The Attack is two movies in one. First, The Attack is about a surgeon whose wife dies, and he discovers something about her that makes him question whether or not he ever really knew her. Second, The Attack is about the divide between Arab Israeli relations. The Attack is banned in most Arab countries because it was filmed in Israel. Ziad Doueiri directed The Attack, and though I did not recognize his name, we know his camera work from Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn and Quentin Tarantino’s films: Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. The Attack has subtitles, but it is such a tender portrait that refuses to give its audience any comfortable answers that it is worth viewing.
I suspect that Doueiri relates to The Attack’s main character, the Arab surgeon in an Israeli hospital, who is forced to finally face a personal existential crisis and an international struggle. The Attack treats the surgeon like a tragic mulatto: he thinks that he belongs in one world, but discovers that he never can no matter how respectable he is, and he is not at home with his family. (Is there an Arabic word for coon?) The Attack makes him a suspect in both worlds while he is guilty of nothing except privileging his personal happiness in a world of people filled with pain, including his wife. The Attack shows him discovering righteous anger at a late age which makes him a bit of a narcissist and stunningly unobservant, but somehow still sympathetic. I could tell from the beginning of The Attack who was up to nefarious deeds. His anger is less about the violation of his dignity, and thus the indignities faced by Arabs, but a childlike anger that life is not fair.
The Attack is a portrait of a jealous husband discovering that his wife was having an affair except it was not sexual. He is jealous that other people will always have a part of her that he can never possess or experience. The Attack does a pitch perfect portrait of the grieving process, particularly the imagined conversations with his wife and demanding that other people tell him stories about his wife. The Attack really tackles the idea that you can never truly know someone, and that different people have different perspectives, but no one has a complete one except the person living her life. It was particularly devastating how he was literally haunted by her image everywhere.
If The Attack has any negatives, it is the implicit generalization by the Arab surgeon and Doueiri that all Arabs, Christian and Muslim, are suspects, only a few degrees separated by terrorists. His Israeli buddies are somewhat vindicated for being suspicious of him. Was his wife a kind of femme fatale who never loved him, but only used him to get closer to Israeli targets? The answer is ultimately no, but he is cast as a kind of film noir investigator of terrorism. He is a doctor. The very idea of terrorism is against everything he does, but terrorism is also portrayed as being an intricate and willfully unseen part of his life.
The Attack is a really textured film that wrestles with issues of identity and human connection. The Attack seems to suggest that you can’t runaway from yourself so leaving home never helps, and it is better to deal with your demons as soon as possible.