TV & Film – Page 23

Abargil makes Brave Miss World worth seeing

Cecilia Peck, left, and Linor Abargil in Princeton, N.J. (photo by Motty Reif)

Former Israeli beauty queen and international cover girl Linor Abargil is a sharply intelligent woman with a cause: survivors of rape. Empathetic yet unsentimental, highly visible but also private, Abargil is a uniquely complicated individual.

Those who have been directly or indirectly affected by rape will have a visceral, positive reaction to Abargil’s story, as depicted in the feature-length documentary Brave Miss World, which is now streaming on Netflix. While Cecilia Peck’s film suffers from a meandering structure, Abargil’s toughness and tenacity provide a steady source of inspiration.

Shortly after she was anointed Miss Israel in 1998, the 18-year-old Abargil went to Milan for some modeling jobs. Preparing to leave Italy and return home a few months later, she was raped by an Israeli travel agent who’d been recommended by her modeling agency.

Abargil escaped with her life by promising the assailant that she would never tell anyone, but quickly reported the crime to Italian and Israeli authorities. When he returned to Israel, he was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced. (The film marshals allegations that the perpetrator – an Egyptian Christian married to an Israeli woman – was a serial rapist and an ongoing danger to society.)

The film picks up Abargil’s saga many years later, after she’s begun a website (now based at bravemissworld.com/speak-out/share-your-story) for rape survivors to confide their experiences, as well as the ongoing effects of their trauma.

Brave Miss World follows the peripatetic Netanya native from Tel Aviv to Cleveland, Johannesburg, New York, Princeton, UC Santa Barbara and Beverly Hills, where she meets with rape survivors and speaks at charity luncheons. Supplying solace and strength as needed, Abargil offers in-person proof that it’s possible to heal from a sexual attack and lead a satisfying life of unapologetic self-expression.

It’s not always a smooth ride, of course, particularly when Abargil’s rapist is up for parole and she has to confront past events and ongoing fears. Her determination, along with her belief that the failure to prosecute more rapists is an injustice that contributes to the ongoing suffering of survivors, is truly inspiring.

Abargil is a strong-willed, self-confident woman, and it’s always interesting watching her interact with strangers. But the documentary lacks her courage, tiptoeing around anything that might make her less sympathetic and saddling her with dull voice-over narration devoid of the bite of her personality. The omission of any discussion of how young women are objectified in advertising and fashion photography is an especially curious oversight given both Abargil’s extensive career as a model and her outspoken nature.

Brave Miss World was shot over a period of time that encompasses Abargil’s enrolment in law school as well as her abrupt transition from secular to religious Jew, which flummoxes her ever-loyal parents and may unsettle some viewers.

Ultimately, Brave Miss World does a clumsy job of blending a character study with a social-issue documentary. It’s soft-centred, unlike its subject, and largely content to proffer good intentions and a parade of hugs instead of exploring the tangle of issues surrounding rape.

Abargil, however, is a pretty remarkable person who never stops pushing herself beyond the familiar and comfortable. She’s well worth getting to know.

Michael Fox is a San Francisco film critic and journalist.

Elan Mastai taps family history for F Word

Zoe Kazan and Daniel Radcliffe on the red carpet in New York City. (photo from facebook.com/thewhatifmovie/photos_stream)

When Elan Mastai’s father said hello to a pretty stranger in a Jerusalem café some four decades ago, it was the only English word he knew.

She was born in Chicago and grew up in Vancouver, and had lived in London the previous few years before trekking to Israel to explore her Jewish heritage and teach English, of all things.

It worked out pretty well for both of them. They relocated to Vancouver, got married and started a family. Now, their 39-year-old son has channeled their youthful bravado into his screenplay for What If, a warm and refreshingly grounded romantic comedy that opens in as-of-yet-unspecifed Canadian cities Aug. 22 with its original title, The F Word (F as in friend).

“The idea of moving to a country where I didn’t speak the language, different legal system, different everything, and having to start my life from scratch, it’s almost impossible for me to imagine doing that,” Mastai said in an interview. “But that’s what my father did. And he did it for love. That is a big part of the kind of things I like to write. I think in my DNA are the things that people do for love. And that’s all over this movie.”

The film imagines just-dumped Daniel Radcliffe meeting Zoe Kazan at a party, only to learn that she’s in a serious, long-term relationship. Say, there’s no reason they can’t be friends, right? It just requires a little honesty on his part and a lot of clarity on her part.

If only things were that simple, well, there’d be no movie. The film has great fun poking and prodding the central characters until one of them takes a leap of faith – and a transatlantic flight – that results in nothing I can reveal here.

photo - Screenwriter Elan Mastai — Screenwriter Elan Mastai *(photo from thefinaltake.com)*

“I love the romantic comedy, but it can sometimes be a bit of a debased genre because it’s a very phony genre at times,” Mastai said on the phone from Toronto, where he lives with his wife and children. “The ones I love – and they’re the ones that most people love – have something real and relatable to say about human interaction.”

Mastai’s childhood was happily marked by a Shabbat dinner every Friday night, where his large family would convene and debate the issues of the day. Everyone had strong ideas of right and wrong, but there was plenty of grey to debate, as well.

“In my personal heritage, I had all the different versions of the Jewish experience in the 20th and 21st century,” Mastai explained. “Whether it’s American Jews, European Jewry, Sephardic, the beginning of Israel, it was all literally sitting around my dinner table when I was growing up.”

Notably, the travails his grandparents had survived did not mitigate their sense of humor. “To me, the sensibility at the core of the film is very Jewish in terms of that legacy of Jewish humor, whether it’s Billy Wilder or Woody Allen or Nora Ephron or Charlie Kaufman or William Goldman,” Mastai said. “Wit and humor as a tool to defuse awkwardness and tension, and that prizing of intelligence, and the prizing of ethical behavior – these are things that were part of my Jewish upbringing, and I tried to bring those to the characters.”

We may think that a successful screenwriter, more than anything, must have a fabulous imagination. Mastai’s triumphantly demonstrates in What If/The F Word that heart and intelligence are sufficient to engage an audience in the romantic travails of a couple of ordinary people.

“All the way through it, I wanted to write what I thought of as an ethical romantic comedy,”

Mastai confided. “A comedy where people aren’t making these crazy, cockamamie schemes or twisting the truth or hiding things from each other. Everybody’s trying to do the right thing. That feels very Jewish to me because of how I was raised, that you can try to do the right thing, try to make ethical decisions, and still make a total mess of your life. Because that’s the way life is.”

Michael Fox is a San Francisco film critic and journalist.

Zach Braff’s new film funny, spiritual, existential

Zach Braff, left, and Jim Parsons at the première for Wish I Was Here. (photo from facebook.com/wishiwasherefilm/photos_stream)

Zach Braff is unabashedly and proudly Jewish. One might not deduce that, though, from the caustic attitude toward organized Judaism expressed at the beginning of his new film, Wish I Was Here.

In his second foray as director, a decade after the indie success of Garden State, Braff plays a chronically unemployed, 30-something Los Angeles actor with a devoted wife (Kate Hudson) and two children in Jewish religious school. Braff’s Aidan Bloom is avowedly secular – his father (Mandy Patinkin) chose and pays for the kids’ education as a way of inculcating their Jewish identity – and Bloom delights in cracking cynical jokes about religion while driving his offspring to school. To underscore his disrespect, Bloom sneaks a hit on a joint after the children get out the car, only to be caught in the act by a rabbi.

“I don’t think the movie’s anti-Jewish at all,” Braff said in a recent interview in a San Francisco hotel. “My character says, ‘I’m envious of people with faith. They take comfort in their faith. I wish I had that to get me through this but, since I don’t, I’m a secular man, I need to find something that works for me.’”

The “this” is Aidan’s father’s illness and encroaching death, which throws a financial wrench in the kids’ private education and impels Aidan to become both a good son and a good parent. The film’s title refers to that dual challenge while evoking Aidan’s existential dilemma of needing something to believe in.

“If I was going to do PR for the Jews of America,” said Braff, “I would say, ‘There needs to be a more proactive way of connecting with Jews who identify with the culture and the humor and the holidays in a way that can tap into the spirituality that they have within themselves. So, any social commentary in the beginning on the yeshivah was meant to show here’s a secular guy who doesn’t know how to tap into his faith.”

image - Concept art for the movie Wish I Was Here — Concept art for the movie Wish I Was Here. *(photo from wishiwasheremovie.com/gallery/concept-art)*

Wish I Was Here, like Braff himself, blends unwavering self-confidence, clever one-liners and earnest philosophizing. Many viewers will be entertained by the acerbic dialogue and moved by the sentimental family resolution, while others will find Wish I Was Here an indulgent tonal pastiche epitomized by a sight gag of an elderly rabbi on a Segway visiting an intensive care unit.

Braff, of course, became a household name in the 2000s for his role in the long-running sitcom Scrubs. Most recently, he starred in the London première of his original play All New People, before making his Broadway debut in the musical adaptation of Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway. He co-wrote Wish I Was Here with his brother Adam. The New Jersey natives borrowed from the early experiences of a third brother, Joshua (who is also a writer), in developing Aidan’s character.

“My brother went to a very strict yeshivah as a child and really was alienated from it, and had a very bad experience,” Braff related. “It wasn’t until shooting this movie, in the yeshivah we actually shot in, that I saw a Modern Orthodox school. It was a wonderful school, and the rabbis that I talked to were really charming guys and we actually had some interesting conversations about religion, and the kids were all happy and having a wonderful time.”

Braff leaned forward, warming to his point.

“So, I hope that any strict religious people reading this know that the movie is not condemning orthodoxy at all. It’s saying that, from my point of view, I wished I’d had in my life someone who could help me tap into my own spirituality better, instead of saying, ‘Here are the rules. Work within these rules.’”

Wish I Was Here has some fun (as noted above) with an aged rabbi. But a younger rabbi – who Braff described as “the dream rabbi I wished I met” as a young person – makes a contribution to Aidan’s journey of reconciliation with his father, an old-school guy who harangues Aidan to provide for his family and abandon his artistic ambitions.

“I took a Hinduism class in college and loved this idea that here are a bunch of allegories and wonderful stories and gods, and you can choose to find your own path,” Braff mused. “It isn’t so much like ‘These are the rules.’ It is ‘Here’s what we believe but find your own way.’ Now, I don’t know much more about Hinduism than an intro to Hinduism class, but I remember that striking me, as someone who’d been raised very strictly Jewish and kosher.”

Braff financed Wish I Was Here through a crowd-funding campaign last year, drawing flak in the process from those who thought well-off celebrities should reach into their own wallets. Without referencing the Kickstarter controversy, Braff makes the case for consumer support of his movie.

“The studio system isn’t going to make a movie about a Jewish family,” he asserted. “A financier wasn’t going to make a movie about a Jewish family. It’s very, very hard to get – we’re two percent and shrinking – a movie about Jewish people made. If I made this in the studio system, they’d be like ‘ix-nay on the ewish-jay.’ I’d have to [dial] it down. So, I hope that Jews will show up because I’d like to make more films about my Jewish experience, and it matters if they go to the theatre or not.”

Wish I Was Here opens in Vancouver on Friday, July 18.

Michael Fox is a San Francisco film critic and journalist.

When Jews Were Funny promises less and more than it delivers

Director Alan Zweig, right, and Marc Maron. (photo from Sudden Storm Entertainment)

When Jews Were Funny is a seemingly straightforward title that promises both less and more than Alan Zweig’s unexpectedly provocative documentary delivers.

The Toronto filmmaker’s stab at closing the book on American Jews’ enormous contribution to 20th-century comedy is funny ha ha, all right, but the laughs are more of the chuckle variety than outright guffaws. At the same time, the film is also a tad funny-weird, shot through with a personal streak that’s disarming and discomfiting in equal measure.

Yet, when all is said and said – there’s no doing in this film, only talking – When Jews Were Funny is oddly satisfying. Zweig may be seeking answers but, instead of a mood of finality, his film has a catalytic effect. It invites every Jewish viewer to weigh in – personally and anecdotally, emotionally and sociologically – on the sources and state of Jewish humor on the long road from immigration to assimilation.

Zweig achieves this unusual level of reflection by structuring When Jews Were Funny so that it feels like its viewers are party to a succession of conversations. Instead of buffeting the viewer with punchy sound bites delivered via rapid-fire cutting between interviewees, he serves up chunks of real-time interaction.

It would normally be the smooch of death for a talking-head documentary to linger at length on the faces of its interviewees. But when they include Shecky Greene, Ed Crasnick, Howie Mandel, David Steinberg, Judy Gold, Gilbert Gottfried, Bob Epstein and Stewie Stone, we await with anticipation the next insight, witticism or off-the-wall remark.

Paradoxically, and somewhat perversely, Zweig doesn’t lead with his best material. To the contrary, he makes the risky and self-effacing choice of opening with Shelley Berman, who’s baffled into near-silence by Zweig’s earnest questions.

A legendary figure, Berman saw himself as a comedian who had to appeal to everyone – he didn’t do “Jewish” material. So, while it’s factually accurate to call him a Jewish comic and he takes pride in being Jewish, he doesn’t see himself as a purveyor of Jewish humor. So, he asks, what does Zweig want from him?

At first, it seems that Zweig is on a quixotic quest to identify and define the qualities of Jewish humor, and Berman represents an awkward, inauspicious beginning, but we’re intrigued by a filmmaker who showcases his own pratfall – in the crucial opening minutes, no less – rather than leaving it on the editing room floor.

Things improve for Zweig (and the audience) from here, and we’re treated to a variety of incisive analyses, off-the-cuff musings and entertaining meanderings from comics who span three generations. They pinpoint various characteristics of Jewish humor, from clever wordplay to an off-centre worldview to droll melancholia (which, depending on your perspective and the joke in question, might express defiance or fatalism).

The bottom line? “Jews own comedy,” declares Steinberg, speaking more directly and less diplomatically than most of his peers. “I’m proud to say that’s true.”

As a form of proof, and for classic straight-ahead laughs, Zweig intersperses brief, delectable clips of Alan King, Rodney Dangerfield, Harvey Stone, Henny Youngman and Jackie Mason performing on The Ed Sullivan Show in the mid-1960s. This was the golden age of Jewish stand-up, when Borscht Belt vets found mainstream success, and it coincided with Jews across America transitioning from outsiders to insiders.

The viewer gradually realizes, however, listening to Zweig question and interact with his subjects, that he is propelled less by ethnographic interest than by some nagging personal dilemma. Almost imperceptibly, When Jews Were Funny begins to feel like a first-person documentary in which we continually hear but never see the protagonist (that is, the filmmaker).

Zweig desires reassurance that the bittersweet experience and restless personality that drove so many wonderful Jewish comedians is not disappearing.

It’s not giving too much away to say that Zweig remembers the joy of growing up with extremely funny uncles (never aunts) and grandparents, and frets that his young daughter will never know “old Jews.” He desires reassurance that the bittersweet experience and restless personality that drove so many wonderful Jewish comedians is not disappearing.

A few interviewees call Zweig on his not-so-hidden agenda, pointing out good-humoredly that even his angst-fueled inquiry is uniquely Jewish.

“Look at you,” says the New York stand-up comedian Modi. “We got a camera crew to discuss your Judaism. It’s so self-obsessive. What goy, what Christian in the world is running around now with a camera crew, ‘Talk to me about being Christian!?’ No one cares.”

When Jews Were Funny taps into a large reservoir of affection and tenderness, which is not the first thing you’d expect to encounter with urban Jewish performers. Perhaps the film’s generous heart explains its award for best Canadian documentary at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, since there’s nothing innovative or especially adroit about the filmmaking.

That generosity extends to the audience. Zweig’s implicit concerns about the future of Jewish identity evoke, and include, our own. And what could be more Jewish than a large plate of jokes with a side order of gnawing doubt?

JI readers can get $1 off the digital download of the film, which screened last fall in both the Vancouver International and Vancouver Jewish Film Festivals, at whenjewswerefunny.com by using the discount code JEWISH.

Michael Fox is a San Francisco film critic and journalist.

Fading Gigolo’s Jewish notes

Woody Allen, left, and John Turturro in Fading Gigolo. (photo from Millennium Entertainment)

“My big thing was to not have him wear khaki pants and an army coat,” said John Turturro with a broad smile. “And I got him out of that. I said, ‘That’s not in my color scheme. I’m an Italian director.’”

This dash of bravado might sound pretentious, or even ludicrous, on paper. But when it comes from a tall, impeccably groomed man in an elegant blue velvet suit (double-breasted, blue shirt buttoned to the top, no tie), it seems perfectly reasonable.

For his fifth feature behind the camera, Fading Gigolo, the renowned actor and filmmaker solicited ongoing (and ruthless) feedback from another New York icon, Woody Allen, during the lengthy screenwriting process. Allen accepted a rare acting assignment in the film, hence the discussion of his costume.

Allen plays a newly retired Manhattan bookstore owner who, in need of money, convinces his friend, floral arranger Fioravante (Turturro), to provide sexual services to affluent women. Murray claims a fee for arranging the liaisons, which take Fioravante in an unexpected and ultimately poignant direction.

photo - John Turturro in Fading Gigolo. — John Turturro in *Fading Gigolo*. *(photo from Millennium Entertainment)*

Fading Gigolo starts out as a slightly absurd sex comedy and deepens into a mature, empathetic study of big-city loneliness against a backdrop of cross-cultural and ethnic identity. The crucial relationship in the film is between Fioravante and Avigal (French actress Vanessa Paradis), an astute mother of six and the widow of a Chassidic rabbi. Sex isn’t part of the equation, but Dovi, a protective and covetous neighborhood Satmar watchman (a touching Liev Schreiber), can’t know that.

“I met all these people who’ve left the [Satmar] community” in the course of his research, Turturro said in a recent interview at a San Francisco hotel. “They’re like the strays of the community. They gather in this place, people who left and people who hadn’t left who just went there to see what was going on.”

Paradis got to know one woman in particular who had left the Satmar community and explained the various directives, such as keeping her hair concealed under a wig.

“All these things are made up by men,” Turturro declared. “Women didn’t make these rules. And, to me, that says it all.”

Fading Gigolo is unambiguously respectful toward observant Jewish practice, while inviting us to empathize with a woman trying to reconcile autonomy and conformity.

“Avigal’s not looking to escape,” Turturro explained. “She’s just looking to receive.”

Fading Gigolo climaxes with a religious trial where Murray is confronted with the query, “Are you proud to be a Jew?” It’s the question we’ve long wanted Allen to answer onscreen and, at that moment, it’s difficult not to conflate the character and the actor.

Turturro’s experience of Judaism goes well beyond growing up in New York and now living in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn. His wife is Jewish and his son went to Hebrew school, and Turturro confides that he’s spent a fair amount of time in Reform synagogues. He has played several Jewish characters onscreen, most famously in the Coen Brothers’ Miller’s Crossing and Barton Fink, and immersed himself in the life of Primo Levi to portray the Italian-Jewish Holocaust survivor in Francesco Rosi’s The Truce.

“If you’re raised a Catholic, you realize there’s not a debate that goes on,” Turturro said. “And, if you’re raised a Jew, there’s a debate that goes on. And I really like that. Therein lies one of the greatnesses of Judaism.”

At Allen’s behest, Turturro brushed up on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short stories while he wrote the Fading Gigolo screenplay. But, after all his various and diligent research, certain things came down to intuition – and style.

“I only chose Satmar because I liked the hats the best,” Turturro said. “I don’t want the Borsalino. I’m Italian. It’s an esthetic choice, understand. That’s how it goes with me. The hat dictates. That’s it.”

Fading Gigolo is playing at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. It’s rated R for some sexual content, language and brief nudity.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Film spotlights dance as a way to forge peace partners

Dancing in Jaffa follows dance instructor Pierre Dulaine as he teaches 11-year-old Israelis and Palestinians. (photo from Tiara Blu Films)

Going back at least as far as 2001’s Promises, most recent documentaries that have opted for an optimistic slant on the Israeli-Palestinian situation have centred on children. The next generation, to be sure, is the universal embodiment of hope. But betting on today’s children to solve a problem down the road is tacit acknowledgement that today’s adults aren’t up to the task – or so those who see the Mideast glass as half-empty might say.

Both perspectives are skillfully interwoven in Dancing in Jaffa, a nuanced, feel-good study of cross-cultural fence-hopping in which the best traits in human nature vie with street-level realities.

The movie’s motor is world-champion ballroom dancer and teacher Pierre Dulaine, who returns to his hometown after many years with the self-proclaimed goal of giving something back. Perennially dressed in a starched shirt and tie, and fluent in Arabic, English and French, the grey-haired Dulaine is a cosmopolitan alien in a working-class town.

The indefatigable Dulaine is a lifelong proponent of partnered dancing as a way to develop social skills and self-confidence but, in Jaffa, he’s determined to apply his pedagogy to an even greater good. His plan is to teach merengue, rhumba and tango to 11-year-olds at various schools, culminating with young Jewish and Palestinian Israelis dancing together in a public ballroom dance competition.

“This is how you learn to work with another person,” Dulaine offhandedly remarks to one child while correcting his form. It’s a lovely sentiment, one that will gradually sink in after the student has become comfortable with the steps and can actually look at and interact with his or her partner.

There’s an unpredictability and bumpiness to Dulaine’s mission, at least initially, that negates the comforting formula that some viewers will expect. Most of the kids are shy, embarrassed and downright resistant to engaging with the opposite sex, even without the Islamic prohibition on touching someone of the opposite sex. (None of the Jewish kids are Orthodox.)

While boys will be boys and girls will be girls, Dulaine perseveres with firmness, as well as affection. Progress in the classroom can be hard to discern, however, so the film provides glimpses of the home lives of three children to suggest their individual blossoming.

Hilla Medalia, the prolific Israeli-born producer and/or director of such documentaries as To Die in Jerusalem and Numbered, again displays her talent for gaining access, winning trust and crafting small, revealing moments. The most memorable are political rather than interpersonal, and occur on the street rather than in someone’s home. The arrival in town of an intentionally intimidating group of right-wing Israelis chanting some variation of “Jaffa for the Jews” provides buzz-killing evidence that conciliation is not everyone’s goal.

An illuminating sequence contrasting the observance of Independence Day at a Jewish school with its description as the Nakba (Catastrophe) at a Palestinian Israeli school likewise underscores Medalia’s preference for presenting reality rather than peddling fantasy.

In this regard, she and Dulaine are perfectly in step. He was four years old when he left Jaffa with his Palestinian mother and Irish father during the War of Independence, and he’s chagrined but not surprised when his request to re-enter his family’s old home is summarily rejected by the Jewish owners.

Consistent with the theme that the future is more important than the past, Dulaine’s presence in the film steadily diminishes. We, and he, are left with the satisfaction that individual children have grown and glimpsed possibilities they couldn’t have imagined. A small victory, perhaps, compared to a lasting resolution to the ongoing conflict? Even a pessimist wouldn’t have the chutzpah to call a child’s transformation a “small victory.”

Dancing in Jaffa, in Hebrew, Arabic and English with English subtitles, played at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival in November 2013 and has yet to have a Canadian release date scheduled. It’s on a limited release in the United States. The film currently has a rating of 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Carl Sagan’s Cosmos finds new life

Carl Sagan with Viking. (photo by Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Carl Sagan fans old and new have been gazing at their televisions in awe as host Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson’s resurrection of the science epic Cosmos takes them on a journey from the Big Bang, to microscopic one-celled organisms, to the ascent of man, to beyond the stars and planets. The return of Cosmos – which launched in March and runs for 13 episodes on the Fox network, ending June 2 – provides an opportune time to remember Sagan, the show’s Jewish creator.

An American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist and author, Sagan was born to into a family of Reform Jews. According to science writer William Poundstone, author of Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos, Sagan’s family celebrated the High Holidays and his parents made sure that he knew Jewish traditions.

“Both of his parents instilled in him this drive to get ahead in America, and that is something he kept all his life,” said Poundstone in an interview. “It may have been one factor in this idea that he not only wanted to be a successful astronomer, but [also] to write books, to become a celebrity and an entrepreneur. His mother particularly instilled that in him.”

Noah channels God’s wrath and humankind’s fallibility

Russel Crowe is Noah in Darren Aronofsky’s latest film. (photo from Paramount Pictures)

An earnest amalgam of free-association Bible story, dire disaster movie and family melodrama, Noah is a more thoughtful and provocative movie than one has any right to expect. Sure, it’s ludicrous and ponderous at times and embellished with gratuitous special effects, but it also succeeds in prodding the viewer to reflect on his or her behavior toward others and relationship to God.

Darren Aronofsky, a Brooklyn Jew by birth and upbringing, has concocted a sporadically inspired film with enough fodder for a month of sermons. It’s a compelling saga up until the great flood, when key plot elements collide with enough force and absurdity to sink an ark. Metaphorically speaking, that is. After all, the species (plural) must go on.

In terms of contemporary resonance and relevance, the film’s depiction of religious absolutism pushed to the point of tyrannical self-righteousness – in the name of God, of course – neatly undercuts the inclination by zealots of any faith to claim Noah as gospel.

I remember Noah as a mild-mannered super-carpenter and reluctant zoologist in my Hebrew school classes of yore, but you don’t cast Russell Crowe to play a guy grappling with internal and existential dilemmas. His Noah is a decisive survivalist who doesn’t hesitate to kill to protect his family or to fulfil God’s plan.

Aronofsky’s Noah can only infer and deduce that plan from the occasional wondrous sign or disturbing dream, aided by his sage, Merlin-esque grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins). Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel resist the temptation – and the arrogance – of having God speak directly to Noah.

We have no doubt, though, that Noah is the last true believer in the Creator, as the Lord is referred to throughout the picture. Indeed, he has a real talent for channeling God’s merciless fury. In this regard, Noah is reminiscent of Moses, who was up to the task of meting out vengeance – or justice, in the vernacular of the film – when the time came.

That association aside, Aronofsky’s most Jewish picture remains his mystical black-and-white debut, Pi, in which Handel has a cameo as a kabbalah scholar. It is much more difficult to discern a Jewish sensibility in Noah than it was (to summon another biblical adaptation) to detect Mel Gibson’s deep-seated antisemitism in The Passion of the Christ.

photo - Noah's Ark in the film Noah — Noah’s Ark, pictured here with its master builder and his son, is based on interpretations of what the biblical vessel may have looked like. *(photo from Paramount Pictures)*

The most jarring element in Noah from a Jewish perspective is the presence of angels, called “Watchers” and manifested as angry, hulking, walking, talking rock piles. Punished by God for trying to intervene on behalf of Adam and Eve, the Watchers decide to help Noah – and, by extension, serve their Creator – build the ark and then repel the hordes who desperately attempt to board when the hard rain starts a-fallin’.

At a crucial moment, the Watchers are redeemed for their sacrifice and return to the heavens like Roman candles. Polls report that a majority of Americans believe in angels, so for some viewers this sequence will mark the emotional high point of the movie.

Amid the concessions to visual effects-driven miracles, Noah manages to convey the nasty, brutish world of the Bible. At the same time, it demolishes Noah’s cloak of absolute good to demonstrate that no person is devoid of flaws and fallibility.

The film does not, alas, evoke the strength and power of the Bible’s matriarchs, for its female characters – Noah’s wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and a young girl (Emma Watson) saved and raised by the family who grows up to be Shem’s love interest – are given little to do in the second half except cry, shriek and sob.

The biggest obstacle to a visual rendering of Noah’s mythic saga, though, is that we know how the reboot of civilization turned out. We’re living it. So the optimistic rainbow at the end of Noah has all the credibility and gravitas of a Hallmark commercial.

Whether we see the modern world as the inevitable manifestation of human nature in all its glories and depravities or as a technologically supercharged Sodom, Noah makes us ponder the fate of the world as a function of our interdependence as well as our individual morality. Should we fear God’s anger and another flood, or (as the movie hints) is a self-inflicted die-off from environmental destruction just as likely? Either way, Noah represents a powerful admonition to humankind.

What’s intriguing about a repeat apocalypse is that it would be a communication from a God who’s been silent for centuries. The power of Noah, one could say, is to remind us that every cloud has a silver lining.

Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.

Films offer glance at Bedouin life

A still from the movie Voices from El Sayed.

When one is a Bedouin living in southern Israel, ironies seem to multiply with regularity. Two relatively recent Israeli-made films bring this incongruous life into sharp focus.

In the first, Voices from El Sayed: A Snail in the Desert (2009, documentary), director Oded Leshem examines a minority within a minority – a special needs Bedouin group. In the second, Sharqiya (2012, drama), director Ami Livne focuses on an Israeli Bedouin who, although he has spent his young adult life protecting other Israelis – first as a soldier and then as a security guard – faces eviction from his land because the Israeli authorities do not acknowledge it as his.

Leshem focuses on both the social and technological challenges facing the deaf members of the El Sayed Bedouin. In an understated but convincing manner, Leshem makes this point: for people who are deaf, this Bedouin tribe is both heaven and hell.

Leshem presents a lot of information in his 75-minute film. For starters, he unearths this nugget: the El Sayed have the highest concentration of deaf people of any community in the world. Estimates are that this desert community located northeast of the Negev city of Be’ersheva has 3,000 tribal members and, of this number, 125-150 are deaf. Intra-marriage is high – 65 percent of El Sayed’s couples are somehow related – so deafness is, therefore, more often transmitted from generation to generation. Almost every family has a deaf family member.

In this village, deafness is acknowledged as a fact of life. Not only is it considered normal, but everyone in the film – hearing and deaf – knows and uses sign language. At first glance, deaf community members appear totally accepted and functioning comfortably within the group. There is always someone with whom to converse – but in which language does one communicate?

According to Leshem’s film, language is one of the major social challenges facing Israel’s minorities. The film notes that the older deaf members of El Sayed converse in their own form of signing: El Sayed Bedouin Sign Language (EBSL). A number of the younger members, however, have studied in schools outside the community. These schools fall under the jurisdiction of the Israeli Ministry of Education, so these Bedouin study Israeli Sign Language (ISL). In addition, these same young students learn to read and write in Hebrew, rather than in Arabic, their mother tongue.

There is no school for the deaf on tribal land: children are bused to a school in Be’ersheva. But not every deaf child attends or has attended this facility. As the audience learns, some young adults studied in the centre of the country. However, on the positive side, the film explains that Be’ersheva has a special early childhood class for the hearing challenged, which is taught by traditional Bedouin teachers.

The deaf young adult tribal members who speak in the film want to marry deaf partners. But in this strongly paternalistic society, their parents still have a lot of say in marital matches. Some of the hearing parents want their marriage-age children to break what they see as a chain of deafness, so they are interested in having their deaf offspring pair off with hearing mates.

Not only are there parents who want to alter the course of future generations, but there are those trying to improve the life of their offspring in the present. The movie depicts one set of hearing parents who decide that one of their children will be the first El Sayed member to undergo a cochlear implant.

The good news is that the Israeli health-care system will cover the cost of the surgery and the implant itself. But, as viewers soon grasp, this family faces many other obstacles. The first several months following surgery entail regular and frequent trips back to Be’ersheva’s Soroka Hospital. During these hospital visits, the parents learn how to encourage their toddler to listen in everyday situations. Both the mother and father accompany the child to the hospital. There, they work with a Hebrew-speaking professional staff. The father speaks and reads Hebrew fluently, but the mother does not. No Arabic translator is provided. This point is critical as, at home, the mother has the huge task of ensuring that all the other children participate in the training.

No less significant is the hospital staff’s lack of awareness of the overall situation in El Sayed. While Leshem’s camera reveals that high-tension wires stand in close proximity to the village, the film’s narrative discloses that El Sayed is not hooked up to the national grid. There is no electricity, except for the generators that power the village. Just as the hospital staff comes to terms with the family’s difficulty in keeping all the implant parts properly charged, so the audience grasps just how challenging this procedure is for this family.

El Sayed lacks what most Westerners would consider basic utilities or services. For the dispersed Bedouins living in areas of southern Israel, which successive governments have classified as “unrecognized,” not having electricity or running water is a common situation. Nowhere is that brought home more clearly than in Livne’s drama Sharqiya.

photo - a still from Sharqiya — A still from *Sharqiya*.

The story of Sharqiya centres around two brothers and the wife of one trying to live on family land. The land appears fairly inhospitable. Family members live quite minimally in one-room tin huts, serviced by a temperamental generator. In the barren surroundings, one brother herds a small number of goats, while Kamel Najer, the other brother and main character, works as a security guard in Be’ersheva’s central bus station.

Westerner viewers might wonder why it is so important to keep this undeveloped plot of land, especially when Israeli authorities offer compensation for leaving it. Coming from a Western society, it is also hard to get one’s head around the notion of inheriting land without documentation. But this is exactly what the Najer brothers claim: their family has lived on the land for generations.

In the film, viewers watch the authorities stand by, waiting to destroy the Najers’ homestead, as Kamel packs up cherished memorabilia from his army service. We witness this young Israeli Bedouin – who has felt enough sense of belonging to hold on to his army pictures and banners – have his living space made not just unfit, but non-existent. Livne makes it clear that if Israeli society does not appreciate the irony of this situation, it will not understand that such treatment puts the fragile foundation of Israel’s democratic structure at risk of collapse.

When the human and humane element is missing – as depicted by the Israel Land Authority’s tractor leveling the family’s meagre housing and corral – the cracks in society’s foundation deepen. The frustration and the disappointment do not fade out: in the closing shot, they are inscribed on Kamel’s face.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology.

More on the Bedouin

The following links are to position papers or websites of some of those involved in Israeli Bedouin affairs.

From the Israeli government: mmi.gov.il/static/HanhalaPirsumim/Beduin_information.pdf

From Jewish National Fund: www.kkl.org.il/eng/about-kkl-jnf/kkl-jnf-in-public-discourse/kkl-jnf-conferences/kkl-jnf-european-leadership-conference/kkl-jnf-position-bedouin

From a few nongovernmental organizations:

• adva.org/uploaded/NegevEnglishSummary.pdf

• dukium.org/eng/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/NCF-CounterClaims-Dec10.pdf

• acri.org.il/en/category/arab-citizens-of-israel/negev-bedouins-and-unrecognized-villages