You should not watch The Time that Remains unless you can give it your complete attention because the majority of the story is conveyed visually, and there is very little dialogue. When there is dialogue, it is rarely in English. You may be familiar with the director, Elia Suleiman, from his second film, Divine Intervention. The Time that Remains is an intimate historical autobiographical surrealist epic drama/comedy. The Time that Remains reminded me of what the next step after silent films could have been. The Time that Remains is what Wes Anderson, who is Suleiman’s contemporary, would have made if he was born an Israeli/Palestinian Christian Arab. The comedy is very dry. The dialogue is delivered in a dead-pan voice. The scenes are absurd and generally framed like a theater curtain or cinematically. It is implicitly and clearly political, but the message is not belabored or heavy-handed. The Time that Remains is about how major events are viewed on a personal level, and how the ultimate history is one’s origins in a specific time and place, the examination of the passage of time through daily rituals and the eventual transformation and inevitable demise of one’s parents and connections to one’s hometown, Nazareth. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Yes, and apparently repeatedly. Merry Christmas!