Ford Transit takes its name from the reluctant star of its film – a white Ford transit van. Hany Abu-Assad's documentary follows young man Rajai as he detours between checkpoints and borders in the occupied territories, ferrying his motley crew of passengers around hair-raising shortcuts and occupational hazards like a flat tyre in the middle of nowhere.
This is white van driver Palestinian style, from the perspective of the most resourceful taxi-driver you've ever seen. Ostensibly making a film about Ford transits, Rajai gives Abu-Assad virtually unlimited reign to film his passengers and their views on the middle-east conflict. As the camera sits in the front seat next to Rajai and lets the passengers talk, the audience is treated to a wonderful panoramic rainbow of views from the young, old, Arab, Jew, American and government official.
As movement across the occupied territories is so rigorously controlled by the Israelis, it is only possible for a vehicle to drive so far before it reaches a checkpoint and has to turnaround. This has led to the rise of a kind of relay team of independently owned Ford transit taxis who drive to a checkpoint, drop off passengers who walk to pick up another cab on the other side of the checkpoint that takes them to the next one, and so on. The vans used to belong to the Israeli police and were given to the Palestinians to help them with transportation, and have now been taken on by this new breed of entrepreneur. Rajai is no fool, and he's brave, speeding to the front of a checkpoint queue risking the wrath of the Israeli security guards, or getting shot at by taking a short cut to miss a newly erected checkpoint.
If you want to know the mood of the people, just ask a cab driver, and Abu-Assad rightly gives Rajai plenty of screen time. “Educated people are hard to please”, “I'm not involved in politics …they'll put us in reservations like the Indians”, “You can't survive here if you're afraid,” he says. For Rajai it's all about beating the system and getting one over on the Israelis which is a daily challenge for him, punctured by minor victories. In an ironic sense he represents a certain kind of refreshing anarchic freedom; no one worries about a seatbelt, no one is crippled by insurance or litigation if someone breaks a finger nail, a licence, speed cameras or speeding fines. With bigger issues at stake, Rajai is more like a motorised warrior than a working driver.
Whilst we hear from government officials, Hanan Ashrawi and a Jewish filmmaker, we also hear from the mother of a suicide bomber, an American PhD student, children and people simply on their way to work. There is a nice scene when a group of men are arguing – not about politics in this instance but something very banal like body odour – a woman gets into the van and they fall silent. As soon as she gets out, their argument immediately erupts again. These few scenes are humorously staged by Abu-Assad, probably to show that Palestinians enjoy arguing about most things. Their beef is mostly with the US and Bush, who comes off worst in their estimation for using the region as a playground to settle American scores. As Rajai comments: “The whole world fights its battles out here”.
With the talking heads regularly changing throughout Ford Transit, spliced together with insight from Rajai and scenes of his triumphs and defeats, the film is constantly entertaining and informative. Refreshingly it offers a Palestinian-Arab viewpoint of the conflict from the voices of its own people, so contributing to a greater understanding of the region's problems. It also gives much needed humanity to a people who are otherwise reduced to terrorists and suicide bombers. |
