A Combustible Mix

Reviews of Mike Judge's "Extract" and Cherien Dabis' "Amreeka."

Cherien Dabis’ “Amreeka” is less ambivalent about formula. The story of a Palestinian woman who emigrates to the U.S. just after the invasion of Iraq, the movie could have been spun off some master disk in a vault deep below Park City. But Dabis, who came of age in a small Ohio town during the first Gulf War, invests her story with insight and complexity that surpass the bounds of the genre.

Nisreen Faour plays Muna, who leaves the West Bank with her son, Fadi (Melkar Muallem) to settle with her sister (Hiam Abbass) in small-town Illinois. In a fit of anxiety, Muna hides all their money in a cookie tin before they leave, which backfires when her son gives it to an inquisitive customs official, leaving them destitute. Although Muna was a bank teller at home, the best she can manage in the new world is a job at White Castle, but she’s too ashamed to admit that she’s been reduced to flipping burgers, so she pretends to work at the bank next door, waiting for her sister to drive off before slipping into her apron.

In other words, Muna makes a string of foolish choices, some prompted by her circumstances and some the product of her own shortcomings. Given that the film is set at a time when anti-Arab sentiment was at its most socially acceptable, Dabis isn’t subtle about the racism Muna and Fadi encounter, but she doesn’t treat them as passive victims. She’d rather we feel for them than feel sorry for them.

Sam Adams is our guest critic for the month of September.

“Extract” opens wide and “Amreeka” opens in limited release on September 4th.

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