Fill the Void (2012)

I watched Fill the Void (dir. Rama Burshtein) on a rainy night at the Sodankylä film festival. Perhaps this testifies to my flawed attention, but in my view, the film was overly ambiguous, and not ambiguous in the sort of way that opens up for several readings. In this case, the ambiguousness made it hard to relate to the film. Obviously, the director sees a certain urgency in a story she wants to tell. But I was never sure what this urgency was.

The story is set in Tel Aviv among a group of ultra orthodox Hasidic Jews. From what I've read, the aspiration of the director was to make a film about this group of people from the inside. I suppose that this does not exclude the possibility of a critical perspective, and this is what makes the film interesting. If anything, Fill the Void reminds us that no culture is uniform. If it criticizes certain cultural patterns, how should this be understood, should it be understood as a distinction between the religious and the cultural, or as a distinction between limiting cultural norms and a craving for independence? To be honest, I'm not sure at all, some things would speak in favor of the opposite of the latter: faith is also a way of life, not an inner conviction. The central character is Shira, 18 years old, an age at which you are expected to get married, and marriages are arranged. Everything changes when Shira's sister dies. The sister had a husband and a child. The widower is under press to re-marry, and some grief-stricken family members see Shira as a suitable match. Shira herself seems to repress her feelings; the only thing she says is that she wants to do the right thing. And it is here that my confusion appears. Is the film supposed to be a love story, so that Shira has fallen for her sister's husband, or are we to think that Shira would rather not marry the guy, but complies with the conventions to act the role of the dutiful daughter, thus repressing her desire to marry someone she loves? In part, we get to see things from the other party's perspective, the man Shira would marry tries to elicit her "real feelings" and maybe this makes my own thoughts trail off into familiar Romance Story territory (in which the usual path is to show women who are not clear about who they are, they need a male perspective). But the ending of the film thwarts this interpretation.

Fill the Void is a film that tries hard to evoke emotions, feelings that do rarely come to the surface, feelings that can only be hinted at. Ambivalence is all over, and it is painful for the characters to bear. In this, the film is rather successful, especially in how it focuses on the awkward meetings between two people who have been chosen to be a good match for each other. On the downside, the film is at times too overblown, so wrapped up within these mixed emotions that it is hard to navigate - where exactly are we heading? The excessive use of certain stylistic devices (shallow focus, soft edges, close-ups, emotional music) also felt a bit contrived.

Waltz with Bashir (2008)

An animated documentary might sound like a contradiction in terms. Well, it will appears so if a very shallow notion of documentary is employed. The first time I "watched" this film, I was at a friend's place. It was late at night. I was tired. They had a very small TV, and I could not see the subtitles. I understood nothing of the dialogue, but was stunned by the visuals. I still am. Waltz with Bashir succeeds in what has proven an impossible task for most directors: to evoke the space of imagination, dreams and memories. Ari Folman works with haunted images where not too much is shown. In this light, the ending scenes are all the more powerful. The questions the film ceaselessly poses is: what does it mean to "see", to "witness", to experience and be aware of? There are not epistemological questions, but rather, the director ignites these issues from a moral perspective.

The story begins with a sense of confusion. Folman tries to understand why he is unable to remember a specific event during the invasion of Libanon in 1982. Waltz with Bashir is an exploration of the past-as-trauma, reconstruction of memories and fuzzy dreams. It's a difficult film. It is also a very serious film. We see no traces of garrulous recollections of adventures. The film's images, in sickly yellows, reds and browns - ooze dread, fear and a dreamy sense of dislocation. A sense of something being all-to-real, too real to handle.  Of course, it is also a political film. Folman's trauma is not an individual one. His film seems to get at the more or less willful repression of memory, amnesia as an evasion of responsibility. But there are no pointing fingers here, or very few ones. The dialogue is quiet, and sticks to the concrete, to the level of experience rather than general conclusions. Questions about guilt and responsibility are not solved - but they are addressed. It is a very important film.

The Galilee Eskimos (2006)

In the face of deep debt & bankruptcy, men, women and children leave their kibbutz in a state of total desolation - save for a group of elderly people who, unaware of the exodus of their peers, have remained. They decide to keep on living there, despite external pressures in the shape of bulldozers, bailiffs and the lucrative prospect of building a casino on the former kibbutz. This is the story of The Galilee Eskimos, an Israeli comedy that does not lack political undercurrents. But this is far from a political manifesto - if you want to see political dimensions here, fine - but actually, this is more of a feel-good film about friendship, joy and memory. The group of seniors take charge of the situation, and in doing that, they recollect their youth; socialism, independence, work. Even though I found this film very charming, the very uncritical picture of kibbutz life made me a bit uneasy. That the kibbutz founders had a natural right to that kind of life was not something the film dwelled on, even though thematically, it revolved around what it means to belong to a place and view it as one's own - and the bitter realization that one's life is shattered by external forces. On a more positive note, this is a film that honors the joys of everyday life and the possibility of finding friendship and love.

Adama Meshuga'at (2006)

The setting of Sweet mud (2006) is a kibbutz in Israel during the 70's. The theme seemed interesting and I tried to watch it. I haven't seen that many Israelian movies, so that was one more reason for trying it out. But actually, I couldn't finish it. The cinematography was sweetly nostalgic, but the story was not. So what do we learn about life in the kibbutz? Well, mostly that it was a place for weirdos who deceive themselves in thinking that they represent an openminded and democractic lifestyle. The fact that one of the first scenes involved a boy witnessing a man's sexual feelings for a cow is quite revealing as to what kind of picture of kibbutz life the film tries to sell off.