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What’s more exciting than a bar mitzvah?
Bernie is desperate to be the center of attention, and when it’s time for him to become a bar mitzvah in 1966, he thinks he’ll finally get his wish.
But when England’s football (soccer) team makes an unexpected run to the World Cup finals, Bernie’s hopes are dashed. The final match is on the same day as his simchah!
This is the story of “Sixty Six,” an autobiographical comedy based on the experiences of director Paul Weiland. The film also stars Helena Bonham Carter as Bernie’s mother.
“Sixty Six” screens Thurs., Sept. 4, at 7 at Shaker Square Cinemas.
‘Secret’ and lies born in the Holocaust
Reviewed by MARGI HERWALD ZITELLi
City Editor
François wishes he had a brother.
Not an uncommon fantasy for a young boy. But François’s imaginary sibling opens wounds and memories long unspoken in his seemingly normal Jewish family in “Un Secret.” The film, written and directed by Claude Miller, is based on the autobiographical novel by Phillipe Grimbert.
In 1955 France, François (played by two child actors and as an adult by Mathieu Amalric of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) has been baptized Christian and encouraged by his athletic, beautiful, seemingly perfect parents (Cécile de France and Patrick Bruel) to shield his Jewish heritage. But by his teen years, family friend Louise (Julie Depardieu) feels compelled to reveal to him the true tale of how his cold, perfect parents met and the very Jewish lives they led before the Holocaust descended on France.
In the early going, “Un Secret” yo-yos between saturated color scenes of François’s youth in the ’50s and ’60s and soft focus black-and-white scenes of his adulthood in 1985. But once the film settles into telling the pre-Shoah story, this clever convention stops completely, and the story becomes a single, straightforward, linear plot. While the Holocaust-era story is an interesting one (featuring a haunting performance by Ludivine Sagnier as Hannah, a lost relative), the switch from intriguing memory mystery to a traditional narrative takes much of the wind out of the film. Even at its brief 105 minutes, the film feels slow.
Miller unwisely has Amalric narrate several scenes and transitions with a bland, straightforwardness that makes the film feel more like a documentary than a feature.
Most of the characters are played by the same actors over the course of a 50-year span. The age makeup is not quite believable.
There is a good deal of beauty in this soft, sad tale of love and war. But without much punch or consistency to the narrative, “Un Secret” remains thin and hard to connect with.
“Un Secret,” in French and Yiddish with English subtitles, screens Sat., Sept. 6, at 9:30 at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
I ‘Spy’ a fascinating documentary
Reviewed by douglas j. guth
Senior Staff Reporter
“When you must take on the identity of another man, you either become the other person, or you are not suitable for the role,” says a Mossad cohort of Ze’ev Gur-Arie.
During the 1960s, Gur-Arie was more than suitable in his role as an undercover agent for the Israeli secret service. He seamlessly “played the part” of Wolfgang Lotz, a dashing ex-Nazi playboy and horse breeder living in Cairo.
The price Gur-Arie’s/Lotz’s loved ones and friends paid for this perfect duplicity is the subject of “Champagne Spy,” an at times fascinating documentary from first-time director Nadav Schirman. The film is winner of the 2007 Israeli Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Schirman handles Gur-Arie’s astonishing story with subtlety and intelligence. It would have been easy to romanticize the inevitably James Bond-like aspects of his deceased subject’s adventurous life. Instead, the epicenter of the tale is the spy’s grown son, Oded. Gur-Arie revealed his double identity to Oded when the boy was 13 years old.
This admission, shared in a Paris coffeehouse (the family moved to France from Israel) is only the beginning of the story. While Oded and his mother were in France, “Lotz” was undercover in Cairo during a time when Egypt was thought to be developing nuclear weapons with the help of ex-Nazi scientists.
Lotz’s impeccable language skills and demeanor allowed him to infiltrate Cairo’s high society. While keeping an eye on the scientists, he essentially became the man he was portraying.
His cover was so good that when the Egyptians arrested six people as West German spies, Lotz was among them. From here, the story goes from pulpy adventure tale to tense drama, to the ultimate tragedy of a spy who loved his fictional persona a bit too much.
“Champagne Spy,” in French and Hebrew with English subtitles, screens Sun., Sept. 7, at 7 at the Cedar Lee Theatre. Oded Gur-Arie, the son featured in the film, will lead a Q & A after the screening.
Debut feature questions rigid faith
Reviewed by
Marilyn H. Karfeld
Senior Staff Reporter
“Do dogs have souls?” Menahem Eidelman asks his father, Abraham, a Talmudic scholar and teacher. The young boy has just watched a loyal German shepherd leap into an ambulance taking its ill owner to the hospital.
“Absolutely not,” sternly replies Abraham, a Haredi (fervently Orthodox) rabbi in Jerusalem. Animals have no will, no sins, no commandments; there is no heaven for a good, devoted pet.
Such rigid adherence to a set of beliefs and its anguishing effect on one family is the theme of “My Father, My Lord,” writer-director David Volach’s spare and moving debut feature. The minimally plotted 73-minute Israeli film recounts the daily life of a strictly observant family and their vacation to a Dead Sea beach. It won the top prize at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
When Abraham shoos away a dove sitting on her nest of chicks at Menahem’s school, he justifies his action to his distressed son with an obscure Torah teaching. “We do everything written in the Torah without asking why because those are the laws of the Almighty.”
Religious tenets are black and white to Abraham (Assi Dayan, Moshe Dayan’s son), but his only child Menahem (Elan Griff) is curious and questioning. While gruff, Abraham obviously loves his son and his wife Esther (Sharon Hacohen Bar), but they are subsidiary to his all-engrossing faith. In contrast, Esther softens some of the religious strictures with warmth and outward expressions of love and emotion.
With an insider’s eye for telling detail, Volach, who grew up in the Jerusalem Haredi community with 19 brothers and sisters, opens a window on an obscure, doctrinaire world.
Abraham forces his son to rip up a small, cherished photo of Africans with painted tribal markings because it represents idolatry. The camera lingers on Menahem’s distressed face as a solitary tear runs down his cheek. In another scene, Esther, upset with Abraham’s authoritarian ways, writes a complaint to her husband, rather than speaking aloud to him in her own bedroom.
With poetic cinematography and understated, nuanced performances from a superb cast, the film, which begins with Abraham weeping, comes full circle to a heartbreaking climax. Darkening skies, doves, a father named Abraham and references to the sacrifice of Isaac n the film is heavy with symbols and portents, making it almost a biblical parable.
While clearly criticizing a fundamentalist way of life, Volach leavens his indictment with affection and compassion toward all of his characters.
“My Father, My Lord,” in Hebrew with English subtitles, screens Sun., Sept. 7, at 10 a.m., at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
Arab and Israeli children schooled in peace
Reviewed by ARLENE FINE
Senior Staff Reporter
“Bridge over the Wadi” is a compelling documentary about a grand cultural experiment n a joint Arab and Israeli elementary school located in the Arab section of the Wadi Ara region of Israel. This is the third such school to open through a program called Hand-in-Hand.
Israeli filmmakers, brothers Tomer and Barak Heymann, capture candid reactions and conversations of the Israeli and Arab third-graders, their parents and their teachers as they grapple with the problems, challenges and rewards of their chosen school.
The 55-minute documentary opens with comments by two cherubic-faced Israeli children. “My name is Assaf, and I’ll be going to the Jewish-Arab school.” The other child tentatively adds, “I think it’s a good school, because you learn a lot of good things there. But on the other hand, there are Arabs there.”
As Asma, an Arab mother, prepares to send her daughter off to school, she looks directly at the camera and adds, “When I grew up, I was told to hate the Jews. But when my daughter grew up and told me ‘I hate Jews,’ I thought, why should she grow up the way I did?” However, the same mother later adds, “If I see my children become like Jews, I’ll simply take them and go home.”
One Israeli mother did just that. Clearly agitated after watching her son join his classmates in a play about Ramadan in which the students said, “Allah is great” and knelt down, she removed him from the school.
Throughout the film, in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles, we see and understand the challenges of promoting peaceful coexistence for these schoolchildren. We also see them hugging each other, learning together, and developing bonds of understanding that reinforce the value of a bilingual, multicultural education one small but powerful step at a time.
“Bridge over the Wadi” screens Mon., Sept. 8, at 7:30 at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
‘The Grand Role’ asks, What price love?
Reviewed by JANET DERY
Associate Editor
What lengths would you go to to bolster the spirits of a dying loved one, perhaps prolonging her life? “The Grand Role,” a French film with Peter Coyote in a supporting role, asks this question.
Maurice (Stephane Freiss) is a struggling actor who thinks he’s just landed the role of a lifetime n Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” directed by a world-famous American (Coyote). When he finds out the role has gone to someone else, he enacts a complex charade to pretend he has indeed been cast as Shylock in order to make his dying wife Perla (Berenice Bejo) happy.
Sweet, charming, with moments of lightheartedness scattered throughout, “The Grand Role” is at its best when showcasing the deep emotion the lovers clearly feel for each other. Although the movie takes a little while to find its stride, strong performances by the leads keep the viewer’s interest. Freiss’s Maurice is chiseled but never cold; the actor brings a certain gravitas to the role that is quite memorable.
Don’t be fooled by reviews that call the film a comedy, however. Maurice’s group of boisterous friends does provide comic relief, although the Judaic themes often feel a little forced. For example, the very first scene, set in a restaurant, begins with a theater director mildly warning Maurice to watch out for bacon in the potatoes he’s just been served. After Maurice replies that he eats everything, the character says, “I’m flabbergasted. I’ve never seen someone of the Jewish persuasion eat pork.”
Later there is a scene in a synagogue with Maurice and his buddies that more closely resembles Catskills comedy than real life.
The laughs definitely take a back seat to the movie’s defining themes of love, friendship and sacrifice.
“The Grand Role,” in French with English subtitles, screens Tues., Sept. 9, at 7:30 at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
Fighting more than the enemy in ‘Beaufort’
Reviewed by MARGI HERWALD ZITELLI
City Editor
“I don’t deserve to be the one who fled from Beaufort!”
cries Liraz (Oshri Cohen), the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officer in charge of the titular fort and outpost in the film “Beaufort.” He doesn’t deserve to be the coward who retreats. He doesn’t deserve to be the fool who risks his life and dies. But he will have to do whatever the Israeli government decides for him.
This is one of the struggles at the heart of “Beaufort,” a beautifully crafted and intensely sad film directed by Joseph Cedar. Ostensibly a war movie, “Beaufort” actually feels more like a character study of the type of men who become Israeli soldiers.
“Beaufort” was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008. Based on the novel by Ron Leshem (who co-wrote the screenplay with Cedar), the film centers on the IDF unit stationed at Beaufort castle in Lebanon prior to the army’s evacuation in 2000. As evacuation draws nearer, Hezbollah mortars begin to fall more often.
“Beaufort” succeeds on so many levels. First, the script. Cedar and Leshem keep the story narrowly focused on the men in the fort. This enhances the intimacy. Also, the soldiers are all drawn as regular dudes. They would be the same people if the movie were set in a pool hall or diner or someone’s living room.
The acting, too, is subtle and natural. Without any “actor-y” bombast, the whole ensemble hits all the right notes in scenes of fear, sadness, anger and humor.
Lastly, Cedar’s direction is spot on. He creates a very stark, visual landscape and smartly chooses shots, focusing on characters and mostly avoiding images of bombs or destruction. That approach works n the danger is as unknown to the audience as it is to the characters, and the tension is crazily high.
“Beaufort” certainly didn’t fill me with positive feelings for the IDF or the Israeli government. And it left me with an overwhelming sadness. Nonetheless, as a story about real people with real fears and doubts, it may be the most powerful and most naturalistic Israeli film I’ve ever seen.
Reprinted from a review that ran May 30. “Beaufort,” in Hebrew with English subtitles, screens Thurs., Sept. 11, at 7:30 at the Cedar Lee.
Humor and chutzpah make ‘Trouble’
Reviewed by Susan H. Kahn
Assistant Editor
Long the punchline of jokes, Jewish women turned the tables when they entered the world of comic entertainment. “Making Trouble,” a documentary by Rachel Talbot, explores the lives of six legendary American humorists: Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner and Wendy Wasserstein.
Produced by the Jewish Women’s Archive, this delightful documentary weaves together rare archival footage of these performers with reflections by those who knew them well. Framing the film is commentary by four contemporary Jewish women comics; they reflect on the talent and chutzpah of their predecessors over a nosh at Katz’s Deli in New York.
While the film doesn’t break new ground, viewers will get a kick out of watching the pioneers. Picon, a star of the Yiddish theater in its heyday, was a versatile performer who could sing, dance, play piano and, you should pardon the expression, ham it up with the best of them. Likewise, the talented vaudevillian Fanny Brice “knew she couldn’t be the prettiest girl on the stage, but she could be the funniest.” Brash and bawdy Sophie Tucker grew up Orthodox in Baltimore; she defied community norms when left her infant son to pursue a stage career. The indefatigable Joan Rivers, one of the first to break into the all-boys club of stand-up comedy, still plays the clubs at age 72.
Knowing their lives were cut short by cancer lends a bittersweet quality to clips of Gilda Radner and interviews with Wendy Wasserstein. Radner shot to stardom during the glory days of “Saturday Night Live.” Pulitzer-prize winning playwrigh Wasserstein wrote “The Heidi Chronicles” and “The Sisters Rosenzweig.”
As the comics note, the unflattering stereotype of the Jewish woman has been used in far too many jokes, but the comediennes featured in “Making Trouble” do what Wasserstein says she intended in her plays, “I’m going to give that woman her dignity.”
“Making Trouble” screens Sun., Sept. 14, at 2 at the Cedar Lee Theatre. A representative of the Jewish Women’s Archive will speak after the screening.Love transcends language in ‘Noodle’
Reviewed by ELLEN SCHUR BROWN Editor, Family Section
Miri, an El-Al flight attendant, returns home to find an hysterical cleaning lady in “Noodle,” the 2007 Israeli film directed by Ayelet Menahemi. “I go. One hour,” the Chinese woman tells Miri in broken English, with the understanding that her 5-year-old son will stay with Miri.
The cleaning woman’s son (played by an adorable BaoQi Chen) at first refuses to speak or look up. Later, he tries to run away, fights and screams, until he finally accepts the reality that his mother is not coming back. In one powerful scene he recites the only Hebrew he knows: “Ani yeled Seeneet” (I am a Chinese boy), for the new “family” he considers his jailors.
The young Chinese actor delivers an amazing performance, moreso considering that, like his character, he probably doesn’t understand the Hebrew spoken by the adults around him. When Miri (renowned Israeli actress Miri Avital) finds a Hebrew-Chinese dictionary (seeing these two disparate alphabets on the page is a laugh), he lights up the screen with recognition.
Miri marshals her troops (mainly family members) to get the boy back to his mother, but emotionally, the family is in bad shape. Miri’s sarcastic sister Gila lives with her while considering a divorce. Izzy, Gila’s third husband, confides in her like a platonic lover. Miri would rather fix her sister’s problems than face her own considerable demons.
On their complex and emotional journey, everyone finds a fresh start.
This heartfelt film, presenting a riveting moral dilemma, is as good as anything you’d see at a multiplex with Hollywood showings. “Noodle” well deserved the Grand Prix Jury award it won at the Montreal World Film Festival.
And bring hankies n you’ll need them.
“Noodle,” in Hebrew, English and Mandarin with subtitles, screens Sun., Sept. 14, at 7 at Shaker Square Cinemas.
Bernie is desperate to be the center of attention, and when it’s time for him to become a bar mitzvah in 1966, he thinks he’ll finally get his wish.
But when England’s football (soccer) team makes an unexpected run to the World Cup finals, Bernie’s hopes are dashed. The final match is on the same day as his simchah!
This is the story of “Sixty Six,” an autobiographical comedy based on the experiences of director Paul Weiland. The film also stars Helena Bonham Carter as Bernie’s mother.
“Sixty Six” screens Thurs., Sept. 4, at 7 at Shaker Square Cinemas.
‘Secret’ and lies born in the Holocaust
Reviewed by MARGI HERWALD ZITELLi
City Editor
François wishes he had a brother.
Not an uncommon fantasy for a young boy. But François’s imaginary sibling opens wounds and memories long unspoken in his seemingly normal Jewish family in “Un Secret.” The film, written and directed by Claude Miller, is based on the autobiographical novel by Phillipe Grimbert.
In 1955 France, François (played by two child actors and as an adult by Mathieu Amalric of “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”) has been baptized Christian and encouraged by his athletic, beautiful, seemingly perfect parents (Cécile de France and Patrick Bruel) to shield his Jewish heritage. But by his teen years, family friend Louise (Julie Depardieu) feels compelled to reveal to him the true tale of how his cold, perfect parents met and the very Jewish lives they led before the Holocaust descended on France.
In the early going, “Un Secret” yo-yos between saturated color scenes of François’s youth in the ’50s and ’60s and soft focus black-and-white scenes of his adulthood in 1985. But once the film settles into telling the pre-Shoah story, this clever convention stops completely, and the story becomes a single, straightforward, linear plot. While the Holocaust-era story is an interesting one (featuring a haunting performance by Ludivine Sagnier as Hannah, a lost relative), the switch from intriguing memory mystery to a traditional narrative takes much of the wind out of the film. Even at its brief 105 minutes, the film feels slow.
Miller unwisely has Amalric narrate several scenes and transitions with a bland, straightforwardness that makes the film feel more like a documentary than a feature.
Most of the characters are played by the same actors over the course of a 50-year span. The age makeup is not quite believable.
There is a good deal of beauty in this soft, sad tale of love and war. But without much punch or consistency to the narrative, “Un Secret” remains thin and hard to connect with.
“Un Secret,” in French and Yiddish with English subtitles, screens Sat., Sept. 6, at 9:30 at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
I ‘Spy’ a fascinating documentary
Reviewed by douglas j. guth
Senior Staff Reporter
“When you must take on the identity of another man, you either become the other person, or you are not suitable for the role,” says a Mossad cohort of Ze’ev Gur-Arie.
During the 1960s, Gur-Arie was more than suitable in his role as an undercover agent for the Israeli secret service. He seamlessly “played the part” of Wolfgang Lotz, a dashing ex-Nazi playboy and horse breeder living in Cairo.
The price Gur-Arie’s/Lotz’s loved ones and friends paid for this perfect duplicity is the subject of “Champagne Spy,” an at times fascinating documentary from first-time director Nadav Schirman. The film is winner of the 2007 Israeli Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Schirman handles Gur-Arie’s astonishing story with subtlety and intelligence. It would have been easy to romanticize the inevitably James Bond-like aspects of his deceased subject’s adventurous life. Instead, the epicenter of the tale is the spy’s grown son, Oded. Gur-Arie revealed his double identity to Oded when the boy was 13 years old.
This admission, shared in a Paris coffeehouse (the family moved to France from Israel) is only the beginning of the story. While Oded and his mother were in France, “Lotz” was undercover in Cairo during a time when Egypt was thought to be developing nuclear weapons with the help of ex-Nazi scientists.
Lotz’s impeccable language skills and demeanor allowed him to infiltrate Cairo’s high society. While keeping an eye on the scientists, he essentially became the man he was portraying.
His cover was so good that when the Egyptians arrested six people as West German spies, Lotz was among them. From here, the story goes from pulpy adventure tale to tense drama, to the ultimate tragedy of a spy who loved his fictional persona a bit too much.
“Champagne Spy,” in French and Hebrew with English subtitles, screens Sun., Sept. 7, at 7 at the Cedar Lee Theatre. Oded Gur-Arie, the son featured in the film, will lead a Q & A after the screening.
Debut feature questions rigid faith
Reviewed by
Marilyn H. Karfeld
Senior Staff Reporter
“Do dogs have souls?” Menahem Eidelman asks his father, Abraham, a Talmudic scholar and teacher. The young boy has just watched a loyal German shepherd leap into an ambulance taking its ill owner to the hospital.
“Absolutely not,” sternly replies Abraham, a Haredi (fervently Orthodox) rabbi in Jerusalem. Animals have no will, no sins, no commandments; there is no heaven for a good, devoted pet.
Such rigid adherence to a set of beliefs and its anguishing effect on one family is the theme of “My Father, My Lord,” writer-director David Volach’s spare and moving debut feature. The minimally plotted 73-minute Israeli film recounts the daily life of a strictly observant family and their vacation to a Dead Sea beach. It won the top prize at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
When Abraham shoos away a dove sitting on her nest of chicks at Menahem’s school, he justifies his action to his distressed son with an obscure Torah teaching. “We do everything written in the Torah without asking why because those are the laws of the Almighty.”
Religious tenets are black and white to Abraham (Assi Dayan, Moshe Dayan’s son), but his only child Menahem (Elan Griff) is curious and questioning. While gruff, Abraham obviously loves his son and his wife Esther (Sharon Hacohen Bar), but they are subsidiary to his all-engrossing faith. In contrast, Esther softens some of the religious strictures with warmth and outward expressions of love and emotion.
With an insider’s eye for telling detail, Volach, who grew up in the Jerusalem Haredi community with 19 brothers and sisters, opens a window on an obscure, doctrinaire world.
Abraham forces his son to rip up a small, cherished photo of Africans with painted tribal markings because it represents idolatry. The camera lingers on Menahem’s distressed face as a solitary tear runs down his cheek. In another scene, Esther, upset with Abraham’s authoritarian ways, writes a complaint to her husband, rather than speaking aloud to him in her own bedroom.
With poetic cinematography and understated, nuanced performances from a superb cast, the film, which begins with Abraham weeping, comes full circle to a heartbreaking climax. Darkening skies, doves, a father named Abraham and references to the sacrifice of Isaac n the film is heavy with symbols and portents, making it almost a biblical parable.
While clearly criticizing a fundamentalist way of life, Volach leavens his indictment with affection and compassion toward all of his characters.
“My Father, My Lord,” in Hebrew with English subtitles, screens Sun., Sept. 7, at 10 a.m., at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
Arab and Israeli children schooled in peace
Reviewed by ARLENE FINE
Senior Staff Reporter
“Bridge over the Wadi” is a compelling documentary about a grand cultural experiment n a joint Arab and Israeli elementary school located in the Arab section of the Wadi Ara region of Israel. This is the third such school to open through a program called Hand-in-Hand.
Israeli filmmakers, brothers Tomer and Barak Heymann, capture candid reactions and conversations of the Israeli and Arab third-graders, their parents and their teachers as they grapple with the problems, challenges and rewards of their chosen school.
The 55-minute documentary opens with comments by two cherubic-faced Israeli children. “My name is Assaf, and I’ll be going to the Jewish-Arab school.” The other child tentatively adds, “I think it’s a good school, because you learn a lot of good things there. But on the other hand, there are Arabs there.”
As Asma, an Arab mother, prepares to send her daughter off to school, she looks directly at the camera and adds, “When I grew up, I was told to hate the Jews. But when my daughter grew up and told me ‘I hate Jews,’ I thought, why should she grow up the way I did?” However, the same mother later adds, “If I see my children become like Jews, I’ll simply take them and go home.”
One Israeli mother did just that. Clearly agitated after watching her son join his classmates in a play about Ramadan in which the students said, “Allah is great” and knelt down, she removed him from the school.
Throughout the film, in Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles, we see and understand the challenges of promoting peaceful coexistence for these schoolchildren. We also see them hugging each other, learning together, and developing bonds of understanding that reinforce the value of a bilingual, multicultural education one small but powerful step at a time.
“Bridge over the Wadi” screens Mon., Sept. 8, at 7:30 at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
‘The Grand Role’ asks, What price love?
Reviewed by JANET DERY
Associate Editor
What lengths would you go to to bolster the spirits of a dying loved one, perhaps prolonging her life? “The Grand Role,” a French film with Peter Coyote in a supporting role, asks this question.
Maurice (Stephane Freiss) is a struggling actor who thinks he’s just landed the role of a lifetime n Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice,” directed by a world-famous American (Coyote). When he finds out the role has gone to someone else, he enacts a complex charade to pretend he has indeed been cast as Shylock in order to make his dying wife Perla (Berenice Bejo) happy.
Sweet, charming, with moments of lightheartedness scattered throughout, “The Grand Role” is at its best when showcasing the deep emotion the lovers clearly feel for each other. Although the movie takes a little while to find its stride, strong performances by the leads keep the viewer’s interest. Freiss’s Maurice is chiseled but never cold; the actor brings a certain gravitas to the role that is quite memorable.
Don’t be fooled by reviews that call the film a comedy, however. Maurice’s group of boisterous friends does provide comic relief, although the Judaic themes often feel a little forced. For example, the very first scene, set in a restaurant, begins with a theater director mildly warning Maurice to watch out for bacon in the potatoes he’s just been served. After Maurice replies that he eats everything, the character says, “I’m flabbergasted. I’ve never seen someone of the Jewish persuasion eat pork.”
Later there is a scene in a synagogue with Maurice and his buddies that more closely resembles Catskills comedy than real life.
The laughs definitely take a back seat to the movie’s defining themes of love, friendship and sacrifice.
“The Grand Role,” in French with English subtitles, screens Tues., Sept. 9, at 7:30 at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
Fighting more than the enemy in ‘Beaufort’
Reviewed by MARGI HERWALD ZITELLI
City Editor
“I don’t deserve to be the one who fled from Beaufort!”
cries Liraz (Oshri Cohen), the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officer in charge of the titular fort and outpost in the film “Beaufort.” He doesn’t deserve to be the coward who retreats. He doesn’t deserve to be the fool who risks his life and dies. But he will have to do whatever the Israeli government decides for him.
This is one of the struggles at the heart of “Beaufort,” a beautifully crafted and intensely sad film directed by Joseph Cedar. Ostensibly a war movie, “Beaufort” actually feels more like a character study of the type of men who become Israeli soldiers.
“Beaufort” was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 2008. Based on the novel by Ron Leshem (who co-wrote the screenplay with Cedar), the film centers on the IDF unit stationed at Beaufort castle in Lebanon prior to the army’s evacuation in 2000. As evacuation draws nearer, Hezbollah mortars begin to fall more often.
“Beaufort” succeeds on so many levels. First, the script. Cedar and Leshem keep the story narrowly focused on the men in the fort. This enhances the intimacy. Also, the soldiers are all drawn as regular dudes. They would be the same people if the movie were set in a pool hall or diner or someone’s living room.
The acting, too, is subtle and natural. Without any “actor-y” bombast, the whole ensemble hits all the right notes in scenes of fear, sadness, anger and humor.
Lastly, Cedar’s direction is spot on. He creates a very stark, visual landscape and smartly chooses shots, focusing on characters and mostly avoiding images of bombs or destruction. That approach works n the danger is as unknown to the audience as it is to the characters, and the tension is crazily high.
“Beaufort” certainly didn’t fill me with positive feelings for the IDF or the Israeli government. And it left me with an overwhelming sadness. Nonetheless, as a story about real people with real fears and doubts, it may be the most powerful and most naturalistic Israeli film I’ve ever seen.
Reprinted from a review that ran May 30. “Beaufort,” in Hebrew with English subtitles, screens Thurs., Sept. 11, at 7:30 at the Cedar Lee.
Humor and chutzpah make ‘Trouble’
Reviewed by Susan H. Kahn
Assistant Editor
Long the punchline of jokes, Jewish women turned the tables when they entered the world of comic entertainment. “Making Trouble,” a documentary by Rachel Talbot, explores the lives of six legendary American humorists: Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner and Wendy Wasserstein.
Produced by the Jewish Women’s Archive, this delightful documentary weaves together rare archival footage of these performers with reflections by those who knew them well. Framing the film is commentary by four contemporary Jewish women comics; they reflect on the talent and chutzpah of their predecessors over a nosh at Katz’s Deli in New York.
While the film doesn’t break new ground, viewers will get a kick out of watching the pioneers. Picon, a star of the Yiddish theater in its heyday, was a versatile performer who could sing, dance, play piano and, you should pardon the expression, ham it up with the best of them. Likewise, the talented vaudevillian Fanny Brice “knew she couldn’t be the prettiest girl on the stage, but she could be the funniest.” Brash and bawdy Sophie Tucker grew up Orthodox in Baltimore; she defied community norms when left her infant son to pursue a stage career. The indefatigable Joan Rivers, one of the first to break into the all-boys club of stand-up comedy, still plays the clubs at age 72.
Knowing their lives were cut short by cancer lends a bittersweet quality to clips of Gilda Radner and interviews with Wendy Wasserstein. Radner shot to stardom during the glory days of “Saturday Night Live.” Pulitzer-prize winning playwrigh Wasserstein wrote “The Heidi Chronicles” and “The Sisters Rosenzweig.”
As the comics note, the unflattering stereotype of the Jewish woman has been used in far too many jokes, but the comediennes featured in “Making Trouble” do what Wasserstein says she intended in her plays, “I’m going to give that woman her dignity.”
“Making Trouble” screens Sun., Sept. 14, at 2 at the Cedar Lee Theatre. A representative of the Jewish Women’s Archive will speak after the screening.Love transcends language in ‘Noodle’
Reviewed by ELLEN SCHUR BROWN Editor, Family Section
Miri, an El-Al flight attendant, returns home to find an hysterical cleaning lady in “Noodle,” the 2007 Israeli film directed by Ayelet Menahemi. “I go. One hour,” the Chinese woman tells Miri in broken English, with the understanding that her 5-year-old son will stay with Miri.
The cleaning woman’s son (played by an adorable BaoQi Chen) at first refuses to speak or look up. Later, he tries to run away, fights and screams, until he finally accepts the reality that his mother is not coming back. In one powerful scene he recites the only Hebrew he knows: “Ani yeled Seeneet” (I am a Chinese boy), for the new “family” he considers his jailors.
The young Chinese actor delivers an amazing performance, moreso considering that, like his character, he probably doesn’t understand the Hebrew spoken by the adults around him. When Miri (renowned Israeli actress Miri Avital) finds a Hebrew-Chinese dictionary (seeing these two disparate alphabets on the page is a laugh), he lights up the screen with recognition.
Miri marshals her troops (mainly family members) to get the boy back to his mother, but emotionally, the family is in bad shape. Miri’s sarcastic sister Gila lives with her while considering a divorce. Izzy, Gila’s third husband, confides in her like a platonic lover. Miri would rather fix her sister’s problems than face her own considerable demons.
On their complex and emotional journey, everyone finds a fresh start.
This heartfelt film, presenting a riveting moral dilemma, is as good as anything you’d see at a multiplex with Hollywood showings. “Noodle” well deserved the Grand Prix Jury award it won at the Montreal World Film Festival.
And bring hankies n you’ll need them.
“Noodle,” in Hebrew, English and Mandarin with subtitles, screens Sun., Sept. 14, at 7 at Shaker Square Cinemas.
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