Concealed Connections, Hidden History

by Matthew Bernstein

AJFF's 10th season finds a line-up of films as strong as any in the festival's history. Every year features a mix of films, but each year has seen different emphases: comedies, Holocaust films, survivor stories, and films about the Mideast conflict. This year, I was struck by the number of excellent films depicting mesmerizing but less well-known aspects of Jewish life and history, as well as others that relate the surprising yet plausible ways in which Jews have been able to connect with one another and people of other faiths.

Here follows a discussion of a dozen films I found particularly striking, engaging and well made. But the usual caveat applies: every film in the festival is worth your attention. Here's to ten years of AJFF outstanding selections for our enjoyment and enlightenment.

Against the Tide
Here's one example of little-known American Jewish history, and an engrossing, unhappy one at that. Archival footage and interviews recount the story of a clear-eyed effort to rescue European Jews, which foundered on internal Jewish politics and a failure of national will. The film weaves this wider tale with intimate portraits of various victims (Anne Frank) and survivors. The Simon Wiesenthal Center's documentary program sets the gold standard for historical Jewish documentaries – and this film has clear implications for our country's reluctance to intervene into contemporary humanitarian crises. For another documentary film that explores American Jewish history in depth, see Cinema's Exiles: From Hitler to Hollywood, which details the plight of German directors, actors, screenwriters and producers who fled Nazi Germany and found a home in the film industry, best exemplified by the cast of character actors in Casablanca. For an entertaining film about American Jewish life, see the biopic about Leonard Chess (of Chess Records), Who Do You Love.

Ajami
This pulsating action film illustrates the notion of hidden connections among communities, both Jewish and non-Jewish, in this portion of Jaffa, Israel. The performances by non-actors are incredibly moving and involving – I doubt you will care more about any characters in any film at this year's festival. The filmmakers take an understated, cubistic, time-shifting approach to the intersecting lives of several families and friends, without the schematic neatness of Crash or the relentless violence of City of God, and with a generous spirit of tenderness toward virtually every distinctly drawn character.

Berlin '36
The story of Gretel Bergmann's last minute barring from the 1936 Berlin Olympics because she was Jewish is another hidden piece of history for me. This handsome period production recounts the fascinating story with an assured directorial hand, a gorgeous visual style, and terrific performances, especially by Karoline Herfurth as Bergmann. It also provides a plausible, genuine sense of the complexities of human relationships, which extend to the surprising alliances Bergmann found with non-Jewish Germans as she went through her ordeal. One can only marvel at Bergmann's incredible grace, courage and dignity in the face of such an absurd and futile situation.

Eyes Wide Open
This masterfully told tale of a married Orthodox butcher, who gradually succumbs to the charms of a waif that he employs, is handled with restraint and carried out by compelling, plausible performances from the two leads, especially award winner Zohar Strauss as the butcher. Many scenes unfold in meaningful and clearly understood silence. Director Haim Tabakman uses reflective surfaces, water imagery and carefully composed shots that juxtapose background and foreground action to visualize Strauss's dawning awareness of the appealing newcomer in his shop and the diminishing importance of his family.

In Search of Memory: The Neuroscientist Eric Kandel
By combining Eric Kandel's visit with his family to his childhood home in Vienna, and by explaining his neurological discoveries with extraordinary clarity, this documentary provides a holistic portrait of a determined scientist, father and husband. Kandel is not only brilliant but a warm, vibrant human being, and when he connects the dots between his childhood experiences and his search for understanding human behavior, the film's circle is complete. You will enjoy spending time in his company.

Mein Kampf
Black comedy doesn't get much darker than this adaptation of an often-produced play by the Jewish Hungarian writer George Tabori. Filled with rich characters and filmed with the highest production values, the film's absurdities become increasingly apparent, as kind, elderly Jewish men play therapist and guidance counselor to an annoyingly adolescent Adolf Hitler. Their nurturing eventually leads him to find his own sinister voice. Though profoundly disturbing, this film is a terrific, rare opportunity to engage with Tabori's work.

Nora's Will
From the opening series of tight close-up shots as Nora makes preparations in her apartment in Mexico, I was totally charmed by this understated minimalist comedy in which a lapsed Jewish ex-husband finds himself inexorably enacting his late wife's final wishes in spite of all his resistance, religious skepticism and selfishness. One could watch lead Fernando Luján for hours, for he, like all the colorful relatives and friends gathered with Nora, gradually reveals depths of character and reacts to the curious circumstances that enrich this story. For another terrific comedy, see A Matter of Size.

Protektor
The Czech Republic has offered up some of the most insightful and involving films about the Nazi occupation - consider Closely Watched Trains (1966) and Divided We Fall (2000). Protektor firmly takes its place in this distinguished tradition with its intriguing tale of a marriage under pressure during the Nazi era. Enhancing the story is a lush visual style that evokes the harrowing period via costumes and low-key (barely color) photography that creates a powerful sense of desolation, paranoia and betrayal. The inventive editing superimposes movie scenes and character fantasies with waking reality, yet another reason I found the film riveting from its opening moments. To which character does the title refer? Another engaging, challenging film along these lines is Seven Minutes in Heaven, which portrays the consciousness of a young Israeli woman, who survived a suicide bus bombing, in a compelling yet ambiguous manner. 

The Seven Days
The writing/directing team of Israeli film actress Ronit Elkabetz and her brother Shlomi returns to the claustrophobic scene of domestic unhappiness and family dysfunction from To Take a Wife (2004), reuniting many of the cast. This time, the Moroccan Jewish family sits shiva for an older brother, and all kinds of conflict erupt as proximity and the emotional toll of mourning (wonderfully captured in the extended opening graveside scene) foments family disintegration. The Elkabetz siblings elected to shoot and edit their story with a kind of minimalist rigor that frames many family members across the screen in long shots of protracted duration, as if allowing us the opportunity both to study these characters thoroughly, and to make us feel their experience of entrapment.

War Against the Weak
The history of the American eugenics movement should be better known to the general public, for it  justified Nazi ideology of Aryan supremacy. That such theories were supported by the American government, foundations and universities is disturbing enough, but War Against the Weak reveals how the almost virile spread of such ideas reached jurists such as Oliver Wendell Holmes and even Robert M. Yerkes, the namesake of Emory's Primate Center. Moreover, interviews with survivors of Nazi procedures and contemporary victims of eugenics show us how alive such ideas remain.

The Wedding Song
This is a sensuous, engaging portrait of the surprisingly tight-knit connection between a Tunisian Muslim teenager and her Jewish friend. Director Karin Albou, who portrays the Jewish girl's mother, powerfully creates the initially strong bond amongst the women of all faiths in this community. As the Nazis crack down on the Jews, and the men in the girls' lives each enact a form of compromise with the occupying forces, the fragility of that bond is acutely drawn.

Where I Stand: The Hank Greenspun Story
I had never heard of Hank Greenspun, but I found his life story, his integrity and his fearlessness utterly inspiring. I'm a fan. He dealt with some of the most famous names in American 20th century history and played a crucial role in Israel's struggle to establish itself. You cannot help but think, watching this quick, lively and humorous portrayal of Greenspun, that there have to be so many more American Jews whose fantastic life stories have yet to be told on film – starting with many of Greenspun's friends and associates. For an imaginative, multifaceted and lyrical re-creation of a Jewish life, see Room and a Half, about Russian Nobel literature Laureate Joseph Brodsky.

Matthew H. Bernstein chairs the film studies department at Emory University, where he also serves as Director of Graduate Studies. The University of Georgia Press published his book, Screening a Lynching: Leo Frank on Film and TV last year.