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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
A dazzling Israeli film renaissance, led by both Jewish and Arab directors, is crowned by the marvelous social comedy "The Syrian Bride."
Nov 24, 2005 | Israeli cinema, says filmmaker Eran Riklis, is enjoying something of "a revolutionary year." On the film festival circuit and in major cities where movies from all over the world play, the evidence is unmistakable. What distinguishes this Israeli new wave -- and if that grandiose term has not yet been applied, let me be the first -- is both its superior craftsmanship and its confident, independent-minded spirit. These movies are made by both Jews and Arabs about both Jews and Arabs (and others). While the political context of the Middle East is necessarily never absent, these filmmakers are committed to transcending, and even subverting, the ideological orthodoxies that have defined Israeli (and Palestinian) life since 1948.
Eytan Fox's "Walk on Water" imagines a surprising friendship between an Israeli intelligence agent and the grandson of a Nazi war criminal. Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now" explores the world of two would-be suicide bombers from the West Bank, who are smuggled into Tel Aviv by an Israeli yuppie driving a BMW. Simone Bitton's documentary "Wall" laconically surveys the enigmatic and vastly expensive security barrier built around Israel (largely by Arab laborers) -- and the director herself insists on identifying as both Jew and Arab. Danae Elon's documentary "Another Road Home" examines the contradictory fallout of the filmmaker's privileged Israeli childhood, when she was raised by a Palestinian man who spent more time with her than with his own children. Gidi Dar's "Ushpizin" penetrates the closed world of Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Hasidim, often viewed with prodigious mistrust (and even distaste) by secular Israelis.
That's an impressive assortment even before you add one of the year's truly serendipitous surprises, Riklis' "The Syrian Bride," an extraordinary social comedy set in the Golan Heights, an embattled patch of high ground that used to be Syria and is now Israel (and may very well be Syria again, if the two nations can ever reach a realistic peace agreement). Distribution of all these Israeli films is predictably patchy in the United States if you don't live in or near a major Jewish population center (and even if you do), but it would be a shame if a crop of films this diverse and engaging were perceived entirely as niche-market products. (I mean, let's face it, the number of people willing to see non-mainstream film is niche-y enough already.)
In a phone conversation, Riklis told me that the revolution has been both international and domestic -- that Israeli audiences who weren't much interested in homegrown film a few years ago are showing up enthusiastically to see challenging pictures about their own society and its intersection with the world. While admitting that he's "pretty much your typical left-wing Israeli filmmaker," he sees this moment of breakthrough as signifying a new openness and a sense of what he calls "opsimism" (a guarded combination of hopefulness and realism) about the future of the nation and the region. It's almost always a mistake to draw political conclusions based on cultural product but, hey, this can't be a bad thing. Speaking as your typical American left-wing film critic, the Israeli film renaissance, whatever its causes and consequences may be, is a reason for thanksgiving.
