And then, about three quarters of the way into the movie, we started to understand what the movie is about. In one sense, yes, it's about how awful terrorism is, but there's more to the movie. Much, much more. By the end of it, what we realized is that we had watched, in it's understated and powerful way, a passionate and almost desperate attempt to strip everything away and to do nothing but show the gaping wound of a region caught in the throes of what at the time (early 2002 right in the middle of the Infitada) felt like the death spiral of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The movie feels like nothing but a postcard depicting what life is like right smack dab in the center of hell.

really