Director Nadav Schirman took a gamble when making his third feature: he assumed that his subjects and their intertwining stories were fascinating enough to sustain 90 minutes of what is essentially a documentary about two men talking. He assumed correctly, because The Green Prince builds the same levels of psychological tension one could find in any spy thriller, all the while offering a rare look into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is informative without being didactic, confident without bias—through only two viewpoints presented clearly, Schirman illustrates a magnificently bigger picture.
The film’s two subjects—Mosab Hassan Yousef, a Hamas terrorist’s son who became a spy for Israel’s Shin Bet, and the man who recruited him, Gonen Ben Yitzhak—don’t sound at all like they’re giving scrubbed, government-authorized versions of the events they’ve witnessed. Instead, Schirman focuses only on what’s necessary: he lets the two men provide all necessary context, the camera staring them straight in the eyes as they tell their stories—much in the same way Errol Morris would—as if he’s silently holding them to their word, occasionally augmenting their account with archival and reenacted footage (which admittedly illustrates the content to varying success). The visuals can be monotonous (even when their repetition make sense), but the rhythm of the editing, combined with Max Richter’s score and the sincerity of the subjects’ accounts regarding both their actions and motives, pulls us into the intricacies of an endless conflict without easy answers and proffers a historical account where not one of the subjects seems concerned over appearing correct.
Once Yousef starts talking, it’s hard to look away. His eyes are intense and his no-nonsense approach implies a much more deep-seated turmoil. He describes his recruitment after being arrested, how witnessing Hamas members torture their own revealed to him the emptiness of the organization’s objectives. Of course, Yousef’s life becomes progressively difficult: Palestine-side, he’s living a lie, pretending to believe in something he detests and betraying his family in the process. He routinely has to succumb to arrests and beatings to avoid suspicion, worrying if he’s been found out. Within Shin Bet, he’s working with people who don’t trust him, and in some cases don’t respect the sacrifices he’s making. He’s putting his life and sanity on the line; he receives insults in return.
Yitzhak’s interviews demonstrate startling frankness too. He discusses the manipulative nature of recruiting spies, how Yousef was often treated merely as an asset, a pawn to be employed strategically. Of course, Yousef was a prized get—codenamed “the green prince” due to his relations—and was often tested to see what he could achieve. Largely, The Green Prince is the story of how Yitzhak comes to see the humanity behind his espionage resource.
The Green Prince isn’t meant to distill the whole Middle Eastern conflict into a digestible 100 minutes—instead it strives to describe how a deep friendship can arise despite years and years of political conflict. Far from a tale of chumminess, or of people who form bonds through long, intimate discussions, The Green Prince is about how two men, when their tribes were doing everything wrong, were bound by their united action to break away and do right.
Director: Nadav Schirman
Starring: Mosab Hassan Yousef, Gonen Ben Yitzhak
Release Date: September 12, 2014