L ifestyles /C ulture
‘Mayor’ Makes Mundane Matters Meaningful
FI L M
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
THE FIRST TIME we
see Ramallah Mayor Musa
Hadid, subject of David Osit’s
new documentary “Mayor,”
he’s striding into the lobby of
Ramallah City Hall.

A waist-high decorative
snowman wearing a Santa
Claus outfit greets Hadid with
a black half-ramp of a smile.

There are potted plants. There
is a vending machine in the
lobby, which is presumably
restocked semi-regularly.

In Hadid’s first meeting
of the movie (which is largely
in Arabic, but subtitled in
English), a goofily boring
exploration of Ramallah’s
“city branding,” the slideshow
is shown with a Microsoft
operating system. Out front,
there is a fountain, with lights.

Ramallah City Hall and the
duties of the people who walk
its halls — trash collection,
street cleaning, filling potholes
and, yes, city branding —
are totally and completely
mundane. It is a place where
city council, led by Hadid,
administers municipal services
to a city of about 35,000 people.

In this mundanity, Osit finds
an utterly compelling story.

The movie is an interesting
departure from the usual conver-
sation about Israel and Palestine.

Even the most fervent partisans
could write the other side’s lines
at this point. The positions have
been stated and restated. With
the collected text of cable news
screaming matches, seder table
debates and poorly formatted
chain emails, you could teach
computers how to argue
about disengaging from Gaza
in 2004.

And when it comes to
movies, if you want to find the
one that adheres to your exact
view of what’s happened, it’s
out there, surely.

Meanwhile, people die,
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM Mayor Musa Hadid watches a Christmas celebration.
become embittered and dig in
further. Generations of Israelis
feel besieged and generations of
Palestinians feel dispossessed.

But while the fates of Israelis
and Palestinians are played
out in the halls of power, in
Washington, in Jerusalem,
someone has to make sure that
in Ramallah, the Christmas
tree lighting ceremony is
properly sequenced (national
anthem, then moment of
silence). Someone has to be
in charge of deciding whether
“WeRamallah” is meant to
use the “R” as a stand-in for
the word “are.” After clashes
between Israeli soldiers and
Palestinians clear, someone has
to go around and put out the
literal fires.

In Ramallah, that someone
is Musa Hadid, a man
seemingly born with a hand
clasped to his forehead, when
it’s not holding an e-cigarette.

Hadid is the tired mayor at
the center of the movie, bearer of
a deeply lined face and a bushy,
graying mustache. It’s a good face,
one that Osit keeps his camera on
for much of the movie.

Hadid rubs his eyes and his
temples with regularity, smiles
at Prince William during his
official visit, looks upon soldiers
in the street with horror, and
at the naive German parlia-
mentary delegation with
indignation. When a teacher
demonstrates the crappy doors
on her classroom, he frowns.

“I can’t bear to see these
doors again next years,” Hadid
grumbles. Even when Prime Minister
Mohammad Shtayyeh is telling
cameras that he hopes Easter
will be celebrated in Jerusalem
next year, it’s Hadid’s face in the
foreground, seemingly occupied
with more immediate matters.

That shot encapsulates
the spirit of the movie. The
day-to-day is the focus, with
the exceptional nature of the
occupation as the contextu-
alizing backdrop. The most
moving sequences of “Mayor”
return to this reality repeat-
edly; one montage early on,
preceding a protest quelled
with tear gas and bullets, shows
American restaurants, social
media logos on a billboard,
hands raised in protest,
fences, trucks with Hebrew
lettering, the “WeRamallah”
sign, a Christmas tree and an
ominously smiling green light.

There are thorny questions
and a fraught history to every
image, but we don’t have time
to deal with that all right now,
because a city that uses the
currency of a country it is not
a part of has to be governed.

The meaning is built through
the images.

JEWISH EXPONENT
jarring experience for viewers
who are not used to hearing
serious newscasters describe
Yom Ha’atzmaut as being the
anniversary of “the Israeli
regime’s installment,” and
those who are accustomed to
seeing Israel Defense Forces
soldiers as more than far-off
blurs toting big guns.

If those viewers would like
to watch a movie that conforms
to their experience of reality,
they’re out there. But if you’re
just a little curious about one
Rammalah-ite’s experience of
living in Ramallah, it’s worth
Courtesy of Rosewater Pictures
seeing Mayor Hadid, the
morning after an IDF raid on
Osit’s movie is “the Ramallah, in disbelief that a
Ramallah-ite’s experience of school’s volleyball court could
living in Ramallah,” as he put be so poorly designed. l
it in an interview with The
New York Review of Books. jbernstein@jewishexponent.com;
For this reason, it will be a 215-832-0740
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DECEMBER 24, 2020
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