Given the recent headlines for the past two years concerning Israel and Palestine, it’s very hard not to notice the political tensions concerning that conflict as it has existed and maintained for almost 100 years at this point, and (unfortunately) will probably remain a challenging solution to navigate. No matter what side you’re on regarding the debate, it’s a chaotic one, and has been for a very, very long time. Director Michael Winterbottom’s latest film Shoshana, explores the turmoil through the eyes of real-life figure Shoshana Borochov (one of the founders of Labor Zionism) and her relationship with British police officer Thomas Wilkin amidst terrorism attacks by Avraham Stern and his Lehi organization.
Set during the 1930s and 1940s, Shoshana takes place in “Mandatory Palestine” under British rule. During that time, there was a growing movement among Jewish settlers wanting to “establish the kingdom of Israel” and while there was a non-violent movement, but there was also the Lehi organization, which had no problem with car bombings, indiscriminate murder of women and children, and shooting at police officers. Here, we are introduced to Ukrainian-Jew Shoshana Borochov (Irina Starshenbaum), a socialist Zionist journalist, who is living and working in Tel Aviv, documenting the turmoil. She soon meets Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth), a British member of the Palestine Police Force. His job is to investigate acts of terrorism by Jewish settlers against the British police and Palestinians.
As the two begin a relationship, they are at odds because they are from two different worlds. While Shoshana is not associated with Lehi, that doesn’t mean that she isn’t associated with people in her community who are. And Thomas’s job is to investigate and stop the acts of terror. She gets questioned by people in her community for not dating a Jewish man, and his loyalty is questioned by his colleagues for being too close. The two realize that eventually they will have to take a side, even though they do get married and try to have a functioning relationship. As Shoshana progresses, so do tensions between Arabs, Jews, and the British in the middle of everything, trying to maintain the peace (and both Arabs and Jews want them out of the land).
Because Shoshana is based on real-life and real historical figures, the film doesn’t have a happy ending. No need to spoil the outcome because you can simply Google how tragic things end for them, but Shoshana does try to remain neutral when it comes to the Israel/Palestine debate (even though there are no key characters who are Palestinian in the film). Even though Shoshana is centered on the romance between Shoshana and Thomas, the focus of the film seems to be mostly on the tensions between the British Police and Zionist terrorists, and the actual “romance” part of the film seems to be lacking. It appears director Michael Winterbottom wanted to remind the audience about the Palestine/Israel conflict and how long it’s been going on. There are moments in Shoshana where the British police’s treatment of Jewish settlers is reminiscent of how the Israeli military treats Palestinians nowadays, and that most likely not by accident, as this conflict over land has come full circle.
Shoshana is now playing in select theaters.
