-By Eric Monder

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The fact that first-time co-directors Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani used a mostly non-professional cast and shot Ajami on location, sometimes without a script, gives their film a raw, realistic power. The main drawback to this noble effort, just nominated for the Foreign-Language Oscar, is that the two-hour film is unrelievedly grim and tense.

Cinematic treatments of Middle East tensions usually find an audience. Word of mouth and the many awards the film has already won (Oscar or not) will assure Ajami a certain success at specialized venues, though the film’s evenhandedness might annoy the politically astute.

Copti (a Palestinian from Israel) and Shani (an Israeli Jew) combine forces by telling their original story, based in part on their own experiences and observations, and setting it in the multi-ethnic section of Jaffa called Ajami. Here, several disparate characters cross paths—sometimes in deadly and tragic ways, starting with Omar (Shahir Kabaha), a young Israeli determined to avenge the murders of his family members; Malek (Ibrahim Frege), a Palestinian refugee working illegally in order to afford major surgery; Dando (Eran Naim), a Jewish police officer hell-bent on finding his missing brother; and Binj (director Copti), a wealthy Palestinian trying to find peace as he romances a Jewish young woman. In Pulp Fiction fashion, the stories intertwine and are told in flashbacks and flashforwards, adding to the sense of chaos and crisis inherent in the lives of those in the war-torn region.

Again, it is worth noting that this is the feature debut for both of the writer-director-editors. Copti and Shani’s skill at juggling the many balls of the narrative is more than admirable. The multiple points of view offer audiences a chance to experience the variety of situations from a range of character perspectives. Also, thanks to cinematographer Boaz Yehonatan Yaacov, nearly every moment feels authentic (only a few scenes of violence betrays a “staged” quality). At its best, Ajami exhibits the suspenseful immediacy of such documentary-like fictions as Cristi Puiu’s Bucharest-set crime drama Stuff and Dough. While no one actor stands out, the ensemble seems completely natural.

Yet there are several flaws to Ajami that are hard to overlook. The film is simply too long and could have been trimmed without losing valuable information. The shaky, cinéma-vérité camera style may be appropriate but becomes overused (after 20 years of this mainstream film and television technique, it might be time for directors to give it a rest). Finally, the emphasis on the personal over the political is obviously intentional, but Ajami passes up the chance to be more critical or even darkly humorous in the manner of the films of Amos Gitai or Elia Suleiman; the film better resembles thematically, if not artistically, Susan Sontag’s recently re-released 1974 documentary Promised Lands (which goes to show that things haven’t changed much in the Middle East over the last several decades).

Hopefully, viewers will be able to appreciate what works well about Ajami and give a pass to the rest.