ALL THAT'S LEFT OF YOU Review: Epic but Tender Family Saga about Palestinian Multigenerational Trauma

The third feature film by American Palestinian director Cherien Dabis, All That’s Left of You opens in 1988 in the occupied West Bank, where a teenage boy, Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman), gets involved in the protests and might be injured after Israeli soldiers open fire.

We won’t know his fate for sure until much later, since the film abruptly cuts to Noor’s mother, Hanan (played by Dabis herself), talking to an unseen counterpart, as she informs them – and us – that to truly understand what happened with her son, we must first address the past.

The film then rewinds to the end of the 1940s, when Noor’s grandfather, Sharif (Adam Bakri), then a young man, refuses to leave his family home and his orange grove in Jaffa, even after his wife and young children flee amid almost constant bombings. This is the part where it’s easy to confuse the film for what it is actually trying (and succeeding) not to be: an educational dramatization of the tragic Palestinian history, starting with the 1948 Nakba; a piece where said history is humanized by the plight of one particular family.

The director, who also plays a major character at three different stages of her life in the film, says that this is a problem with convincing the audience to watch a Palestinian movie: most seem to instinctively believe that this is a cinematic equivalent of eating broccoli, i.e., healthy and wholesome, but not necessarily enjoyable. And while it is hard to talk about a film with such a tough subject matter in conventional terms of enjoyability, it is certainly a piece that evokes lots of emotions. In fact, it addresses the audience’s feelings first and foremost, yet still manages to sneak in a whole bunch of complicated questions for us to ponder.

All That’s Left of You moves chronologically after the 40s bit, first settling in 1978, where we meet an older and much more disillusioned version of Sharif, now played by the late Palestinian cinema powerhouse, Mohammad Bakri. Here, Sharif is transformed from an idealistic symbol into a human being, a grumpy man, whose memory of his native land is already fraught with what appear to be the first signs of possible dementia. The doctor Sharif’s now grown-up son Salim (Saleh Bakri) consults, and suggests that forgetting might be a blessing in disguise.

The fragmented way the epic narrative is structured here, with the story jumping back and forth between different decades, comes off as almost symmetrical with the idea of a lost home, viewed through the distorted memories of three different generations. For Sharif, this memory, and therefore, his home, is still tangible, something to be proud of and cherish. For Salim, who left Jaffa as a small child, it’s something to disassociate himself from to be able to move forward. And for Noor, this is a home he never really knew – an ideal to contrast with the actual surrounding reality.

As life goes on, filled with everyday humiliations and unfairness, the hell of bureaucracy, and more heartbreak, traumas fester and perceptions change. As they do, the world of All That’s Left of You, captured intricately by cinematographer Christopher Aoun (Capernaum, The Man Who Sold His Skin), expands and contracts – from complex tracking shots to delicate closeups, where characters at times seem utterly alone, locked in with their pain.

In such moments, it’s worth remembering that Dabis’ film is also a story of different kinds of love and being able to make choices even when they seem impossible. Among them, the choice to somehow go on no matter what appears to be the most devastating – but also at least a little bit soothing.

The film opens today (Friday, January 9), in select locations, via Watermelon Pictures. Visit their official site for more information.