Lemon Tree is a film painted in broad strokes. A house and a lemon grove owned and cared for by a middle-aged Palestinian woman are at the heart of this story. The house and the lemon grove run into conflict with the entrance of a new neighbor, who happens to be the Israeli Defense Minister. For him, the lemon grove represents potential danger, an obstruction which must be removed; a nest where terrorists could hide.
Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis sets Lemon Tree in Zur HaSharon, on the Israeli-West Bank border. Salma, a 45–year old widow, inherited her house and the lemon grove which borders it from her father, who planted it 50 years ago. Next door, Navon, the Israeli Defense Minister, builds a new house for himself and his wife Mira. Their home straddles the grove on the Israeli side of the border.
From this archetypal situation of neighbor versus neighbor, Lemon Tree rapidly explodes into an emotional cauldron of personal issues that confront each personality. Salma, who fights the Israeli quarantine of her land, finds aid in a Palestinian lawyer who takes on her case. A love story gradually develops between the divorced lawyer and Salma, an older, lonely widow.
Navon's elegant wife, Mira, has her own issues with her hard-driving, ambitious and philandering husband, whom she faithfully stood by as he rose in power and prominence. All this might sound simple-minded, stereotypical storytelling, if nothing else, the metaphors are obvious. The fence depriving Salma of her cherished lemon orchard clearly symbolizes the ever-expanding wall being built to separate Palestinian from Israeli.
What redeems Lemon Tree are the women's performances– Salma, the Palestinian widow, portrayed by Hiam Abbass, and Mira, the minister's wife, played by veteran theatre actress Rona Lipaz-Michael. Both actresses elevate the potentially melodramatic material with nuanced, understated performances, revealing an unresolved internal agony.
The female performances also give us a secondary theme in Lemon Tree. The women share a tragically unrealized emotional connection. Separated by a fence, both share destinies that are shaped and controlled by the politics and actions of men. The possibility of these two women on opposite sides of the fence understanding and reaching out to each other is palpable, but neither can overcome the barriers that keep them apart.
The film's drama escalates as Salma fights for her right to keep and tend her trees. The Palestinian Authority to whom she first appeals refuses to get involved. An Israeli military court quickly rules against her. But the case becomes an international media story, progressing to the Israeli Supreme Court.
Much has been made of the pro-Palestinian stance of Lemon Tree. Eran Riklis, whose previous film was “Syrian Bride,” is one of a new wave of Israeli filmmakers. Many feel these filmmakers are opposed to hard-line Israeli politics, and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. For Lemon Tree, this overstates the case. The film is most effective in reducing politics to questions of acceptance, tolerance, understanding, trust.
Lemon orchards inherited as a legacy, a minister and his family's security, a Palestinian widow's loneliness are the emotional chess pieces which underscore larger themes. Here, history confronts co-existence. Distrust destroys the possibility of peace. Lemon Tree elevates the Israeli-Palestinian question to the human level of everyday. An arrogant neighbor building a fence as self-protection could well result in your loss of access to the trees, or to life.
Milos Stehlik’s commentaries reflect his own views and not necessarily those of Facets Multimedia, Worldview or 91.5 WBEZ-Chicago Public Radio.