NEWS: DVD Release: Defamation

What is anti-Semitism today, two generations after the Holocaust? In his continuing exploration of modern Israeli life, director Yoav Shamir (Checkpoint, 5 Days, Flipping Out) travels the world in search of the most modern manifestations of the “oldest hatred", and comes up with some startling answers.

In this irreverent quest, he follows American Jewish leaders to the capitals of Europe, as they warn government officials of the growing threat of anti-Semitism, and he tacks on to a class of Israeli high school students on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz.

The film questions our perceptions and terminology when an event proclaimed by some as anti-Semitic is described by others as legitimate criticism of Israel’s government policies. The film walks along the boundary between anti-Zionism, rejecting the notion of a Jewish State, and anti-Semitism, rejecting Jews. Is the former being used to excuse the latter? And is there a difference between today’s anti-Semitism and plain old racism that is affecting all minorities?

Film: Defamation
Release date: 25th October 2010
Certificate: E
Running time: 91 mins
Director: Yoav Shamir
Starring: Uri Avneri, Norman Finkelstein, Abraham Foxman, John Mearsheimer
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Dogwoof
Format: DVD
Country: Israel

DVD Special Features:
• Director’s statement
• Stills gallery

REVIEW: DVD Release: Waltz With Bashir

Film: Waltz With Bashir
Release date: 30th March 2009
Certificate: 18
Running time: 87 mins
Director: Ari Folman
Starring: Ron Ben-Yishai, Ronny Dayag, Ari Folman, Shmuel Frenkel, Dror Harazi
Genre: Animation
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD
Country: Israel/France/Germany/USA/Finland/Switzerland/Belgium/Australia

Waltz With Bashir is Ari Folman’s 2008 adult animation based on the political corruption of Lebanon. Distressing chronicles of the 1982 war in Beirut are magnified by the fact that the film is based on the director’s own experiences - the cartoon visuals serving to make the facts more digestible.

The film opens to a gang of fearless dogs, vicious and steadily raging through a city dowsed in morosely animated colours of grey and yellow. This is the troubled dream of army war veteran Boaz Rein-Biskila; a dream which took twenty years to form itself following the horrific events of the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians.

Protagonist Ari Folman discusses the dream with its owner, only to suddenly realise that any memories of the event that he also witnessed are absent from his mind. He is not suffering from amnesia, he is not sick; he has simply unveiled an area of grey cloud within his brain. And so the film’s concept begins, following Folman as he goes on to converse with characters with which he had shared his war experiences, attempting to piece together this broken mental jigsaw…


Folman’s interviewees are a mismatched assortment of middle-aged characters, all with different experiences to share, different emotions to feel, but with a common focal point: the Lebanon massacre of 1982. We meet Carmi Cnaa’n, a cannabis-smoking falafel vendor who now lives in Holland. We meet Folman’s psychologist friend, who casts a philosophical light on this troubling lack of memory. We meet people who could just as easily be our own friends trying to solve our own problems with their barefaced storytelling of intensely personal mental excerpts.

Folman nonchalantly ponders whether he was 100, 200 or 300 yards from the massacre. He goes back into his 19-year-old self and cautiously wanders the streets of Beirut alongside punks and the scent of death. A tank of soldiers laugh and joke as they draw towards a site riddled with soldiers and guns. Their amusement is harshly slaughtered as the commander receives a bullet to the face, pushing the film’s atmosphere from cheery camaraderie down into frantic terror and the heartbreaking loyalty associated with team survival attempts. These pieces of the grand memory puzzle are slowly collected to form a frosted picture of despair and terror, relieved only occasionally by subtle moments of humour – such as the amusing reconstruction of an animated porn video on a television.

The title itself is drawn from one instance during the battle, where a soldier named Shmuel Frenkel performs an intricate dance with his machine-gun amidst a rain of enemy fire, musically accompanied by Chopin’s Waltz #6. He glides delicately beneath a poster of Bashir Gemayel, the Lebanese Phalangist leader and Israeli ally. The entire construction of this scene is fundamentally disturbing, with the audio choice and the elegance depicted in the most inappropriate of places – a combination of classical piano in conjunction with certain death is never intended to have a comforting effect.

Surprisingly, the film undeniably intends to portray the Israeli soldiers as the victims more so than the civilians - highlighted perfectly by the scene where Folman watches a crowd of screaming, faceless Palestinian women. The voices of the women are slowly drained out; leaving the shot focused on Folman’s distressed facial expression and loud, shallow breathing, as he struggles to cope with the emotional impact of the situation. Throughout the film, all Palestinians are seen only as dead or indistinct beings, merely objects alongside the constantly dynamic soldiers.

The cinematography is visually similar to the rotoscope animation techniques used by Richard Linklater in A Scanner Darkly. In actual fact, the film’s graphics are loyal to its homeland, as its aesthetic design is a method invented by Israeli ilustrator Yoni Goodman. This haunting cartoon version of reality is created using Adobe Flash cutouts, and the additional use of muted colour palettes makes for very sombre viewing.

Waltz With Bashir is a cathartic journey with an impressive collection of award wins and nominations. The monotonous Hebrew is detached from the film by the requirement for subtitles, accentuating the graphic quality and allowing the pictures to speak for themselves like subdued segments of foreign news recordings. The memories built up over the course of the film are surely too much for one person to contain. At the beginning, Folman was unsettled by his inability to remember an incident of such magnitude. At the end, he apparently regains his mind as the film suddenly cuts to genuine video footage of the war - footage that he will find impossible to forget.


Perhaps the animated nature of the film lures you into a false sense of security, for even a rabid dog or a dead child can never be as horrific as its lifelike replica. Or perhaps this is worse, as Waltz With Bashir conceals murder and distress inside beautifully directed images to the point where sadness simply becomes artful cinema instead of an actual emotion. But while it is technically just a cartoon, it is also much more than that. Waltz With Bashir is something profound; it is something that speaks with gritty wisdom, something that cries real tears. NM

REVIEW: Cinema Release: Budrus

Film: Budrus
Release date: 24th September 2010
Certificate: PG
Running time: 78 mins
Director: Julia Bacha
Starring: N/a
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Dogwoof
Format: Cinema
Country: Israel/Occupied Palestinian Territory/USA

The tagline which accompanies this award-winning documentary states that between Israel and Palestine you have “the most divided people on earth,” but whilst governments and certain groups are content for violence and animosity to continue breeding between their countries, Julia Bacha’s film shows that it’s the everyman that is ultimately affected – an everyman who can unite with other nationalities, and show the sort of leadership skills his country has been severely lacking for so long.

Budrus is a small village of 1500 people in Occupied Palestine Territory; an agricultural village which cultivates olives.

When the Israeli government decided to build a Separation Barrier inside Palestine in response to suicide bombings, villages like Budrus were being cut off from hundreds of acres of their land (as one Israeli army captain interviewed says, “less fortunate than the death of an Israeli civilian”).

As CAT diggers begin uprooting trees in Budrus, Ayed Morrar brings together the village’s communities (of both Fatah and Hamas members) who are incensed by the confiscation of 300 acres of their land, the uprooting of 3,000 olive trees, and the impact on their cemetery. These villagers form an alliance to stop Israel destroying land which is “not their own” through peaceful/non-violent demonstrations.

But with operations being delayed, Israel becomes aggravated, sending in unsympathetic and trigger itchy border police, and declaring the village a closed military zone. Of course, Ayed and his comrades will not be deterred, creating strategic operations and gaining international support, including citizens from the neighbouring country they’ve been at loggerheads with for so long.

However, with government figures being left red-faced on Israeli TV by the disruptions caused by a small, poor village in Budrus, this fallout is soon escalating out of control…


In many ways, the biggest fault you could pick with this documentary is ultimately its great success, and what makes it such a riveting watch. The film takes a longstanding and complicated conflict, and largely ignores it to milk as much drama and therefore entertainment out of one by-product of two countries at war. It’s also unarguably biased, less about offering a balanced account of the issues that are affecting the two neighbouring countries, or offering any historical context – the reasoning behind this operation, which is ultimately many heinous and inhumane crimes against Israeli civilians, which cannot be acceptable in any circumstance - but creating a soap opera of sorts where the good and the bad guys are painted with very broad brush strokes.

It is, of course, not to say this issue was not vitally important to the communities affected, and wholly unfair, and with the Israeli’s playing up to the part as villains of the piece, both in the violent actions which are caught on film, and the interviews given to protagonists involved in the incidents captured at a later date (border police officer Yasmine is particularly cold and unrepentant), you are soon engaged with the villagers, and empathetic to their plight – slanted, of course, but enlightening still that for all the news we receive of suicide bombers, that this is not the mindset of a country on the whole.

As is the case throughout the world, many communities and religions are pillared for the actions of a small group of extremists, and so the filmmakers cleverly allow us to get close to the Morrar family, in particular, and gain a real sense of community, which they share with people who are equally downtrodden, but still show great love and respect for one another, and with no motivations to upset the status quo or harm others. Shockingly content in many ways, and although the Israeli’s are the bad guys we see on screen, the Palestinian government provoke even more anger, given little mention or screen time, but seemingly weak and unfitting to lead a people who deserve better, and at the very least support.

With the bigger picture largely forgotten, and our attachment to such likeable characters – who humour with deadpan comments such as “not normal if no-one is injured” - momentum builds throughout the documentary, as the women (led by Ayed’s 15-year-old daughter, Iltezam, who has a “duty to perform”) become empowered, minor victories, which are cleverly thought out, and marches/rallies lift as dramatically as we are sent crashing down to mourn olive trees, their livelihoods, being uprooted without care. The voice of a man, clearly cracking as the emotion gets to him is heartbreaking (the filmmakers don’t miss a trick, adding gentle piano to heighten the viewer’s sensations when the opportunities arise), the camera panning across a now barren land, and a child wandering a dusty street in their mother’s shoes.

As tensions increase, the military/police become progressively more heavy-handed, and having been influenced to such an extent by the filmmakers, it becomes the sort of edge of your seat fare that big-budget blockbusters seem incapable of delivering any more. As shots fire, and the anxiety and panic is caught on camera, the cries of “oh my god” are simply chilling. But it’s running this whole gamut of emotions that ensures you appreciate the ultimate ‘feel good’.


Undeniably manipulative, and, without a better grip on the history, it’s an imbalanced piece of documentary making, but it’s probably a story that needed to be told, and given the emotional charge that runs throughout, it’s absorbing stuff. DH

TRAILER: Cinema Release: Budrus

Film: Budrus

REVIEW: DVD Release: Eyes Wide Open

Film: Eyes Wide Open
Release date: 20th September 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 96 mins
Director: Haim Tabakman
Starring: Zohar Shtrauss, Ran Danker, Tinkerbell, Tzahi Grad, Isaac Sharry
Genre: Drama
Studio: Peccadillo
Format: DVD
Country: Israel/Germany/France

Haim Tabakman’s Eyes Wide Open bravely tackles the issue of homosexuality amongst a community of orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. Here, life is meant to be lived virtuously and simply, so it’s a bold decision from Tabakman to make a film as uncompromising in its views and style as his debut.

Shortly after the death of his father Aaron (Zohar Strauss) takes over the family’s kosher butchers shop.

After taking on a good-looking young assistant, Ezri (Ran Danker) the local community began to gossip and Aaron faces a test to his faith as their relationship blossoms…


The film begins with Aaron re-opening his shop, dispensing with dead meat as the rain cascades down. It’s a quiet, grey opening and sets the tone from the outset as this quiet, static movie rarely changes pace or raises its voice. Into Aaron’s lonely world walks Ezri, a broodingly handsome student who is offered a job and allowed to stay in an empty room at the rear of the shop while he is taught the trade.

Things gradually becomes more tender as both characters realise that their relationship is more than that of teacher and apprentice, a fact complicated by Aaron’s marriage and the all-knowing community of which he is part. The restrained romance between the two characters begins with knowing glances, an occasional lingering look and then a failed kiss – Aaron sees this as a test of his faith and refuses to submit to temptation. It’s a tense scene with Ezri’s determination bordering on aggression – the violence of the attempted kiss is completely at odds with the gentle opening of the film and comes as a shock. Sadly the film fails to follow up on the promise of this set-piece and soon settles back into its sedate pace.

The first real example of physical affection between the two male leads occurs when they strip off to go swimming. Ezri sheds his clothes and his inhibitions quickly, Aaron is far more reserved, steadfastly refusing to look at his younger friend as his clothes drop at his feet. It’s nicely acted and cleverly directed – Aaron’s glance never falls upon Ezri until he is fully naked with his back to the older man. The realisation that he needs to get in the water, too, is written all over Aaron’s face, and his reserve can be seen to dissolve even as he enters the cold water still partially clothed... Eventually the temperature between the characters warms and they fool around, pushing each other under the water and wrestling one another. It’s a rare example of anyone having fun in the film – interestingly the only other scene of male characters losing their sense of sobriety is when a male-only religious study group sing joyously together following a meeting. The film would have benefited from more scenes like this – introspection is a difficult thing to convey on screen and Aaron is chiefly guilty of this. A character of few words, he is often difficult to read, particularly given the nuanced performance from Zohar Strauss.

As Aaron’s reserve slowly melts, so the relationship between himself and Ezri gradually becomes sexual. Beginning with a kiss instigated by Aaron in a walk-in refrigerator, the thawing of their reserve is so hesitant as to be almost unnoticeable until finally they reach this crescendo. The scene comes as a relief – finally the ice has been broken. Taking place in a cold refrigerator, however, it all feels rather clinical. The movement between the two characters is somewhat mechanical – it doesn’t lack passion but is oddly sterile and has little warmth.

Occasional discrete sex scenes hint at passion but are usually witnessed ‘after the event’ and thus give little clue as to how the relationship has developed: it comes as a surprise when Aaron explains to a Rabbi that his relationship with Ezri makes him “feel alive.” There has been little evidence to suggest that his life has altered dramatically up to this point – he still rarely smiles, and although he has taken to occasionally closing the shop to disappear into Ezri’s room with him, it’s still a shock to hear that his life has altered dramatically.

Aaron’s relationship with his wife is muted, with no affection and little dialogue. Almost all their scenes are played out in either the dining room or a joyless bedroom. As their marriage becomes more complicated, it somehow seems closer – it’s clear that there is genuine love between the couple despite the lack of warmth and the fact that she is aware of his homosexual affair. Their final scene together is beautifully played – almost devoid of dialogue, but utterly compelling nonetheless, as she cradles her emotional husband in her arms. It’s a shame that this relationship is not explored more fully as it has real emotional depth.

As Aaron’s home life becomes increasingly oppressed, so his personal and professional life are affected. In his tight knit community there are no secrets. Coded warnings and threatening voices in alleyways – “there is a bad man in our community” – become increasingly common as orthodox Judaism begins to strangle the fledgling romance between the two men, culminating in Aaron being forced to choose between the joyless love of his wife and family or the passionate Evri and the abandoning of god.

The film is delicately handled, yet remarkably restrained. The relationship between the male couple is treated tactfully and perhaps this is the film’s major flaw. It’s possible to be risky without being risqué, yet Eyes Wide Open is handled with too much caution.

Despite the grey, rainy backdrop against which the story is played out it’s hard to see a big enough change in Aaron to believe that very much has changed between the moment Evri enters his life and the film’s denouement – things are just as drab at the end and there is little colour or vibrancy even at the height of their relationship.


The film aims for a very niche audience and sadly there is little here of interest for those who are not interested in the study of Judaism. Despite being subtly acted and sensitively filmed, Eyes Wide Open suffers from the same lack of warmth which we see in Aaron, and will only appeal to those who have something invested in the subject matter. RW

REVIEW: DVD Release: Lebanon

Film: Lebanon
Release date: 23rd August 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 89 mins
Director: Samuel Maoz
Starring: Reymond Amsalem, Ashraf Barhom, Oshri Cohen, Yoav Donat, Michael Moshonov
Genre: Drama/War
Studio: Metrodome
Format: DVD
Country: Israel/France/UK/Germany

The talk of Cannes and winner of the Leone d’Oro at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, Lebanon partially documents personal war experiences of the film’s director, Samuel Maoz.

The film follows an Israeli tank crew entering a hostile town on the first day of the 1982 conflict. With the exception of the opening and closing shots, the action takes place entirely from inside the tank, while we receive occasional glimpses of the outside world through the crosshairs of the crew’s gun-sights

Upon entering the vehicle, Israeli tank-commander Asi familiarises himself with the men under his command; a veteran weapons loader, a young driver, and a gunner on his first mission. Following an air-strike on a nearby town, they must accompany a paratrooper platoon into the settlement and clear-up any remaining resistance.

Confronted by horrific scenes of destruction, and the confused parameters of their mission, the tensions inside the tank increase. The confined space – worsened by the addition of a corpse and a prisoner – takes its toll on the men, physically and mentally, and as they battle with each other, the enemy, and their environment, the true horrors of war begin to dawn.

Realising they may have gone off-mission, and with the enemy bearing down upon them, the men must fight for their lives…


Lebanon is an unrelentingly tough viewing experience, but one that offers rich rewards. Despite the motif of characters stuck in an enclosed space being done a number of times in cinema history (in a war context,. most memorably in the stage-plays Journey’s End and The Long And The Short And Tall, both of which have received movie adaptations) Lebanon maintained a refreshingly original feel throughout.

The tensions and interactions between the crew make for compelling drama, delivered with stunning conviction from an excellent cast. Each of the crew are presented as developed, three-dimensional characters, and while the issues they face are common in war films – the gunner, for instance, struggles with the morality of killing people – the setting and levels of emotional engagement ensure that the film rises above stereotype or cliché. Other characters occasionally enter the tank, such as the crew’s superior officer, a Syrian prisoner, and a Phalangist, with each being a catalyst that worsens the relationship between the crewmen as well as offering diversity in the dialogue.

Visually, the film shocks and frustrates. Maoz captures the claustrophobic horror of the setting superbly, presenting a richly textured depiction of the sights, smells and suffering inside the vehicle. The engines deafen, dust and fumes fill the air, and you can almost smell the blood, sweat, and urine. Despite the grim reality, there is still great artistry within the direction; for example, the arresting sight of blood-like oil slowly running down the vehicle’s walls, as if the tank itself were alive and bleeding. Indeed, the machine ultimately becomes a character in itself, so affective is its personification.

However, although everything inside the tank is delivered with nightmarish perfection, the film fails when looking at the outside world. These come solely through the crew’s cross-hairs – accompanied by the sound of the turret moving along with the camera – and although disturbing and upsetting, they lacked any form of subtlety. Examples included a close-up of a painting of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus, before a woman and her child are forced in front by a Syrian soldier; a situation the tank’s gunner is ordered to fire into. Another instance involved the camera/gun-sight zooming in on a seemingly dead donkey, only to see it is still breathing, and when it blinks, a tear rolls down its face. While these hammered home the anti-war message of the film, they felt so staged and heavy-handed that it belied the realism of the action inside the tank. The images, constant close-ups, and lingering shots seemed to underestimate the audience’s intelligence, as if they would not understand the movie’s message if presented in a subtle manner.

Despite these flaws, the film must be applauded for its attempt to show that war affects and brings suffering to both sides, and its impartial outlook contrasts nicely to other war movies that are often overly biased to one side. The film is supposedly based on many of Moaz’s personal experiences during the war, and it should be further commended for its unflinchingly real representation of warfare that makes for compelling, if exhausting, cinema.


The contradictory treatment of the visuals ultimately left the film feeling uneven, but it remains a highly worthwhile viewing experience, horrific and gripping in equal measure, with instances of imaginative direction and superb performances. CD

REVIEW: DVD Release: Kippur

Film: Kippur
Release date: 22nd February 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 116 mins
Director: Amos Gitai
Starring: Tomer Russo, Liron Levo, Uri Klauzner
Genre: War
Studio: Optimum
Format: DVD
Country: Israel/France

Kippur goes the unlikely route of producing a war film without any of the fighting - Amos Gitai creating a movie that focuses on the humanitarian aspect, and the inner and outer hell faced by the soldiers.

Set during the Yom Kippur War of the 1970s, when Egypt and Syria attacked the Sinai and Golan Heights regions of Israel, Kippur is director Amos Gitai's retelling of a war he experienced firsthand. Assisting in this retelling are Liron Levo and Tomer Ruso, as the two main characters: Sgt. Weinraub and Lt. Ruso - two reservists who have lost their unit and end up assisting a helicopter rescue team. The story centres around the exploits (or lack thereof) of these men as they guide their team (also consisting of a doctor played by Uri Klauzner) from the relative safety of Yoran Hattab's helicopter to scenes of destruction on the frontlines of war.

Along with dialogue, plot and exposition are things Gitai considered surplus to what he wanted to achieve with Kippur. The film's quality is in its stark atmosphere, in the parts where Gitai clearly attempted to establish a similar dynamic to Vietnam movies like Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket. There is a genius in having your protagonists do almost nothing in a film while still managing to make this nothingness seem scary, against the backdrop of a war. Therefore, even though the enemy remain unseen throughout the entire movie (and only two shots are visibly fired on screen over the whole running time), the fact that there is a war on is inescapable. You won’t get a cavalry charge, but you will get the impending sense of danger…


What really strikes you about Kippur is the effort that went into surrounding the main characters with an insular web of equal parts desperation, disorganisation and futility. The whole situation in which they find themselves seems totally untenable, unwinnable and frankly pointless, despite the fact that who is actually winning the war is never mentioned. This is not the sort of film where the heroes come home to a fanfare of trumpets and a sea of fluttering flags. Hell, this isn't even the sort of film where they come home to their families and are forgotten about by the rest of the world. The one character who has anything to return to is Sgt. Weinraub, who enjoys a beautiful, unique, if rather pointless love scene that takes up the first nine minutes – thought, it establishes at least a human link.

There are scenes in Kippur that are hard to watch: four men heaving an injured soldier around a field so muddy that they can barely move, breaking the stretcher, dropping him numerous times, panting, heaving, struggling…this is hard to deal with. It is at times like this when the scale of Gitai's achievement with Kippur, and the message imbued within it become clear: you don't need to be killing people to see war in all of its bleakness. However, underneath it all, there is an incredibly black sense of humour – poking fun at the futility of war. It is, to my mind, the most powerful (and simultaneously the most horrible) scene in the entire film, as it on one hand shows what war is actually like before Hollywood fills it with explosions, and on the other shows that Gitai's 'real war' as being pretty terrible even without them.

However, a film with scenes that are hard to watch runs the risk of also being a film that drags, and Kippur occasionally falls foul of this. The acting is solid, but with so little attention paid to dialogue, or any real characterisation, the responsibility for driving the film onwards when nothing is really happening (note: this occurs a lot) falls to the film's unique dynamic. This works most of the time, but relying on a sense of minimalism and banal terror to progress your movie is always a risky business, and Kippur does not always manage to remain stimulating. That said, the vibe that it establishes – part Easy Rider, part 'Nam movie – is consistent, foreboding and scarily effective, so much so that it would be unfair not to stress the film's success in this regard once more.


Kippur is nothing if not an ambitious movie. Fortunately for fans of war films this is just the beginning of what Amos Gitai's hugely watchable work offers, but be warned, if you're after Bruckheimer-esque explosions then look elsewhere: Kippur is a movie that focuses on what war does to the heart and the head, not the body. JD

REVIEW: DVD Release: My Father My Lord

Film: My Father My Lord
Release date: 12th April 2010

Certificate: PG

Running time: 73 mins

Director: David Volach

Starring: Assi Dayan, Ilan Griff, Sharon Hacohen Bar

Genre: Drama

Studio: Artificial Eye

Format: DVD

Country: Israel

Director David Volach has approached this film with inside knowledge, having been raised within the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community it centres on (he turned away from it in order to pursue a career in film), and set in a country (Israel) of great volatility one might expect a film with plenty of action and a fast paced story line. However, if that’s the kind of movie you are hoping for, look elsewhere.

This film’s gentle pace allows time for a highly authentic feel to shine through, from both characters and setting, and the attention to the detail of the orthodox lives of the three main characters – Rabbi Abraham Eidelmann, Esther, his wife, and their young son Menachem – is the backdrop and preparation for a storyline of great and tragic simplicity: a family visit to the seaside results in the death of the child who is lost in the sea, whilst his father is engrossed in his afternoon prayers.

It opens with a depiction of the small world of Menachem, and we see him spending time with his parents, at the Rabbi’s Yeshiva school with the students, and also at his own faith school. Sometimes we see the world through the child’s eyes, and at other times we observe as adults the world that Menachem has to live in. The greatest influence on him is his father, whom he clearly loves, but is also in awe of.

Menachem’s life is ruled by his father’s complete (some might say obsessive) devotion to his faith, and the living out of the Torah; every part of the boy’s life becomes a lesson in faith, and much of what the Rabbi says is in the form of a prayer. His long suffering wife Esther does her best to protect her boy from the excesses of this, trying in vain to intervene when Menachem is ordered to destroy his collector’s card because it might depict a scene of idolatry, and softening the effects of Menachem having to watch his father drive a dove from her young because the Torah told him it must be done…


There is strong irony in the story; Rabbi Abraham uses his son’s question about whether dogs have souls to explain to his Yeshiva students that only they, the Righteous, have the privilege of God’s guidance, and anyone outside that group, and that includes non observant Jews, and indeed the rest of the world’s population, is only there to be the servant of the Righteous. And yet we discover that God has chosen (as the Rabbi sees it) to take away a doted on only child from this Righteous couple whose lives are devoted to God. Seemingly, and most likely because of his fervent belief that God directs every moment of his life and control is therefore not his to wield, the Rabbi recovers from this tragedy faster than his wife, even chastising her for weeping on the Sabbath. This is a heartbreaking scene, in which one can feel the faith ebbing away from a distraught Esther, whilst her husband sings praise to God. Bemused, the Rabbi asks his wife what he was supposed to have done when the boy disappeared, because as he said, at that moment, “I was wrapped in the hands of the Almighty.”

This is a movie which raises many issues, and it really needs a second viewing to get the best out of it, because one can get so engrossed in the minutiae of Hasidic life the first time around that the issues only become apparent later. Esther is a victim of the orthodox gender divide; she is not allowed on the all-male beach with her son, and stands apart from her husband as the emergency services search for Menachem, whilst Abraham sings to his God. She cannot share her grief with him in the Synagogue either; however, this provides her with one of the final moments of the film, in which she pushes prayer books over the balcony of the women’s gallery onto her husband below, a feeble “revenge” for her loss, but another indication that she blames her husband for her son’s death.

It must be said that whilst Volach is critical of the Orthodox community, he is not disrespectful, and maybe that is why the film works so well. There is no doubting the genuineness of the Rabbi’s love for his son, a truly passionate tenderness which, in fact, both parents depict beautifully. Similarly, one has to guard against the human being’s natural reserve when it comes to experiencing a different way of life to one’s own, and look beyond that to the faith-based devotion that is genuinely felt. What Volach wants us to see is what happens when that devotion to God blinds an individual to the dangers of the here-and-now.

David Volach has produced a brave and unflinching critique of religious exclusivity so be prepared for the sting - you may come away from this story feeling strangely uncomfortable, saddened, and disheartened to discover that yet another faith has an inflexible and extreme element to it.


Beautiful to look at, with an abundance of softly lit scenes and warm colours, complemented by wonderful performances from the three leading actors. Watch it, and learn. GR