Writers: Laurence Coriat, Paul Viragh and Michael Winterbottom
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Set in 1930s Palestine, Michael Winterbottom’s new film, his first since the lukewarmly received Greed, is a tense and riveting story of terrorism and loyalty. Under British rule, new city Tel Aviv is a dangerous place where bombings and shootings are commonplace. The police are there to keep the peace between Jewish settlers and Arabs, but it’s a complex operation. Shoshana tells the true story of a Jewish journalist embroiled in an affair with an English policeman.
It’s the kind of story that Graham Greene could have written; colonial types, desperate men and slippery women playing war games. Douglas Booth is the idealistic policeman, Tom Wilkin. He wants to do good, and after a few years in the city considers it home. He feels even more comfortable there when he starts dating Shoshana Borochov. She’s well-known in Tel Aviv, still small enough at the time for everyone to know everyone. But as tensions increase between the British and the Jewish community, their relationship is thrown into jeopardy.
Shoshana belongs to the illegal paramilitary group Haganah; she believes in a future state where Jews and Arabs can live side by side. However, the more militant group, Irgun, wants a state for Jewish people only and engages in a bombing campaign, targeting the Arab community and the British police which it believes is biased towards the Arabs. When Tom’s boss is killed in one of these attacks, a new superior officer, Geoffrey Morton, is brought in to hunt down the charismatic leader of Irgun, Avraham Stern.
Harry Melling (Harry Potter alumnus) as Morton is a magnetic character. From humbler origins – he’s from the ‘sweeping plains of Tooting Common’ – than the rest of the police department, he perhaps has to overcompensate by throwing his weight around. He certainly lacks tact, but not leadership. Melling gives Morton a sinister authority that would be foolhardy to challenge. In comparison, Booth’s Tom is a gentleman diplomat.
Their resolve to capture Stern overshadows the story of the film’s title character. Irina Starshenbaum’s Shoshana is clever and a little cold, never giving too much away. Only when she is in bed with Tom are her emotions plain to read. Otherwise, she is inscrutable and Tom’s superiors order an investigation into her and Tom’s relationship.
Much of the film’s budget seems to have been spent on explosions and there are many of them, some as slick and as nerve-shredding as those in The Hurt Locker. Italy’s coastline stands in handsomely for Palestine and a jazzy soundtrack contradicts the violence on the streets. There’s a real sense of the last days of empire as the people dance and party as a war that still has not ended begins. Winterbottom’s film tries to be as objective as it can, but it lacks a substantial Arab character. The only Arabs we see are victims of Irgun’s bombs or of Morton’s dubious strategies to keep order.
This is probably Winterbottom’s best film since Welcome to Sarajevo, it too about a war zone. Shoshana is a history lesson, but also a top-notch thriller.
