THE GREEN PRINCE

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3.5 stars
Whichever side of the political fence you sit on regarding Palestine and Israel, Nadav Schirman’s (In The Dark Room) controversial documentary political thriller, The Green Prince, will likely throw you into moral confusion.
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On the one side you have Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement committed to the destruction of Israel, which, after a landslide victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections, governs the Gaza Strip; on the other you have Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, whose primary function is to safeguard state security but whose duties include assassinating alleged Palestinian terrorists. From the opening credits you know you are in for an interesting, even uncomfortable, ride.

The film opens with the son of the Hamas leader, Sheik Hassan Yousef (one of seven founding members of Hamas) staring down the barrel of the camera relaying his extraordinary story of betrayal. At the age of 17, Mosab Hasson Yousef started supplying Israel with highly sensitive material when he was skillfully recruited by a member of Shin Bet, Gonen Ben Yitzhak. How and, more importantly, why this happened, is explained over the next 101 minutes. It transpires that Yousef junior was picked up by Shin Bet after a poorly-planned assault went pear-shaped; he was subsequently convinced that by becoming a traitor to Hamas he was, in fact, protecting his father (who now resides in an Israeli prison - no worries about ‘protection’ there). Yousef himself lives in exile and spends most of his time moving for fear of reprisals but, at the time, he was so important to Israel that he was given the code name ‘the green prince’.

Schirman has approached his subject from an unusual angle in that he doesn’t try to tackle the complexities of the situation in the Middle East directly in the film, but instead focuses on the connection between the two chief protagonists, the spy and his handler, so that we see the problems through the lens of their ‘odd couple’ relationship. And what a relationship it is! Over the years Yousef and Ben Yitzhak become almost like an old married couple, wholly dependent on each other while not exactly enamoured of their situation yet unable to divorce.

The director hones in on the dilemmas the two men were faced with when confronting their consciences and gives these concerns pole position. How far is someone prepared to go to betray their own flesh and blood in order to keep them safe? What happens when a young man is wedded to a doctrine he has firmly believed in for most of his adult life, only to be presented with evidence that his cause in fact goes against his basic principles? And how much do these opposing forces rely on each other?

Try and sort these queries out in the dark as you watch this real-life spy thriller unfold. It’s a film that raises big themes: betrayal, lies, identity, and truth, but it’s also a film that forces the viewer to assess his or her own moral compass. The fact that you have the original players on-screen telling their stories only adds to the feeling that the two men are trying to justify their actions and yet, in reality, their political masters are both as brutal as each other. Paradoxically, both Hamas and Shin Bet as much as the ‘green prince’ and his handler need each other to justify their actions and to guarantee their survival.

This makes for a compelling documentary, but one that Schirman wishes will leave you with a sense of, “Hope, for where politicians fail, individuals seem to succeed, even against all the odds… [and] awareness of the fact that things are never what they seem to be, and that one should look deeper behind the surface before formulating an opinion or passing fast judgment”. Now that is a big ask.

// SALT

Previewed at The Reel Room, Sydney on November 19, 2014

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DOCUMENTARY
Mosab Hassan Yousef
Gonen Ben Yitzhak
Sheik Hassan Yousef

DIRECTOR
Nadav Schirman


SCREENWRITER
Nadav Schirman

COUNTRY
Germany / Israel / UK

CLASSIFICATION
M

RUNTIME
101 minutes

AUSTRALIAN
RELEASE DATE
December 4, 2014
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The Green Prince (2014) on IMDb
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