
The back-and-forth between the film’s two storylines seems deliberately jarring as we—and Flanders—confront the stark contrast between early Zionist optimism and the persistent absence of peace. The film clearly asserts that Israel—and not the Palestinians under its rule—is culpable for the current condition of injustice and violence. Edit’s remarks on the collision between histories encapsulate the sentiments of both Israeli characters, and that of the film: “I have no problem saying that we are to blame,” she says, with a map of illegal settlements hanging behind her, on her living room wall. “Zionism did not take into account that there was another nation here. It could have been done differently but it was not done differently.”
The prominence of Edit’s and Ezra’s narratives and the secondary nature of their partners’, signals a narrative decision that is both strategic and unfortunate. To be sure, most Jewish audiences are more inclined to listen to a story guided by Jews than by Palestinians, thereby rendering the expression of Israeli protest voices compelling and, in many North American circles, unusual. At the same time, though, we meet two incisive Palestinians who leave us wanting to know more about their lives under occupation and as gay people in their communities.
Ultimately, what the film lacks threatens to undermine its artistic and educational accomplishments. Though Flanders deliberately chooses to tell the story of two gay couples, she fails to explore the links between restrictive gender constructions and militarism. Such an omission has laudable intentions—to maintain focus on the Occupation, to avoid sensationalizing homosexuality—but is, nonetheless, a missed opportunity. The implicit contrast between the hypermasculinity of warfare and the gender bending of homosexuality, are not teased out enough to be more than conjecture on the part of the already informed viewer.
By failing to engage with the issue of sexuality, the film obstructs our ability to deeply relate to the subjects, whose personal lives—the very basis for their selection—within traditional societies are invisible to us. Since the film engages almost exclusively with interethnic, not sexual tensions, why not speak with one gay couple and one straight? With such fundamental narrative choices left unexplored, the viewer, intellectually stimulated but ultimately unsatisfied, must turn to outside sources to make sense of the film—rather than turning to the film to make sense of contemporary Israeli society. Nonetheless, Flanders’ is an important and artfully made film.
