In a gripping film set in 1930’s Tel Aviv, lovers fight the tide of terrorism and colonialism
Michael Winterbottom’s ‘Shoshana’ sets a passionate love story against a volatile political backdrop
Harry Melling in ‘Shoshana’ Courtesy of Altitude Films
Editor’s Note: This review contains spoilers.
Michael Winterbottom’s Shoshana is an unexpectedly good film that successfully sets a passionate love story against a volatile political backdrop. Indeed, history and politics informs the romance and the thriller that ensues. Loosely inspired by a true story it boasts added resonance in light of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks and the horrors that have followed in their wake.
Set in Tel Aviv on the cusp of World War II, the British are struggling to keep chaos at bay among the Palestinians and Jews living in the region and representing a range of historical and personal experiences and visions for Israel. Corruption and terrorism exist on all sides. The film, which grapples with imperialism, colonialism, and conflicts over a homeland and how one defines it, largely unfolds from the Jewish and British points of view.
Winterbottom, whose body of work is wide ranging, has made a number of films that dramatize historical narratives, set in fraught areas of the globe. In films like Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), This World (2002) and his recent documentary Eleven Days in May (co-directed by Mohammed Sawwaf), which recounts the bombing of Palestinians in Gaza in 2021, the central relationships become vehicles for political and social explorations. Shoshana, an especially ambitious film, is more encompassing in scope.
Working for the anti-terrorist division of the British Palestine Police force, Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth) is deeply in love with Shoshana (Irina Starshenbaum), the Ukrainian-born daughter of Dov Ber Borochov, co-founder of the Zionist Marxist movement. She is a free-thinking, sexually active woman, attractive to many men, and decades ahead of her time. She makes her living writing for a Socialist publication and is a member of the Haganah, which was founded to defend Jewish residents living in the region.
Wilkin is very much at home in Tel Aviv and plans to settle there permanently with Shoshana as his life’s partner. He studies Hebrew. In some ways he is willfully blind to reality. While his feelings for Shoshana are reciprocated, she approaches their affair with more caution, maybe even pessimism, always mindful that outside forces, coupled with inevitable tribalism may ultimately doom the two lovers.
In a plot that suggests Greek tragedy, Shoshana grows increasingly more committed to her cause than to the idyllic vision of life in Israel that the two lovers share. While Wilkin is ultimately assassinated by members of the terrorist Stern Gang, a more militant off-shoot of the extreme right-wing Zionist Irgun.
The history, who’s who, and especially the political factionalism depicted in the film is not always clear to those of us (and I include myself here) who may not be conversant in the topic. It remains ambiguous, for example, what precisely the British planned for the region. A one or two-state solution? Or are they, the Brits, destined to maintain power? Despite the intermittent use of vivid archival footage and Shoshana’s voice-over narrative, which attempts to fill in the gaps, a bit of Googling may be called for.
Still, Winterbottom in collaboration with co-writers Laurence Coriat and Paul Viragh, and cinematographer Gilles Nuttgens, bring to life a sense of impending doom as the brutality and bombings become more frequent and intense. The momentum builds thanks at least in part to editor Marc Richardson’s tight pacing.
The film is equally successful in forging a white, gleaming, and cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, especially in its nightlife where couples sip cocktails and dance away to Gershwin — “One day he’ll come along, the man I love…” The carefree, sophisticated scene, and
especially the romantic nostalgic lyrics, work wonderfully as both ironic commentary and at the same time accurately drawn re-creation.
A central and arguably stereotypical relationship here exists between the more liberal, and mild mannered Wilkin and the hard-line, at times sadistic British police officer Geoffrey Morton (Harry Melling) who has no problem with employing violence and torture to control Arabs and Jews to obtain information or just plain obedience. Morton emerges as an almost apolitical figure who doesn’t have much use for either Arabs or Jews. After a Jewish bombmaker accidentally blows himself up, Morton dismissively remarks, “There’s one less of them now.”
The performances are exemplary. I particularly admired Melling (The Queen’s Gambit and the Harry Potter films) as the hard-edged and cruel police officer devoid of self-doubt. Making his film debut, Alby, playing Stern, is both intensely introspective and charismatic. Irina Starshenbaum provides a subtle and understated spin on a woman in private turmoil. And Booth is wholly credible as a genial and rational man in a world that isn’t.
But what makes Shoshana so successful, and surprisingly so, is how seamlessly all these threads are woven together. Though at times the political backdrop takes precedence over the love story, Shoshana’s heart-rending grief as the film approaches its conclusion is indisputable. Perhaps all the more so as the hitherto combating factions inexorably join forces to battle what is perceived as a larger evil. The final scene depicting a uniform-clad Irina, rifle in hand, positioned on a field alongside members of the Irgun, says it all.
Shoshana, an American premiere, will be shown on the closing night of the Other Israel Film Festival at the Marlene Meyerson JCC in Manhattan, Dec. 10
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