FEB 25 — Not Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies. Not Brad Pitt’s The Big Short. Certainly not The Martian starring Matt Damon and no, not The Revenant with Leonardo DiCaprio.
I am rooting for Palestinian director Basil Khalil’s Ave Maria.
Really? Is that even a movie, you ask? Has it really been nominated for the Oscars this year?
Yes, indeed. And here’s why I am rooting for it. It deals with sensitive matters that we in Singapore are familiar with but sometimes avoid.
In multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multicultural Singapore, we can identify with Khalil when he says in a Huffington Post interview: “It’s a very, very tricky and sensitive situation because the minute you have anything on Palestine it becomes political. Even if it’s a love story, or someone sweeping their front door, it becomes political if it’s about Palestine.”
We are very fortunate that we have a peaceful trisection of religions, languages and cultures for the past 50 years, and not as Khalil, a Palestinian who says this of his people in Israel: “Once you’re born, you’re instantly having to take sides — whatever religion you are.”
He speaks for the people on both sides who “have to live by those rules without even choosing them”.
In his Oscar-nominated short film, Ave Maria, he makes these worlds collide when a car belonging to a family of Jewish settlers crashes into the wall of the Convent of Sisters of Mercy, housing a group of Palestinian Carmelite nuns who observe their vow of silence.
The Jewish family is observing Sabbath and because of that they cannot use a phone and owing to their vow of silence, the nuns are forbidden to speak. The movie is about how the two work together so that they can get back to their own worlds.
A Singaporean Ava Maria?
Ave Maria is not a film about Israeli-Palestinian issues or the Middle East conflict, of which we get a daily dose in the news.
It is about issues that common people like us live with and deal with in our neighbourhood, in our business and personal lives.
In Singapore, making movies about religious and cultural topics is taboo and understandably avoided. But do we have to do that always? Can we not handle awkward intercultural situations in our lives with mutual respect and tact?
Many people, not only in Singapore, do just that when they entertain guests from abroad, even if there is an unfamiliar language and cultural barrier.
My business travels have taken me to Nouakchott, in Mauritania, on the western end of Sahara, by the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. My customer, an Arab Mauritanian, hosted a dinner for leading businessmen in the city on the occasion of the visit by his supplier from Singapore. Between my “Je parle juste un peu francais” (I speak just a little French) and his “You vegetable?” (his English for “You’re a vegetarian?”), little did I know then that I should expect a Basil Khalil-style drama unfolding that evening.
The centrepiece of the dinner, if I can call it that, was an entire roasted goat on the giant dining table.
In addition, there were multiple courses of meat and seafood for all to enjoy. As I had told him that I was a vegetarian, I was waiting for my vegetarian dish to arrive when others started to carve the goat and lick their fingers in appreciation.
Seeing my plate empty, my host pointed to the cute heaps of cold carrots, corn and peas, nicely placed around the goat and said “Pour vous, les vegetable” (the vegetables for you). I smiled and politely transferred some of those carrots and peas that had not touched the roasted goat. But instead of eating the vegetables that I knew were straight out of the deep freezer in my host’s kitchen, I just moved them around in my plate. An Indian vegetarian eating cold carrots from the side of a roasted goat? Do not tell my mother that I even went to Mauritania!
Despite the language and cultural barrier, my host soon sensed my discomfort. He asked his servants to prepare a huge plate of French fries and serve it with a mezze — a selection of Mediterranean vegetables, a plate of cut fruits and Arabic desserts, all enough to feed a platoon.
With a grand wave of hand he again said, “Pour vous, les vegetable”. About 20 years later, I still gratefully remember his kind gesture to arrange a sumptuous meal for a vegetarian to the best of his abilities despite his initial faux pas.
In a country where we conduct weddings and wakes in Housing and Development Board void decks, I am sure we have enough awkward situations like when mourning and merrymaking are providentially scheduled on the same day, next to each other, and people respectfully manage the situation. Also, with increasing interracial marriages in Singapore, I am sure a director can find enough movieworthy situations when our people with different traditions have overcome their cultural barriers to help one another, why, even to live happily ever after.
I am rooting for a Singaporean Ave Maria from a Singaporean “Basil Khalil”. — TODAY
* S N Venkat is senior associate director, Office of Postgraduate Professional Programme, Singapore Management University.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.