Recent events in the Middle East have increased the depressing feeling that no settlement to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict is possible. But once there was a moment when it seemed peace could be a reality.
That was in 1993 when, following nine months of secret back-channel negotiations in Oslo, two sworn enemies - then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat - stood face to face for the first time under the smug grin of US President Bill Clinton on the White House lawn to announce the signing of an historic peace agreement.
The promises of that agreement - known as the Oslo Accords - were shattered two years later when Rabin was assassinated by Israeli right-wing extremist Yigal Amir. Though there were attempts to set in motion the road map laid out by the accords in subsequent years, they were never successful and today they remain — even in the minds of their most vocal detractors - the best chance the two sides had at achieving a peaceful coexistence.
Clinton's smugness made it seem that he'd claimed the accords as a victory for his administration in negotiating the most impossible diplomatic deal in global politics, but in reality the process leading to the agreement wasn't initiated by the governments involved and had nothing to do with the US. It was the result of a mad idea cooked up by two Norwegian diplomats — Mona Juul and her husband, Terje Rød-Larsen.
The story of the diplomatic back-channel and the Norwegian idealist couple who initiated it forms the basis for JT Rodgers's Tony Award-winning 2016 play Oslo, directed by Bartlett Sher, who now helms the HBO screen adaptation.
Starring Ruth Wilson as Juul and Andrew Scott as Rød-Larsen, the film offers a timely reminder of a moment when the world was more optimistic than it is now and of the potential of the talk-heavy, top-down approach of diplomacy to enact significant social and geopolitical change. After all, the Berlin Wall had just come down, the Soviet Union had collapsed and the apartheid government and the ANC were negotiating a successful transition to democracy in SA.
In that environment the couple believed that their personal approach to diplomacy could find representatives of different sides, given the right opportunity to learn about each other on a human level, willing to negotiate big-picture political and ideological differences.
Sher cuts down the film adaptation to under two hours, an hour shorter than the stage play's running time. And while he attempts to make use of the tools of film to override the tricks of theatre, his attachment to the original stage production doesn't make him the ideal candidate to open the story to the opportunities of this new medium.
As a film, Oslo is caught between the talk-heavy, single-location requirements of the play and the things that film can do to enhance the material. A flashback filmed in the landscape of a familiar street battle between Israeli soldiers and the PLO offers a particularly glaring example of how not to use film when adapting theatre — sentimental, awkward and too obvious to offer anything that wouldn't be better conveyed in words.
Wilson and Scott are well suited to their roles - in spite of their dodgy Norwegian accents - and they're ably supported by the cast from both sides of the divide. In particular, Salim Dau as PLO finance minister Ahmed Qurei and Igal Naor as Israeli legal adviser Joel Singer, offer complex and empathetic performances.
Oslo doesn't offer a balanced view of the conflict's history that led to this narrative. It's a blind spot that is highlighted by the film's release now, when condemnation of the Israeli regime is higher than ever in many countries across the world.
But thanks to strong performances and a sharp script it offers a window into a different time and the idealism of a group of men who were, for a moment, willing to look into the eyes of their sworn enemies and see something of the humanity that linked them. It may never be possible for such a moment to happen again but it's important to remember that it did, even if it was just for a tantalizing, deceptively hopeful second.
• 'Oslo' is available on Showmax.
