Hanna With A K: Reviewing Costa-Grava’s ‘Hanna K.’

In 1983, there weren’t films being made in Hollywood about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sympathetic to the latter. For that reason, Costa-Garva’s Hanna K. was always going to be radical. Before this Blu-ray it also was extremely difficult to see.

Starring American actress Jill Clayburgh, Irish actor Gabriel Byrne, and Palestinian actor Mohammad Bakri, Hanna K. is about an Israeli lawyer named Hanna (Clayburgh) who gets assigned as a public defender to work a case involving a Palestinian man, Salim (Bakri), who’s been accused of being a terrorist. From the attitude of the other men in the courtroom (including Byrne’s district attorney), the expectation is that this case is going to be open and shut. If anything, the fact that Hanna gets Salim exiled “only” is viewed as her going above and beyond, but when Salim ignores the expulsion orders and comes back, he specifically requests Hanna to be his lawyer. This time he wants her to look into his claim that he has a legal right to some land that was taken from him and, after some boots-on-the-ground research, Hanna comes to believe he has a case. Because Salim’s claim on his home has wider implications and would set a precedent for other cases, however, it’s a “can of worms” (to use a glib expression) that the prosecution firmly wants to keep shut.

What complicates Hanna K. Is that — true to the title — this is very much a woman’s picture first, political drama second. After watching the trailer and seeing the font that was used I also have to wonder if naming the film after Hanna and using an initial for her last name was a deliberate attempt to draw a visual correlation between Hanna K. and Costa-Gavra’s earlier film, Z. Having Hanna be the protagonist, though, means a large chunk of time is spent on her personal life and multiple love interests, who just so happen to fall on different cultural and religious lines. While married to a Frenchman, Victor (Jean Yanne), Hanna learns at the beginning of the movie that she’s pregnant with Byrne’s baby. Then there’s Salim, who’s played with amazing screen presence by Bakri but is largely kept a silent enigma.

Due to the seriousness of the conflict in question (which remains as heated if not more so today) and the lack of other films addressing these stories, Hanna K. is held to a standard it never asked for. Hanna is a messy character in a country where to be messy seems irresponsible due to the high stakes. It’s not that the film hits false notes but that it’s telling an individual story while there feels like larger, more pressing injustices to address.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray comes with a commentary by film critics Alain Silver and James Ursini that looks at how the film was buried and breaks down some of the shots used, like the decision to hold the camera on a mother and child during the opening titles. There’s also a new interview with David Clennon, who plays Hanna’s doctor friend, Amnon. At one point, Clennon talks about the thought that went into a gesture his character makes, and it’s the kind of peek into the actor’s mind that’s rewarding in its specificity.

Hanna K. is available on Blu-ray now from Kino Lorber.