Cheap Hanna K. (Video) (Costa-Gavras) Price

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Customer Reviews of Hanna K.

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This is probably the least interesting of the 4 films Costa-Gavras made with A-list Hollywood actresses, the others being Missing, Betrayed and Music Box. However it does provide us with a different take on Clayburgh. Here as a lawyer living in Israel, she defends an accused terrorist with a slowed-down deliberate address as if biting her tongue. And at times she looks nearly as beautiful as she did in Bertolucci's Luna. Once again Gavras places a female protagonist in an oppressive environment, though in relation to the other women, she seems to have it pretty good. She has 3 suitors (count em!) and an international appeal. But we know something is amiss when the trial of the accused terrorist is skipped in favour of Clayburgh's pregnancy, and it's all gone wrong when she is reduced to chasing her client around abandoned refugee camps. It's never made clear why this trial becomes so important to Israel, in spite of providing a pro-Palestinian point of view, and matters aren't helped by scoring points off Clayburgh's competence as a lawyer. In spite of this lack of focus, which one might attribute to the writer/director's overly ambitious task, he does provide some interesting moments, whether it's Clayburgh's French husband, played with charming dryness by Jean Yanne, reacting to her ridicule of him, the frightening righteousness of Gabriel Byrne's District Attorney, or the images of Jerusalem as a beautiful city ravaged by time and war. Near the end, Clayburgh offers up her child to the father, willing to abandon all responsibilty for it, and this shocking act has no weight. She tells us that finally she has lost her identity a la Kafka, and perhaps in a country where identity is everything, the price is what she faces in the final moment.

Unique
This is an interesting film, given that it attempts to view the Arab-Israeli conflict through a lens sympathetic to dispossessed Palestinians. It is also unique in that it is one of but a handful of films that does not use the worn-out habit of portraying Arabs as nothing more than a horde of violent terrorists or oil-rich buffoons.

The film is well worth watching, especially for those who are only familiar with one side of the conflict. The fact that it was filmed on location in Israel and the Territories makes it that much more remarkable, as this is a side of life that the Israeli government is not anxious for the rest of the world to see.