Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

salahadeen-587-489482 This is one of the most true, accurate, and realistic movies on the conflict I have ever seen. I have been to Palestine several times in my life, and also know a family who lives in Palestine who actually had this home occupation happen to them in real life. I can say from first hand experience that this film does an incredibly good job with re-recreating the atmosphere life when ones home is occupied by Israeli's soldiers, which believe it or not is a very common thing for many Palestinian families.The acting is brilliant, and I was truly impressed with how simple, yet powerful the film was. For anyone who would like to TRULY understand the Israeli Palestinian conflict, this film is a must see. It is not a two sided situation like the Israeli revisionists like to make it out to be. It is a one sided situation with the Palestinians being the unfortunate victims of a 60 year military occupation. The Israeli government is one of the most oppressive governments ever to exist, and is easily comparable with the Nazi government and their military occupation of France, which was also a one sided situation with the Jews being the unfortunate victims of the horrific atrocities of the Nazi Regime.Please do not listen to the folks who erroneously propagate that Israel is the victim. Such people, even though perhaps well intentioned, are in manifest error and probably never even been to Palestine, let alone live there, and this film demonstrates with pin point accuracy the stress that 95% of Palestinian families will go through.

sunraider I absolutely loved this movie, which I first caught on the Sundance Channel in the U.S. I've watched it so many times I finally ordered the DVD. This film is a richly textured film, with wonderful acting, strong characterizations, and fine dialog. I'm self-described "pro-Israel" and I did not find this movie biased. It has a point of view as it's the story of a Palestinian family whose home is "occupied" by a group of Israeli soldiers. Everythinig is seen and interpreted from this family's point of view, not the soldiers', with the important exception of the scenes where the daughter hides in the armoire to spy on the soldiers and only we, as the audience, are able to understand the dialog because of the sub-titles (as the daughter cannot understand Hebrew).I love the subtle acting by the actors, such as the roll of the eyes of the neighbor after she's been "interrogated" and leaves the house, or the reaction of the commander as he rounds the corner of the stairs thinking he's going to be interrogating some high value target only to be confronted instead with a middle-aged frumpy house frau (the neighbor). The expression on his face, from intensity to bemusement as his underling questions this hapless woman is priceless. And the actor playing the father is fabulous as he's able to subtly convey both a commanding presence and someone who's been humiliated in front of his family and in unsure how to recover his authority. This isn't a perfect film. Considering the importance his character could potentially have, the one son who finds a left-behind grenade and plants a booby trap for the soldiers is underdeveloped. Is he such a narcissist that he can't even realize the terrible impact his potentially deadly actions would have on himself, his family, and the soldiers? Since he barely says anything, we just don't really understand what's motivating him. And what more can be said about the truly awful ending song that is so heavy-handed as to be disruptive to the viewer. But, overall, a wonderful film that gets better with each viewing.

lastliberal Today the 3rd Amendment to our Constitution appears to be a forgotten artifact of the Founding Era, for it forbids a practice that no longer troubles Americans - the quartering of soldiers in private homes. This was a big problem until the Revolution. This film demonstrates the practice in the Israli-Palestinian conflict as Israeli soldiers take over a Palestinian families home.The father, Mohammed, struggles to keep his family from harm while he tries to maintain a sense of dignity in the face of this insult. Mohammed Bakri turns in a great performance in this film.The most interesting aspects of the film are the different affects on the young children, and the depiction of some of the difficulties soldiers face in carrying out orders.Well worth your time to see another aspect of war.

noralee The first half of "Private" is frustrating as a set piece of European intellectualism and inauthenticity strained to establish a logic puzzle mind game, but the second half rises to the level of universal humanity. There have been many movies about the stubborn old idealist who infuriates his family with his implacability ("Man of La Mancha," "The Field," "Straight Story," etc.) but co-writer/debut director Saverio Costanzo sets this one as a barely-believable Shakespeare-quoting, educated, middle class, secular Palestinian holding on to his house and his very large family amidst the volatility of the West Bank territories. Each member of the family represents a type that has some similarity to the family in "Raisin in the Sun" -- the exhausted housewife who just wants her kids to be safe, the beautiful eldest, enscarfed daughter who argues against leaving for a European education to the apathetic sports-mad teen boy radicalized by his conflicts with Israelis to the traumatized little girl and the big-eyed curious, adorable little brother.With much of the film shot in dark as shaky, pseudo-documentary digital video like night vision goggles, the forced comparison to "Diary of Anne Frank" doesn't quite hold up as the family is locked into their living room only at night by occupying Israeli soldiers as it is a principle not survival itself that the father is insisting upon. They seem to have complete daily freedom to shop and go to school (they say "madrassa" on the soundtrack but we see them do math homework not rotely memorize The Koran), but not to host friends. While the film does well build up the tension of this nightly, stressful ritual, that is also true in nonpolitical hostage films from "Petrified Forest," to "Key Largo," "Desperate Hours," and on and on. The Israeli soldiers are as much types as the soldiers in the TV series "Over There." There's the barking sergeant, the sensitive intellectual and the bored joker just doing his job, but with the casual mention that these frustrated reservists are commuting distance from home, as was seen in "Kippur." The film is also unfair in only hinting at what attacks they, let alone their families at their home towns, have endured from Palestinian civilians to make them so aggressive and jumpy.While it is ironic that the Palestinians and the Israelis have to speak broken English to each other to communicate, the larger themes are confused in perception to the audience because it is not clear what the participants do and do not understand as most of the conversations are translated for us in the subtitles. This is important because the second half of the film reaches an intriguing point where each side slowly starts to perceive each other as individuals and not as just "the other." The turning point is when the oldest daughter breaks the rules restricting the family downstairs and spies on the soldiers billeted upstairs. Motivated initially by some kind of revenge fantasy, she is gradually overcome by natural curiosity, and perhaps voyeurism as they are hunky young men, and begins to parse out their relationships from their body language and activities, which she later relates fantastically to her equally curious younger brother. Shot only from her viewpoint, we begin to realize that a narrow sliver is really how each side has been seeing the other all along.The film leaves no doubt that such insights are brief blips in the ongoing struggles between both sides that leave tragedy in the wake of the continued cycle of miscommunications and misperceptions.Oddly, this is the second recent Italian film about terrorism (Good Morning, Night (Buongiorno, notte)) that uses a Pink Floyd-related song too heavy-handedly on the soundtrack (here a cover of "Perfect Sense, Part 1" from Roger Waters's Amused to Death).