Homecoming

The identity crisis of 'Israel at 50'

by Scott Heller

The state of Israel turns 50 this year, yet the festivities and celebrations come with a side order of soul searching. A nation born in unity is today riven by ethnic, religious, class, and political divisions.

The Israeli struggle to find a sense of home within the homeland is apparent in many of the films being shown at "Israel on Screen: Films for the 50th," a festival of 23 films that runs from March 28 through April 5 at Brandeis University's refurbished Edie and Lew Wasserman Cinematheque. Although many of the documentaries tell the rousing story of the founding of the state, Israeli fiction feature films, almost since the beginning, have cast a more jaundiced eye on the identities of her people. That's certainly true of the works of Ephraim Kishon, the prolific novelist, journalist, and humorist, who -- in his spare time -- has written and directed several of the most beloved films in the nation's short history. Four will be shown at the festival, notably Sallah Shabbati, a 1963 comedy that introduced the actor Topol to international audiences. Kishon will appear with the film on the festival's opening night. (It screens again on March 30).

Time has not dulled this satiric look at a refugee family's bumpy welcome to the new state. Neither has it dimmed Topol's blustery, bellowing charm as the lazy patriarch looking to get the best for his brood of six (or is it seven?) children. Sentenced to time in a ramshackle resettlement camp, Topol's Sallah works every angle to land permanent housing for his family. "There's always a way," he tells a gambling buddy, and so there is. Along the way, Kishon spoofs the rigid Israeli bureaucracy, a recurring theme in many of his films. And in a daring gambit for its time, he also pokes fun at the earnest kibbutzniks who keep alive the egalitarian dream. Although played for laughs, the clash of cultures between European immigrants and native Middle Easterners who make up Israel's population is already apparent in Sallah Shabbati.

Flash-forward 35 years. Filmmakers still score points off Israeli foibles, but the tone is more bittersweet. Pick a Card, also known as Afula Express, swept the Israeli Academy Awards last year. Beautifully shot and scored, with a wonderful pair of lead actors, it's still a break-up or make-up two-character study puffed up to 90 minutes. Batya and Davy have left the provincial town of Afula to make it in Tel Aviv. She daydreams as a supermarket cashier. He plans to be a world-famous magician -- if only he could get a single trick right. They fight, they kiss, they fight some more. Batya heads back home just as Davy starts to succeed.

Pleasantly plump Esti Zackheim and Zvika Hadar make a delightfully lusty duo. (He conjures up Mark Addy, The Full Monty's resident heavyweight, and does a mean impression of Mandy Patinkin's Inigo Montoya shtick from The Princess Bride.) But director Julie Shles pads the story with needless footage from a mockumentary on the now famous Davy's return to his hometown of Afula. Contemporary city life is shown up as empty in Pick a Card, a familiar but resonant theme that Shles introduces but never quite explores.

What if the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza found himself living in a cramped apartment building in modern-day Israel? That's the risky premise of director Igal Bursztyn's ambitious Everlasting Joy. Terrorists toss grenades, the coming of the messiah is falsely reported, and washing machines seem to move on their own. "All this discord makes me neither laugh nor cry, but philosophize," says Spinoza, who wanders through the film quoting from his forebears while his neighbors beg him to tell them, in simple words: will things turn out all right? The answer depends on whether you take the film's title -- and ending -- at face value or as black irony.

Sunday March 29 is no day for irony. That's when you can enjoy a double helping of uplifting Israeli history, thanks to Exodus 1947 and Altalena, two compelling documentaries. Morley Safer's pedestrian narration doesn't help the former. But the heroic story of American Jews who outfitted a rusty steamship and sailed 4500 Holocaust refugees to Palestine is irresistible. Frank Lavine, a Boston native who served on the ship, will help to introduce the screening. Sandwiched between the documentaries is Otto Preminger's 212-minute 1960 feature Exodus, which stars Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint. Speakers at a late-afternoon panel discussion on the "creation" of Israel on film should have a field day discussing Preminger's mythmaking in relation to documentary accounts of the same events.

Other highlights include the documentary Underdogs, a War Movie, the portrait of a working-class soccer squad (April 5); Under the Domim Tree, the popular second chapter in actress Gila Almagor's cinematic autobiography (April 1); and I Love You Rosa (April 2). The festival's April 5 program of Israeli shorts includes the wonderful "Second Watch." In a deft 14 minutes, director Udi Ben-Arie holds out hope for Arab-Jewish reconciliation with the tale of an Israeli sentry who shares a copy of Playboy with his Jordanian counterpart. n

For advance tickets to "Israel on Screen" call 781-736-3400. For program information, call 781-736-2125 or 781-736-8600, or visit http://www.brandeis.edu/jewishfilm.