Read
an extract from Jocelyn Hurdnall's book Defy the Stars
Although Jocelyn and Anthony Hurndall had been divorced for several years, on
April 12, 2003, they boarded a plane to Israel together. All they had been
told was that their eldest son, Tom, had been shot in Gaza and was in a
coma. Nine months later, he would die.
In that time, the Hurndalls mounted a campaign to establish what had happened
and who was responsible. Anthony, a lawyer with the stiffest of upper lips,
responded to the trauma by reverting to type, amassing affidavits for his
own detailed investigation. He submitted his work to the Israeli army (IDF)
and, after months of obfuscation on its part, his report led to the jailing
of Sergeant Taysir Hayb, an Israeli sniper, for manslaughter. It is also the
basis of The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall, a Channel 4 film to be broadcast
this month.
Tom Hurndall was a 21-year-old aspiring photojournalist who took himself off
to Gaza because, in Jocelyn’s words, “he wanted to see what was going on
with his own eyes”. One way to get into Gaza with a camera was to join the
International Solidarity Movement, a Palestinian-founded organisation that
places international volunteers in nonviolent protests against the Israeli
military in Gaza and the West Bank. The passports of internationals are
meant to provide protection for the Palestinians around them. So it was
that, on April 11, Hurndall was taking pictures during a march intended to
blockade Israeli tanks. Warning shots were fired from an Israeli watchtower
to break up the crowd. The protesters took cover, but some children were
left stranded. Hurndall went back once, then twice, to carry them to safety,
and was hit in the head by a single shot.
These facts form the framework for the film. In portraying what happened to
Hurndall, it is as forensically accurate as it can be. “We’ve taken
Anthony’s report,” says the director, Rowan Joffé. “Every aspect of the
demonstration, of the shooting, of the number of rounds that were fired, has
been checked, counterchecked and cross-referenced with him.”
The shooting, however, is only the beginning of the drama — it takes place
during the opening sequences and acts as a slingshot for what follows. In
spite of the title, it is clear that the shooting is just one of several
interests for the film-makers. The film juxtaposes Anthony and Jocelyn’s
campaign for justice with the story of the 21-year-old Israeli sniper who
shot their son. It attempts to show how an Arab-Israeli soldier (Taysir is a
Bedouin) could be employed to fire on Palestinians and, ultimately, kill an
unarmed man. At its emotional core is a very modern family relationship:
divorced parents trying to put differences aside to hold their family
together.
It is the latter elements that turn a potentially dry retelling into a
textured, immensely affecting drama. These same elements, however, drape
conjecture, extrapolation and interpretation over the literal truth, and it
is here that real-life drama almost always runs into controversy. In this
case, all of these issues are compounded by the fact that the main
characters in this story, the Hurndalls, had an integral role in the making
of the film, with some power of veto on the scripts. In this light, The
Shooting of Thomas Hurndall starts to look like an object lesson in the
strengths and weaknesses of a format that is increasingly dominant in
factual television.
Real-life dramas inevitably have to leave material out. In this case, the role
of Tom’s sister, Sophie, who took on the media campaign for justice after
Anthony filed his report, is largely unmentioned. All of the Hurndalls say
they would like to have seen more of their son and brother before his death,
even as they recognise that this is a screenplay, not a tribute.
More contentious than the omissions are the insertions. The Hurndalls maintain
that the growing intensity of their relationship, culminating in a scene
that hints at a reconciliation, is dramatic licence. One scene in particular
did not make the final cut because they insisted it be removed. In it, the
sniper’s watchtower is itself countersniped, and Hayb’s army colleague is
shot in the hand. The scene is meant to suggest the kind of pressures that
were routine for put-upon IDF soldiers. When I spoke to Joffé on location in
Jordan late last year, it was already causing some consternation.
“[Anthony Hurndall's] feeling is, ‘This didn’t happen.’ And our feeling is,
‘You don’t know this didn’t happen.’ Even if it’s not a fact, it’s certainly
true to the extent that, if it didn’t happen to Taysir at this particular
moment, it sums up life in a watchtower — indeed, the entire scene came from
my looking at YouTube. We essentially mocked up countersniping that actually
happened.”
The Hurndalls didn’t see it that way. “The scene in the tower gave a wrong
impression of events,” Anthony says. “It didn’t happen, and there was some
false research fed into the production team from outside, which, I’m afraid
to say, using my usual investigative sense, we sort of blew out of the
water.” He reminded the producers of a contract that, gimlet-eyed as ever,
he had insisted on from the outset. The scene went.
In one sense, therefore, the broader goals of the film-makers have been
trumped by a more dead-eyed forensic rigour. Yet this is part and parcel of
the inevitable abrasive counterpoint of making real-life drama. Where
documentable facts meet dramatic licence, those expecting a verbatim account
can always find nits to pick. On the other hand, real-life drama can elicit
emotional responses beyond the reach of documentary — one reason they are
becoming increasingly popular.
“There is a view that a whole swathe of factual TV is dying, and the only way
you can get people to engage with some of these bigger ideas and thoughts is
through drama,” says Charles Furneaux, the film’s executive producer, who
also produced the award-winning Touching the Void. Furneaux’s background is
in documentaries, but with the success of Touching the Void, he finds
himself at the vanguard of the factual producers’ march on television drama.
“If you want ideas that engage with the outside world, get stories from
people who understand that world. Factual producers are generating the best
of those ideas. It’s really a case of how you keep within the genre of
television the sorts of stories you mostly find written about in newspapers
and magazines.”
The problem with this kind of hybridising is that dramatists strive for a
different kind of truth from archivists. Real-life drama like The Shooting
of Thomas Hurndall lies somewhere between the two. “The important thing is
that, while it’s the Hurndalls’ story, it’s not their film,” Furneaux says.
“There’s a distinction. On the one hand, one has to be respectful of the
fact that it is their story, and of the appalling experience they have been
through. But the film has a distance from them, I hope, which means it’s
more rounded and takes a slightly different angle on what happened.”
In spite of the film’s sometimes fractious gestation, the Hurndalls are
delighted with the end result.
“I think it is outstanding — the integrity of it shines out,” Jocelyn says. It
is in part the memorial she and Anthony wanted for their son, in part a
damning indictment of the IDF, but in the main a superb human drama that
could have stood alone as a piece of fiction.
“There’s always that great distinction, in documentaries, between truthfulness
and literalness,” Furneaux says. “It’s a great thing to
hang on to, because, being literally true, you can be untrue.” He sees the
dialogue between the Hurndalls and the film-makers as the family learning to
understand the distinction. “We all create our own myth. The film is just
another version.”
The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall is on Channel 4 on October 13 at 9pm
