Divine Intervention is not an essay – it’s a diary. It’s a window into one man’s soul, at times sharply focused and other times disassociated.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 20, 2024

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 7, 2008

Elia Suleiman is a talented man who made a striking film to voice the sorrows of his people and there are sorrows to be lamented, but his film is drawn from an ugliness and intellectual dishonesty that besmirches any lesson that could possibly be extracte

| Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 17, 2006

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 6, 2005

A mordantly amusing black comedy about life among the Arab citizens of Israel.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Sep 8, 2005

Life in the Arab-Israeli region has a random and arbitrary unintelligibility, if this surreal stylization validly reflects it. But, validity comes into question.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 7, 2005

| Original Score: 79/100 | May 13, 2005

...a non-narrative film that mixes agitprop with Pythonesque silliness and an almost stately, rueful kind of slapstick that recalls Buster Keaton in tone if not physicality.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jan 17, 2005

| Original Score: B+ | Aug 7, 2004

El director hilvana sensaciones, alegorías, representaciones más bien absurdas, e inspiradas en el cine mudo o la comedia física de Buster Keaton o Jacques Tati.

| Nov 3, 2003

Suleiman works in slow, poetic scenes that build to hilarious climaxes.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 15, 2003

Provocative yet self-reflective, hilarious yet heartbreaking chronicle of love and pain.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 28, 2003

A hard film to get, but an enjoyable one to watch.

| Original Score: B | Aug 27, 2003

As the film progresses, it becomes considerably more focused . . . even though it doesn't always make sense.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 15, 2003

Some of Suleiman's symbols are maddeningly obtuse, while others -- like the final shot of a pressure cooker -- are ridiculously obvious.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 15, 2003

From the first scenes -- a sorry-looking Santa huffing and puffing his way up a hill to flee a gang of Palestinian youths -- Divine Intervention intercedes to offer the most unexpected of film experiences.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 26, 2003

Elusive but fascinating.

Full Review | Jun 13, 2003

A brilliant comic cry of pain, a surrealistically piercing protest at what its maker sees as brutal oppression and chooses to attack with satire rather than rocks or bombs.

| Original Score: B | Jun 5, 2003

a film to be studied and analyzed. Too bad it's not accessible enough to connect on an entertainment level.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 22, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | May 20, 2003