A Film That Really Shook Me

I see an absurd number of films every year, compared to the normal person. And the vast majority of them, good or bad, don't leave that much of an impression any more. So when a movie stirs me to the point that I throw my notes across the room and start screaming at the video screen, you can bet something is going on.

Yoav Shamir's Defamation, an elegantly structured documentary about the political uses of contemporary anti-Semitism, had that effect on me. My review of it is here. I hope that if you see it, it affects you as strongly.

The Price of Filming

I'd like to draw your attention to an article in today's Independent.

This is the price of filming in a police state. I have written about this before in this space. Unfortunately, I will have to write about it again. It's not a problem that ever goes away.

However, if you want to do something concrete to help, you can connect with the Committee to Protect Journalists and Cineastes sans Frontieres.

Unexpected Visitors

My synagogue and one of our neighboring churches have been co-sponsoring a thoughtfully programmed film series over the last couple of years, "The Face of the Other," which focuses on the socio-political implications of "otherness." The catalog of titles is a striking and impressive on, including, most recently, Laurent Cantet's The Class, which I managed to miss when it played theatrically. I've been the "facilitator" for several of these films, and the discussions that have followed have been intelligent and provocative.

Needless to say, the reason I'm mentioning this is that I'm speaking once again at the next offering in the series, and it's recent favorite of mine, Eran Kolirin's bittersweet comedy, The Band's Visit. That is a film I did manage to see, and review, when it opened last year. In fact, my review for Jewish Week is below:

Loneliness seems to be built into the human condition. Blaise Pascal said, “We die alone,” and that limitation on human aspirations – mortality – both unites and divides us all. Mortality and solitude both cut across national boundaries and religious differences.

That gloomy thought has its obverse, though. If we can recognize our shared humanity, our common fate, we can reach across the divisions between us and alleviate our loneliness, if only for a moment. All that is necessary is a willingness to accept the Other, to see oneself in that person.

Heavy thoughts to open a discussion of what is, essentially, a very, very funny comedy, Eran Kolirin’s The Band’s Visit. The film’s basic premise is a simple comedy of errors: the Alexandria Police Orchestra has been brought to Israel to play at the opening of an Arab Culture Center in Petakh Tikva, but snarled communications have brought them to the desolate desert town of Bet Hatikva. (If you don’t get it, try reading the towns’ names aloud.) Bet Hatikva is, as Papi (Shlomi Avraham), one of the town’s perpetually unemployed succinctly puts it, “Bloody nowhere.” And, of course, the day’s last bus from nowhere is the one that dropped the band’s members in its middle.

The queen of this admittedly dubious realm is Dina (Ronit Alkabetz), a tough-but-tender divorcee with an endearingly tolerant personality. Over the course of a long evening in a town with nothing but a falafel joint and a drab, mostly empty roller disco (yes, ”Xanadu” fans, there is roller disco somewhere in Israel), she establishes a warm rapport with the band’s compulsively dignified and proper leader, Tewfiq (Sasson Gabai). She even manages to get him to warm up to his youngest, most obstreperous underling, Khaled (Saleh Bakri), a womanizing Chet Baker fan. Elsewhere in this godforsaken town, the feckless Itzik Rubi Moscovich) will inspire would-be composer Simon (Khalifa Natour) to reconsider his abandoned clarinet concerto, and Khaled will give Papi a lesson in seduction that provides the film’s most utterly hilarious sight gag.

First-time feature director Kolirin, who also wrote the excellent script, understands the valuable lesson of great comedy directors like Ernst Lubitsch and Preston Sturges, that underneath the laughter there lurks deep personal pain and the balancing act that keeps both those moods in play is a delicate but rewarding one (a lesson lost on most contemporary American filmmakers). His script is never remotely preachy, but the film’s points are gotten across with subtlety and wit.

Screenwriter Kolirin is helped in no small way by director Kolirin. The Band’s Visit, from its opening shot of an airport van framed solemnly by two columns that hold up a most unprepossessing bus shelter, much of the film’s visual humor derives from Kolirin’s highly formal, generally symmetrical staging. He gives the film an intentionally funny gravitas by emphasizing the incongruously ceremonial elements of the situation, such as the band’s powder-blue uniforms that stand out absurdly in the grey concrete dustiness of the town, and their military bearing in the unlikeliest situations, which will be echoed by Tewfiq’s awkward dignity in the face of Dina’s insouciance.

And he is aided immeasurably by a uniformly superb cast, starting with Sasson Gabai’s impenetrable sang-froid, which makes such a perfect counterpoint to Ronit Alkabetz’s no less unshakeable wry humor. Saleh Bakri, in his first film appearance, is a particularly fortuitous discovery, sort of a young Palestinian George Clooney, knowing that he is flat-out sexy and rather amused by the consequences. Kolirin has a good eye for the telling behavioral detail that transforms his protagonists from potential caricartures into warm-blooded characters.

In a film industry as economically tenuous as Israel’s has proven in the past decade, one hestitates to make predictions for anyone’s budding career, but is a splendid calling card for Eran Kolirin; he is definitely another name to add to the growing list of highly promising Israeli filmmakers to watch.

The Band's Visit will be shown Thursday, November 19 at 7 p.m. at Fort Washington Collegiate Church (181st St. & Ft. Washington Avenue). The event is free and for those of you with nothing better to do than read this blog -- a frightening thought, that -- you can meet its author and buy him a drink.

Filmmakers on the Streets in Teheran

If you've been wondering what Iranian artists have been doing while their country falls apart around them, wonder no more. Check out this story in the Financial Times (registration is free and, as far as I can recall after several years as an online reader, they don't pester you ).

In the meantime, here's my latest cinema-related offering at Jewish Week.

Falling In

Yes, it must be autumn, 'cause I had to get a new and lousier than ever passport shot for my New York Film Festival press ID. Damned cameras get worse every year -- how is that they always make me look older than I did the year before?

Should be a busy fall, though. If you check out my JWeek film preview here and here, you'll note that there is a lot of interesting stuff coming up. And a rather nice little film opening this Friday, which I review this week, too.

A Show Worth Catching

Times are tight in the newspaper business. Jewish Week, my main outlet, has been running smaller papers, and the arts section has gotten hammered. On the positive side, the paper is using their website more than in the past. In fact, you'll find my piece on the Jerry Jofen show at Anthology as a web-exclusive here. As you can see from the article, I'm intensely ambivalent about Jofen's work. It would be interesting to see more and get some sense of his evolution, but that wasn't his desire apparently. At any rate, "Rituals and Demonstrations," although only 45 minutes long, is worth a trip downtown. (Yeah, for most of us it's downtown to Anthology. You folks in Brooklyn and Baltimore . . . .)

One of my more substantial offerings

My longish piece on Amos Gitai is appearing in this month's issue of Hadassah Magazine. I'm figuring it you're reading this blog, you'll be interested in seeing the article, which can be found here.

Housework

Yeah, delinquent again.
Well, there's good news for once. Filmmakers Co-op has found a new home, and quite a nice one, too. Check out the Times story here.

And I have a sweet little film to recommend, "Laila's Birthday," which is doing a week at the Museum of Modern Art. My review can be found here.

And an excellent documentary at Film Forum. For some reason this one hasn't made it onto the Jewish Week website, so I've taken the liberty and posting here.

There is a longstanding belief in many Hasidic circles in reincarnation, one that ultimately doesn’t differ all that much from the Buddhist version. And both faith traditions place a significant weight on meditation, the attempt to achieve oneness with the infinite and a regard for the sanctity of life that extends beyond the human.

It is impossible not to think of these similarities while watching Unmistaken Child, a new documentary by Nati Baratz that opens on June 3. After all, here is a quietly charming film about the search for a reincarnated Tibetan Buddhist master written and directed by an Israeli filmmaker. What, you wonder, drew Baratz to this subject? More important, what is there about this story that so clearly moved him to produce such a lovely, understated film?

The story the film tells is one that will be familiar to anyone who saw Bernardo Bertolucci’s underrated Little Buddha. Lama Konchog, a world-renowned Tibetan monk, died in 2001 at the age of 84. His disciple Tenzin Zopa, 28, who had been in service to the older man since he was a boy of seven, is sent off to search for the child who is the reincarnation of his master. Eventually, a small boy is found is deemed the “unmistaken” spiritual descendant of Lama Konchog. Given that the child might be anywhere in the world, Tenzin needs somew help in his search, which ultimately takes him to his own home valley.

Since the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism has been dragged into its own confrontation with modernity and the Dalai Lama has made a surprisingly comfortable peace with modern technology, reminiscent of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson’s embrace of the world of cellphones and televisions as the Lubavitcher rebbe. Much of the charm of Unmistaken Child comes from unlikely juxtapositions like the ancient Tibetan astrology used to narrow the search for the special child, the findings of which are conveyed to Tenzin by videotape. And while he uses a hand-drawn map of his mountaintop monastery and other locations of significance as a starting point for the astrologer, Tenzin draws that map with a large yellow pencil covered with smiley faces.

But what really makes Unmistaken Child a delight to watch is the fundamental decent humanity of its central figure. We watch as Tenzin gradually, tentatively comes to terms with his mission and, more important, the grace with which he develops a rapport with the boy who is finally pinpointed as the reincarnated Lama Konchug. The tenderness and genuine concern he displays is a reminder that at their heart, the best parts of all faith traditions have to do with the simple recognition of the humanity of others and a respect and caring for life. Whatever Nati Baratz’s own religious inclinations, his new film is an elegant and eloquent witness to that fact.

Unmistaken Child opens on Wednesday, June 3 at Film Forum (209 W. Houston St.), and is scheduled to play through June 16. For information, phone 212-727-8110 or go to www.filmforum.org.