SHOSHANA – Review by Diane Carson
Shoshana documents pivotal 1938-1940 events in Tel Aviv
British director Michael Winterbottom has made compelling fiction and nonfiction films since 1988, beginning his career with a documentary on iconic Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Among other notable works, he later tackled politically charged issues with Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) and The Road to Guantanamo (2006), both inspired by tragic events. In his latest film, Shoshana, Winterbottom dramatizes a suspenseful, true story inspired by a book he read preparing to attend a 2008 film festival in Jerusalem. He found himself captivated learning about the British Mandate in Tel Aviv between WWI and WWII.
The film begins by providing an informative seven-minute history from the Ottoman Empire to the British administrative authority to the establishment in 1948 of Israeli. Shoshana then delves into pivotal historical events through the story of two people from 1938 to 1940 during hostilities among Tel Aviv’s British, Jewish, and Arab populations in then Palestine. Romantically involved, Tom Wilkin, British deputy superintendent of the Colonial Palestinian police, and journalist/activist Shoshana Borochov, daughter of Dov Ber Borochov, co-founder of the Labor Zionist movement, contend with prejudice from both British and Jewish factions. Advocating for a Jewish state, Irgun and Haganah (meaning defense, the paramilitary militant offshoot of Irgun) resist dictatorial British rule, each advocating and strategically pursuing different strategies. Through increasingly violent retaliation, Haganah dominates the action, illegally acquiring arms and assembling bombs.
Based on real events with illustrative archival footage interwoven, the central plot focuses on the authorities’ attempts to capture Irgun leader Avraham Stern. Against a backdrop of defiant terrorist action, British director Michael Winterbottom offers a multifaceted depiction of tragic events, though an unimaginative good/bad dichotomy between Wilkin and the villainous British officer Geoffrey Morton undermines more nuanced complexity. In addition, the occasional voiceover narration plus sporadic, added background music intrude unnecessarily into what is otherwise a fast-paced, tense presentation of issues that resonate to this day. The two main actors, Douglas Booth as Wilkin and Irina Starshenbaum as Shoshana, deliver superb performances that enhance the drama. Most significant, as Winterbottom said in an interview at the 2023 London Film Festival, this is a story that illustrates “the way violence and political extremism operate on ordinary people’s lives . . . and the importance of dialogue.” The relevance for current conflicts is clear and compelling in encouraging solutions, not violence. Shoshana is showing now at several local cinemas.
