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HANNAH BROWN:
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Movies of the Year

About three years ago, Brad Pitt and Robert Redford cancelled their reservations on flights to Israel, and a movie called Spy Game, a significant part of which was scheduled to be shot in and around Haifa, was completed in Morocco instead.

The movie turned out to be nothing special, but its cancellation proved important because it marked the last time any major international film crew actually planned to shoot here. The movie studio changed the shooting location, of course, due to the current round of violence.

Any observer of Israel’s already beleaguered movie industry would not have predicted anything good would come of blue-and-white cinema in the ensuing years, as the Israeli film community became increasingly isolated. The big names from abroad who once showed up here for festivals, location shooting and awards slowed to a trickle.

But something strange happened. During this period, and particularly during the past year, Israeli movies have showed a surprising resurgence. Three Israeli feature films won major awards at international film festivals, and each reflects different aspects of a movie industry that is finally coming of age.

The most masterful of the three, ironically perhaps, is an extremely low-budget production that was originally made for television, Yossi & Jagger, directed by Eytan Fox. It is significant that one of its leads, Ohad Knoller, who plays Yossi, won the Best Actor prize at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, since so many Israeli movies over the years have suffered from over-the-top, unsubtle performances.

It is also important since far too many Israeli films lack a focus on a single character and instead present a large group whom the plot follows rather aimlessly. So often, it seems as if the director and screenwriter simply couldn’t decide what (and who) they wanted at the center of their movie.

ALTHOUGH YOSSI & Jagger is a love story about two gay IDF officers stationed in Lebanon, what truly sets it apart from most movies made here is not the homosexual angle of the story but the fact that it is a love story. There are secondary characters and subplots in the 65-minute film, but the focus is squarely on the two leads and their relationship.

Another strength of Yossi & Jagger, which is set in an IDF outpost in Lebanon, is that while the uncertainties and dangers the characters face due to the military backdrop have bearing on the plot, it is not a stridently political film. It is a story about young people, and since young people here are generally in the military, the story takes place in the army.

This might seem like common sense, but so many Israeli movies (perhaps even the majority) are set in a bizarre vacuum, a kind of ghost landscape, in which there are no wars, no Palestinians, no hourly news broadcasts or newspapers anywhere, no political discussions ever, and no army service or reserve duty. Those few movies that do touch on political themes generally do so with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, featuring characters reduced to symbols at best, or caricatures at worst.

But director and co-writer Fox has managed the apparently near-impossible feat of making a movie about real people in real situations, which happen to include army service. Not surprisingly, the movie had great resonance for Israeli audiences, who in recent years have rarely seen anyone they can relate to portrayed on screen. It was a popular film with soldiers, many of whom saw it several times during its relatively brief theatrical release.

But the Tribeca Award for Knoller’s understated performance proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that non-Israeli audiences also found the film moving. And this is really the test of a great film: Will it succeed with viewers who have no particular interest in the political situation here, and who are not boosters of Israeli culture? Clearly, Yossi & Jagger passed that test with flying colors.

But although it proved compelling for international audiences, the movie is certainly marked by an idiosyncratically Israeli sense of humor and an insider’s knowledge of the IDF.

Yossi, the platoon commander, is a wonderful officer, hard-working but compassionate, well-liked by both his soldiers and his superiors. He is also in love with and in the midst of an affair with Lior (Yehuda Levi), his company commander, who is known as Jagger because of his rock star cool and good looks. They’re able to steal a few moments together in the snow once in a while, but are still "in the closet" about their relationship and their homosexuality. It’s a difficult balancing act for them, especially for Yossi, who plans to make the army his career.

The drama and tension mount when the Colonel (Sharon Regniano) shows up with two female soldiers (Hani Furstenberg and Aya Koren-Steinovits), and announces that the soldiers, who are still tired from their last ambush, will launch another one that night.

The tense preparations for the ambush and the operation itself take up the bulk of the movie. In the course of this long day, we get to know not only Yossi and Jagger but the other soldiers as well.

The movie doesn’t shy away from the sexual politics of the IDF, how young women soldiers are often placed in remote outposts to provide at least the hope of sexual and romantic fulfillment for the lonely guys, and not because it’s really necessary to have women operating switchboards.

Furstenberg as the harder-edged female character, who is engaged in a particularly joyless affair with her commander, brings a touching vulnerability to her character. This young actress, who works a great deal on stage, has a genuine star quality rare in Israeli films. And in a movie in which the focus is squarely on men, it’s nice to see two female characters with depth and complexity.

The relationship between Yossi and Jagger, which is at the heart of the movie, is handled with refreshing matter-of-factness and humor. The script does have moments of preachiness, but they’re fleeting. Yes, it’s rough to be a closeted gay in the IDF, but it seems to be no picnic for any of the soldiers in the movie. Yossi and Jagger are characters first, gay symbols a distant second.

Fox made a short film on a similar subject, Time Off, which was screened in New York at the Gay/Lesbian Film Festival 10 years ago, and that brief glimpse convinced me he was a director to watch. Fox was born in New York City and came to Israel as a child. He grew up in Jerusalem and after serving in the army, studied in Tel Aviv University’s school of Film and Television, then created and directed the popular television series Florentine. His first feature film, Siren Song (Shirat HaSirena) (1994), based on the bestselling novel about a young woman’s romantic misadventures in Tel Aviv during the Gulf War, was enjoyable if not especially original.

Although at various times in the last few years he has tried to get an English-language film off the ground (a project titled 1967, the story of an American woman who moves from New York to Israel once attracted the attention of actress Mira Sorvino), his most recent film, Walking on Water, stars Lior Ashkenazi and was completed early this summer.

In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Fox said, "I don’t want to sound corny, but I want to do for Israeli culture what Ang Lee did to Taiwanese culture with films like The Wedding Banquet and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. He brought to America and all over the world a different culture, in ways (the audience) could handle and appreciate." With Yossi & Jagger, he has accomplished that goal, and more.

THE TWO other Israeli films that have attracted international attention and won prizes abroad both focus on large families. The Barbecue People (HaMangalistim), directed by David Ofek and Yossi Madmony, won the Best Screenplay award at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina. Unfortunately, it was promoted in ads here as if it were a seret burekas, i.e., a dumb comedy filled with ethnic stereotypes, and that probably kept away audiences who would have enjoyed it. Set in 1988, it’s the story of an Iraqi-born couple living in Ashdod and two of their children. Everyone comes together for a big barbecue on Independence Day, and stories that each member of the family have kept hidden from each other are told.

Inevitably, in films with this kind of a structure, some of the episodes are far more absorbing than others. But they all illuminate a different aspect of the family’s life. Nostalgia for the glory days of the Jewish community in Baghdad is front and center in the sections on both the father’s and mother’s secret lives.

And the story of the son, an aspiring director in New York reduced to making trashy films with his Israeli girlfriend, is the most original of all and touches on some of the ambivalence many young Israelis feel about living abroad. When he returns to Israel and learns that his girlfriend is from an ultra-Orthodox family, the story becomes even more complex.

Director Nir Bergman’s Broken Wings, which was awarded the Grand Prize at last year’s Tokyo Film Festival, is far less innovative than the other two movies discussed here. However, its familiarity may have helped it win over audiences, and it received the lion’s share of last year’s Israeli Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

The story of a Haifa family coping after the death of the father has all the hallmarks of an American television movie, including a certain amount of melodrama and predictability. It is also very much removed from the reality of life here in that there is not the slightest reference to anything outside of the family. While politics and the army would obviously not be the focus here, their utter removal banishes the story to that ghost landscape in which so many Israeli films unfold. The family’s total isolation from relatives, friends and neighbors also has an artificial feel.

However, the film features some standout performances, particularly from Maya Maron as the oldest daughter. Director Bergman does manage to create a certain intensity throughout, and, obviously, the movie struck a chord with a great many viewers.

Most of the Israeli films shown at this year’s Jerusalem Film Festival have not yet opened commercially. However, the Wolgin Award winner at the festival, Nina’s Tragedies, directed by Savi Gabizon, billed as "a very sad comedy," could very well become the same kind of crowd pleaser as Broken Wings. Ayelet Zorer is a standout in the title role, playing the widowed aunt who is a source of fascination for her teenage nephew.

Another film that won great acclaim at the festival, James’ Journey to Jerusalem, by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz, tells the story of a young African who comes to Israel to study and gets arrested. It has played at both the Cannes and Toronto film festivals.

THE YEAR 2003 has been a good year for Israeli movies, but not only for Hebrew-language movies. Two films by Israeli Arabs shown here were both excellent, Ali Nasser’s In the Ninth Month and Eli Suleiman’s Divine Intervention.

Set in a village in the Galilee, In the Ninth Month mixes folklore, symbolism and dream sequences with a look at life during the first Intifada to portray one family’s tragedy. Divine Intervention, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes in 2002, is a disarming, ambitious, and original meditation on life in Nazareth and the West Bank, seen through the eyes of a passive, silent protagonist.

Although the political outlook of both directors might not sit well with many Israeli viewers, there is no denying the quality and impact of these two films.

The past year was also marked by the controversy surrounding several documentaries on Jenin. The first Jenin documentary, Jenin Diary: The Inside Story, directed by Gil Mezuman, a reserve soldier in a company that lost 13 soldiers and officers in Jenin, was shown quietly at the 2002 Jerusalem Film Festival, just a few months after the events it depicts.

The second film, Israeli Arab actor/director Muhammad Bacri’s Jenin, Jenin, was shown once at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, drawing protests from the families of soldiers killed in Jenin, and was subsequently banned by Israel’s censorship authority, because of its negative, and according to the censors, incorrect portrayal of Israel’s actions in Jenin. Bacri is appealing the censor’s decision.

A third film, this one by another Israeli Arab, Nizar Hassan, Invasion, has yet to be shown widely in Israel. Those who have seen both characterize Bacri’s film as devoted to testimony of Palestinian suffering in Jenin, while Hassan’s is a celebration of Palestinian resistance. Pierre Rehov, a French businessman and director, made his own documentary, The Road to Jenin, that focuses on debunking the Palestinian casualty figures.

The battle over these documentaries took on a life of its own when Bacri filed (and lost) an appeal to the Supreme Court to keep The Road to Jenin from being shown on Channel One, protesting it on similar grounds that the censor cited in its decision to ban his film, including onesidedness. Although few saw these films, many more read about them as their director’s struggles were played out in the media.

So, although international productions are still staying away from Israel, the Israeli movie industry has managed to bounce back and is continuing to develop on its own. The past year was extremely lively and produced some high-quality films. Let’s hope the coming year is even better.