Footnote (Friday, March 9, 2012) (25)

Joseph Cedar's Footnote was Israel's entry into the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar race this year - and it is a very good film, well worth watching. It has a very dark and cerebral tone that generally has the comic feeling of Jonze's Being John Malkovich -- a bit of a latter-day screw-ball with lots of bleakness.

Uriel (Lior Ashkenazi) and Eliezer (Shlomo Bar-Aba) Shkolnik, are two leading Talmudic professors in Jerusalem. Father, Eliezer, a broken man filled with almost no love left inside, has spent his entire life researching variations in versions of the Talmud, only to blocked by his main academic rival. His greatest accomplishment is being referenced in a footnote by his mentor. Uriel, his son, a joyful husband and father himself, has become a leading expert on Talmudic traditions, softer subject matter that the father resents. He seems to be a pushover in life and in his family, but a very good man.

One day Eliezer is surprised to get a phone call that he won the most prestigious national prize for scientific research, after he tried for dozens of years, but always came up blank. He seems like a changed man all of a sudden, finding some joy in his accomplishment. The next day, however, Uriel is called to the prize committee's office where they tell him that he was supposed to win rather than his father and that his father got the phone call by mistake (they're both Professor Shkolnik, after all). He now has to figure out a way of convincing the committee to give his father the prize despite internal academic political issues.

The film explores the intersections of truth and fiction, hard scientific research and fluffy social scientific observation. Both men would argue their work is hard research, but Cedar certainly suggests that there's some chest puffing involved in all academic work. There is also a very glib idea that all academic work really doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the real world -- that internal politics of any organization have as much to do with what gets out and its impact as the significance of the work has.

Cedar uses a very sarcastic style throughout, both in his script and in the formal presentation. When Uriel visits the committee in their offices to discuss the problem, there are seven people (he makes eight) in a tiny closet of a room. Whenever anyone wants to get in or leave, they have to rearrange the chairs in a funny bit of physical comedy. Cedar cleverly mixes wonderfully rich long takes (the first shot lasts for about 8 minutes) with elegant dutch angles and interesting lenses. At times there's a jokey score, at other times there is pure silence, as different characters struggle with internal hopes and fears.

There are also, sadly a handful of untied up elements that seem to lead nowhere, but also don't really act as MacGuffins (the big prize itself is a true MacGuffin). There's a bizarre suggestion that Eliezer has a former girlfriend who comes back (actually it's really not clear who this woman is... I'm just guessing that she's an ex) and Uriel struggles with his ne'er-do-well son who is happy to sit and watch TV rather than studying. These things really should have been cleaned up and cut out -- the film would have been a lot tighter without them.

This is a very funny and smart movie and a lot of fun to watch, with great acting throughout (because everyone really plays it straight and not over-the-top, which it really is). I'm happy it doesn't dwell on the rather tired trope of father-son relationships and deals more with the means of academia and the reality of "Truth" and acknowledgment as these are much more interesting ideas with more room for fresh comedy.

Stars: 3 of 4

The Human Resources Manager (Friday, March 4, 2011) (12)

I've written before that what I really love about contemporary Israeli cinema are the very interesting, small and straightforward stories. Take, for example, Haim Tabakman's Eyes Wide Open, which deals with very deep matters of love and faith, but does it in a very intimate way using a very tight story and style. In the past, director Eran Riklis has done beautiful small movies, like Lemon Tree, but with The Human Resources Manager he sheds the simplicity and embarks on a bigger movie with a much more complicated, banal story.

The script for the film, by Noah Stollman (based on a book by Abraham B. Jehoshua, possibly based on a real event) is a mess and lacks a sensible structure. In the film, the eponymous and nameless manager works in a big bakery in Jerusalem. It seem that a woman who used to work there was killed in a suicide bombing, but her body was never collected from the morgue. The woman was a guest worker from Romania who has no family in the country, and the HR man is brought in when the tabloid press suggests the bakery was being cold-hearted in the situation.

As a face-saving measure the HR manager has to take the woman's body back to her country. Following him in Europe is the tabloid journalist who wrote the articles against the bakery and has a beef against the man (because journalists HATE middle-managers). What follows is a screwballish journey into the middle of nowhere with a casket on the roof of an Eastern Bloc van.

My two main problems with this movie are that, first, it moves at a glacial pace and by the time you're near the end of the film, it's hard to remember how the hell you got there, and second, it's a really boring, hackneyed plot. There's a back story about how the HR manager is having trouble with his family (because his job at the bakery is really hard... really?!) and this trip is creating more friction with his wife - but he has to go on the trip to show her that he's a good man. That's all well and good, but by the time you're stuck in some ex-communist military bunker (where he gets a bad flu for no reason), all that back-story is totally beside the point. And do we really need another movie about a man who goes off into the wilderness (well, rural Romania) to find himself to be a good man? I've seen it a million times before and this does nothing to improve on past efforts.

I also feel that the tone of the film is weird. It would be best described as a "screwball dramedy", where you're never sure if the next moment will be silly or serious and significant. This style doesn't really work for me as I think the comedy elements are not really funny (mostly just crass and cheap) and it would have been more effective if it had been a drama with comedic elements in it. Ugh.

This is not a bad movie, but not a good one. I'm frustrated that a director I liked so much before would make such an unwieldy, rambling movie. In fairness, the best part of the film is Mark Ivanir who plays the lead guy very well. I just think the script here needs some editing or rewriting. As it is now, it's a bit of a jumble.

Stars: 2 of 4

Lebanon (Saturday, August 14, 2010) (102)

The first shot of the film Lebanon is the prettiest and most colorful and open. We see a horizon in the distance behind a beautiful field of sunflowers in the foreground with a clear blue sky above. From this moment on, everything else onscreen is dark, tight and dirty. This film is a super-intense, super-intimate look at the early days of the 1982 Labanon War from inside an Israeli tank. Other than this early shot, everything is seen from inside the tank and the only views we see outside are through the scope and cross-hairs of the tank's gun.


This is very different from other films in the spate of Lebanon War movies that have come recently (Waltz with Bashir and Beaufort, to name two). Those movies are more about an intellectual level to the fight - what the men felt at the time and how they see their actions 25 years later. This movie is really about the exact moment these things are happening. The men in the tank are not able to sit and dream about marrying their sweetheart - they're getting shot at and they're worried about not crapping in their pants or getting killed.


There are four solders inside the tank with us: Assi, the commander; Herzl, the rocket loader; Schmulik, the gunner; and Yigal, the driver. Each one is new to war (this is the first day of the conflict) and deals with his fears in different ways. Yigal constantly asks for his mother and asks that the commanders let her know he's safe. Schmulik is easily unnerved and misses several shots because he has trouble pulling the trigger (which leads to the deaths of several friends). Assi is new at leading and doesn't yet know how hard to push these weak men serving under him.


More than anything this film is about the textures, sounds and smells of war. From very early on, we hear the hatch on top of the tank clanking as it opens loudly. We see the water dripping from above into the hold. We see a box that the men piss in so as not to get out and risk getting shot - this of course, however, makes the place smell like piss.


Every surface is covered in grime, oil, blood and soot. Each rocket they launch is a huge explosion inside the pod. When the machine begins to smoke and break down, there's a visceral sense of a human death. This tank is an old man and is falling apart. It groans and aches from its years in service (maybe it was used in the 1967 Six-Day War).


Writer-Director Samuel Maoz doesn't really comment on value or ethics of the war at all - this is much more intimate than that. He merely presents us with a bunch of soldiers in a particular position and shows us how stressful and difficult that spot is. This is much more a comment on the act of war itself, rather than whether or not this is a good or bad fight.


What we see through the rocket scope is very interesting. It is a very small view and it puts us directly in a seat inside the tank. Our view is very limited so we quickly realize that there could be people (enemies) directly outside of our field of vision and we wouldn't know it. We soon learn the blind faith these guys have in trusting the radio orders they're getting and the allies on the ground (the Lebanese Christians). Without these connections, they would be totally lost in a tin can in the middle of a hellscape.


I should say that at times, I did find the frame of the scope and the cross-hairs rather heavy-handed - that everything becomes a possible target and that we become so incredibly vulnerable. I think the use of it is important for the emotional experience of the film as well and is more good than bad - but it was a bit manipulative. Perhaps Maoz overused this view a bit and could have shown it less.

One amazing thing about the film is the use of the quiet spaces between the fire-fights. We get two or three minutes of loud shooting, smoke and explosions and then we get 10-15 minutes of nothing. In these spaces the soldiers reflect on what they're doing and become paranoid at what's coming next or what they've just done. There is a ton of unnerving hurry-up-and-wait in this film and it's these "wait" moments that are sometimes the most dramatic. It's in these spaces your left with your thoughts and worries, not to mention the drips of the decrepit tank and the growing stench of shit, sweat, dead bodies and grease.

Stars: 3.5 of 4

Eyes Wide Open (Saturday, February 20, 2010) (16)

Aaron, and Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem, walks to the door of his butcher shop. On it he removes a sign announcing his father's death. He goes into the shop, takes out the old meat in the freezers and begins to clean up and get back to work. He's a sad man, but it's not clear if this is because of the loss of his father, his sad life with a loving, but nagging wife and a bunch of kids who don't listen to him or some sort of midlife crisis.

After a few minutes a young man walks to the door and asks to use his phone. This is Ezri and he says he's studying at a Yeshiva nearby (Aaron tells him he thinks that particular one closed a year earlier). It seems Ezri has secrets and has come to this neighborhood to hide or get away from his past.

Aaron soon hires Ezri and puts him to work, showing him how to be a kosher butcher. Soon, young men from a Yeshiva come to tell Aaron that he has to fire Ezri because he's "unholy" and a "sinner". It seems that he was kicked out of his school for being gay and having sex. Over a period of time, the two men become very close and ultimately they have sex. For Aaron this is a revelation and brings untold amounts of joy into his life. The problem, of course, is that the Orthodox community he lives in (not to mention Aaron's wife) does not want Ezri around and Aaron is loathe to kick out his lover.

Like many recent Israeli films I've seen recently (My Father My Lord, Lebanon, Beaufort), this film is wonderfully simple and straightforward. Director Haim Tabakman does a beautiful job making very efficient and tight movies with some very powerful imagery. Here the story is very small and quiet. The story is not about the butcher coming out as a big flaming queen, but slowly falling in love with this interesting young man. The sex scenes between them are very short and gentle, but convey the point in a short time span (whereas most Western directors would probably hover over them in bed and make the scene more dirty).

I really like the use of color – or use of no color here. Clearly we associate Orthodox Jews with black and white, but the butcher shop is totally stark white and there’s a washed-out quality to everything we see. It makes you appreciate later when Aaron confesses to his rabbi that Ezri brought him back to life. There’s clearly a visual significance to this.

I think the script, by Merav Doster, has some problems in it, most notably how Ezri shows up out of nowhere and ultimately recedes back into nothingness rather all of a sudden (well, after he's beat up, but he seems to not fight back in a lame way). It was a bit too random and a bit too writerly for me. I like the humanity and naturalness of the story, but these parts felt a bit forced. I guess Aaron and Ezri were living an amazing dream and when physical violence came into their lives, they knew it was time to end it.

I'm very interested in how the Orthodox characters here are seen as very close-minded, clinical and unloving. There's a sense that Ezri is a rather "free spirit" and that he can be a good Jew and be gay. The community doesn't really know that anything has transpired between the two men, but just don't like Ezri because he's gay and seen as a sexual threat. In many ways these Orthodox people could stand in for any conservative religious group on the planet. Maybe this is a bit sweet and precious, but it works nicely here, I think.

Stars: 3 of 4

Ajami (Thursday, February 4, 2010) (9)

Ajami is an Israeli film that was nominated for Best Foreign Language film in this year's Oscars. It tells a few stories of people in a multi-religious slum in Tel Aviv. There is a part about a poor Muslim family who has to pay a debt to a Muslim organized crime element, a Christian family whose daughter wants to marry a man outside of the faith and a Jewish soldier who went missing while on a military mission. The stories are all intertwined, sometimes a bit too cutely, and the structure jumps back and forth between these stories and others as well.

Much of the press surrounding the film has dealt with the interesting production, which was co-directed by a Jewish (Yaron Shani) and Palestinian (Scandar Copti) duo. The actors are mostly amateurs with no experience and it was shot mostly in the places where it takes place (The title of the film comes from a neighborhood in Tel Aviv-Jaffa).

I was not thrilled with this film as I felt it was just too much stuff - too confusing, unfocused and less powerful than it could have been with a more specific story. We never spend enough time with any one character or story for long enough to align with anyone. It jumps so much that we lose interest in each part as it moves along.

There are certainly interesting moments in the story (like the concept of organized crime in the Palestinian world or the Christian minority in Israel), but these bits are watered-down to the point that they have much less impact than they should. I don't get sentimental about Israel-Palestinian relations - and I think this film is not much without the romantic and political elements behind the scenes of this film.

Stars: 1.5 of 4 stars