One More SFIFF Microreview

I just watched The Last Days of Yasser Arafat, and I give it a C. Sherine Salama conducted Yasser Arafat’s last interview, then she made this documentary about it. Her film’s power comes from the sense of immediacy, of being an eyewitness to history, but that’s a sense that can only go so far. It carries the fascinating first section, detailing her struggles to get an interview. It’s one thing to read about the bomb-shattered compound that was the heart of the Palestinian Authority , it’s another to watch Salama shuttled between soldiers and bureaucrats in an environment that barely seems functional. The interview itself (the middle section) is interesting, not so much for what Arafat has to say as for the spectacle of him as an old, frail man, smiling and joking. But the last section–the death watch–goes on too long as we wait for the result we know is coming.