i saw promises on my laptop on the way out to cleveland. actually, it was such a short flight, i only saw the first 25 minutes or so before i had to put the laptop away again. but i finished watching it last night after everyone else went to sleep, so for the sake of simplicity, let's just pretend that i finished it on the plane
"promises" is a documentary about the israeli palestinian conflict from the point of view of a bunch of children from various sides. the plan was to get them all together to play at the end of the film. only half of them agreed, but among that half we got to see the transformation of attitudes that we would expect, with friendships blossoming across the israeli-palestinian divide. then again, the most militant kids were the ones who refused to play in the first place
the saddest part was not the film itself, but the "where are they now" follow-up video among the extra features on the DVD. the two israelis who had made friends with the palestinian kids at the end of the film had joined the army. upon hearing that they were now soldiers, the palestinians wanted nothing to do with them anymore. given that military service is mandatory in israel, it's not really clear how much choice those kids had, but it also buried the notion that we can solve all the world's problems by getting a bunch of kids together then waiting for them to grow up. these conflicts have a momentum of their own.
the only kid who seemed really transformed was a palestinian who had emigrated to the u.s. in the film they mentioned he was a stone-thrower in the first intifada, who saw a good friend of his die when he was shot in the head by an israeli soldier. by the follow-up video, he was in amherst, mass and had received refugee status. as he waited for his application to be processed, he was hosted by a family that was half-jewish and lived with them for two years. he was the only one who really still had the spirit that the film ended with, and that was only because he got out of the region.
