The Promise

Over the last few days we've watched the four episodes of Peter Kosminsky's TV film: The Promise. Like much of Kosminsky's TV work, it's quite provocative, and your sympathies change as the story unfolds.

Two stories interweave: one is set in Palestine just after the Second World War. A young sergeant is caught up in the historic events of the time, when the British were keeping the peace - as far as possible - between the new Jewish settlers who'd returned to their homeland after the horrors of the concentration camps, and the Palestinians who had lived in the area for centuries and were suddenly finding themselves kicked out of their country by a people who apparently forgot, very quickly, what it was like to be treated badly because of who you were.

The second story is set in the present day: the Sergeant is now an old man dying in a hospital. His unsympathetic daughter and his granddaughter (who's barely known the supposedly grumpy old man) set about clearing out his house. The daughter, Erin, finds the old man's diary, with photos and newspaper clippings. Against her mother's orders, she keeps the diary, and takes it with her to Israel where she's going with a friend whose Israeli background means she has to go into the Army for two years. Erin is a typical know-all teenager who begins to find out a great deal more about the Israel-Palestine conflict than she would ever have learned in her native country, and also matures quickly as a result of trying to repair something that had gone wrong back when her grandfather was a young man.

The two stories gradually cohere. There are perhaps too many coincidences in the plotting, and the filmmakers slide over some questions about motivations that probably should have been asked, but for all that the film carries you along as you increasingly struggle - like Erin - to make sense of a country where a people who were hated almost universally for centuries (the Jews) and then were slaughtered in their millions, show almost no care or concern for a people who by accident live in the country the Jews claim as their homeland.

Kosminsky doesn't offer us easy answers: we begin by thinking that the Israelis are a pretty reasonable bunch of people, but gradually discover - as both the grandfather and the granddaughter do - that they have almost no sympathy for the Palestinians, and show little concern about killing them or destroying their property if the need, or mood, arises. Try as you might, by the end of the movie, it's likely your opinion of the Israeli people may be much less sympathetic than at first. Whether this is a more one-sided view on Kosminsky's part than is fair is left to our judgement.

Claire Foy plays the initially sulky teenager with ease - there are times when you want to wipe that sulky look off her face, even late in the film. Nevertheless, she makes the journey from sulkiness to a degree of wisdom effectively. Christian Cooke, as the Sergeant, has a face that often makes it look as though he's going to burst into tears, yet he convinces us that he's a man who can make wise decisions, is loyal, is strong in a crisis, and much more. He's particularly strong in his last scenes when everything he's tried to do for a Palestinian family goes wrong, and he's treated as a deserter and thrown into prison.

The rest of the enormous cast are superb, and with the film shot entirely in Israel (with places standing in for Hebron, Gaza, and the West Bank. Even the Ben Gurion airport stands in for Heathrow. The series in general received high praise when first shown, though there were a number of voices claiming that it was anti-semitic in tone, something which can be justified, if that's what you're looking for.

21.7.14
Since writing this review I've become more aware of the concerns that were raised over Kosminsky's series. This article goes into detail about these and provides some balance to the way in which Kosminsky nudges his viewers more and more into an anti-Israeli bias.

Toitu Otago Settlers Museum

We went to check out the much overhauled Otago Early Settlers Museum today, now called the Toitu Otago Settlers Museum, since the word settlers now covers a wider range of people than it used to.  Both Maori and Chinese get a good look in now, compared to virtually nothing in the past.   There's now a good flow from the new and expansive foyer to the 'stunning, original Edwardian galleries' and the building that used to house the NZ Road Services ticket offices and buses.

The museum has something for everyone (the only thing missing perhaps, are a couple of jacuzzi tubs for those whose feet get weary after trying to cover everything in one go).  There's video everywhere - a huge screen just beyond the foyer thrusts you into a kind of cosmic founding of the area with the word Toitu hammered home - in case you'd missed the point that the Maori were here first.  I was slightly bemused by the screens scattered around the place that show people either talking directly at you and explaining something of their history, or just looking in what seems to me to be a slightly dazed fashion at nothing in particular, but there's plenty of other video to check out.

There's a good deal of touch-screen, interactive material around too, and this is certainly interesting.  However, with the big crowd that was in attendance for today's public opening, it was a bit difficult to get onto some of these, even though we didn't go until later this afternoon.  Nevertheless, there's been a lot of thought gone into these screens, and the information is certainly of value.

The portrait gallery has been done up: no longer a higgledy piggledy jumble of photos from the past, it's now all in order and you can access who these people are in more detail on one of four screens in the room.  And there's a memorial room for the soldiers who died in the First World War, a sobering place where the names of everyone of the Otago soldiers who died is listed, and where there are books showing where they died and when.  My great-uncle, Frank Hannagan, is there.  He died at Passchendaele.  The rather damaged photo on the right is of him and one of his sisters, taken before he went overseas.   His photo isn't in the book at Toitu, for some reason, though the photos of many of the other soldiers are.

The museum has gone beyond its original concept of being a place focused on those who came to Otago in the 19th century (it had already started to do this before the renovation).  There are now a wide range of 20th century artefacts and vehicles, and of course the original 'Elsie', the computer that drew the Bonus Bond winners, as well as the first huge computer that was at one of the Dunedin factories.  And there's the Tiger Tea bus - which I rode on in the past - and the Maryhill cable car, which used to have a terminus outside the house I now live in, and in which I road on a number of occasions as a boy.  And fell off once, when I tried to get off before it had stopped.  That was outside my house too.

Plenty to see.  Make the most of it.  37 million dollars of your money has gone into this refurbishing!