The Time That Remains (2009)

84% of critics liked it
(43 reviews)
68% of users liked it
(7,139 ratings)

An intimate semi-biographical portrait of Palestinians living as a minority in their own homeland between 1948 and the present day, from the acclaimed director of DIVINE INTERVENTION. --- (C) IFC

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 49 min.
Directed By: Elia Suleiman
Written By: Elia Suleiman
Genres: Drama, Art House & International, Comedy

In Theaters: Jan 7, 2011 Limited
On DVD: Apr 24, 2012
Studio: IFC Films

Critic Reviews

Peter Howell, Toronto Star
Suleiman takes the approach of gentle observer, neither condoning nor confronting -- not violently, at least. Start with humor and perhaps empathy will follow.
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail
Living in a part of the world where politics, and the pursuit of politics by warring means, are the rule, director Elia Suleiman is the exception.
Walter V. Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle
Despite its abundance of deadpan and absurdist humor, "The Time That Remains," a look at the Arab-Israeli conflict from a Palestinian perspective, was clearly made with a sorrowful heart.
Adam Markovitz, Entertainment Weekly
Suleiman's obvious gift for cinema makes you wish that in connecting so personally with his past, he'd occasionally reach out to the audience, too.
Anthony Lane, New Yorker
To keep a steady gaze, the film suggests, is not just a virtue but a form of orderly protest, when your world is breaking apart.
V.A. Musetto, New York Post
Another Palestinian director dealing with the same events might rant and rave. Not Suleiman. He knows the power of well-conceived humor.
David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews
...a missed opportunity of nigh epic proportions...
John Beifuss, Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
Deadpan, non-reactive characters inhabit the formally elegant, beautifully lensed and mostly static compositions that grace this movie about a hot subject that more often inspires heated, passionate, noisy debate.
Andrew Schenker, House Next Door
The Time That Remains, Elia Suleiman's six decade-spanning speculative remembrance, brings a bleakly comic sensibility -- as well as an insider's perspective -- to 60 turbulent years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Noel Murray, AV Club
Throughout, Suleiman contemplates how much has changed in his homeland since the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948, and how the natives have tried to maintain some continuity.
Eric Kohn, indieWIRE
Elia Suleiman is among the few living filmmakers to employ slapstick comedy in his work, and the only one to politicize it.
Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
A welcome example of kitsch wedded to serious indictment: Who knew that high-school screenings of Spartacus had such insidious purpose?
Donald J. Levit, ReelTalk Movie Reviews
If technique grows wearisome, still the rapid-fire, dry, visual vignettes do not obscure the picture of a community that cannot find its way.
Nora Lee Mandel, Film-Forward.com
[S]emi-autobiographical trilogy of Palestinian family's experiences from '48. . .culminates in. . .epic storytelling, with maturity and sorrow to match his now gray hair.
Aaron Cutler, Slant Magazine
One of the many simple conceits of Elia Suleiman's film is the way in which one man's silence becomes a metaphor for an entire nation's.
Mark Keizer, Boxoffice Magazine
The formalism Suleiman employs here provides a unique emotional entry point into the Palestinian dilemma, one that uses static shot composition and humor to clarify and comment, not to generate cheap laughs.
Ian Buckwalter, NPR.org
The silence of the character played by director Elia Suleiman lends the role a kind of invisibility that seems meant as an analogy to his view of the Arab presence in Israel. He's present, yet absent.
David Noh, Film Journal International
Family saga set against the backdrop of Israeli occupation has its moments, but suffers from a certain monotony in its direction.

Read all 18 critic reviews

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Walter M

"The Time That Remains" starts with Menashe(Menashe Noy) picking up a passenger in his cab from the airport in Tel Aviv. Soon, an intense storm strands them, leaving the cab driver in a place that he does not recognize which is to be expected in a country where so many of… More
"The Time That Remains" starts with Menashe(Menashe Noy) picking up a passenger in his cab from the airport in Tel Aviv. Soon, an intense storm strands them, leaving the cab driver in a place that he does not recognize which is to be expected in a country where so many of the old towns simply do not exist anymore. It also might be because the story soon moves to July 16, 1948 with the surrender of Nazareth to the Israeli army that kicks in a fight or flight response for many.(And then there are those who choose neither by killing themselves.) For Fuad Suleiman(Saleh Bakri), it is definitely fight while finding a way to help a wounded man before being detained by authorities. Elia Suleiman's previous film "Divine Intervention" was an angry and funny segmented look at the current state of the West Bank. With his latest, "The Time That Remains," the anger has mostly given way to sadness and resignation in an autobiographical film that takes place in 1948, 1970, 1980 and the present day and uses repetition as a way of denoting the dreariness of the everyday lives of the residents. Elia Suleiman is a character throughout and in the present day, the director plays himself, in silent witness of everything that unfolds before him. What's back is the impressive sense of the absurd which he nails(there's an even better tank gag this time around) by just letting the camera stay in one place.