Tag: Israel


The Human Resources Manager

February 20th, 2011 — 1:37am

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The Human Resources Manager sp A woman is killed in a terrorist suicide bombing in Jerusalem but her body is not immediately identified until a paystub found in her belongings places her as working for a large industrial bakery. A newspaper reporter (Guri Alfi) writes a story suggesting that the bakery should have noticed that she wasn’t coming to work and something must have happened to her. The Human Resources Manager( Mark Ivanir) is given the job by his boss  to identify her, notify  the family who is in Romania and avoid bad publicity for the company. The screenplay by Noah Stillman  is based on a novel titled  A Woman in Jerusalem by the well known Israeli writer Abraham B. Jehoshua which we both happened to have read several months ago. The book had the leisure to show in depth  the feelings that the HR manager developed for this deceased woman as he learned more about her. It was able to depict the complex character of this man as he attempted to return the body to her family.  While veteran actor Invanir did an admirable job of trying pull it off, director Evan Riklis orchestrated a tragic comedy which turned in to a road movie rather than a story of a tragic death which slowly reveals the victim and her postmortem impact on people. The film is choppy at times although it moves the story with this unusual plot. In order to give someone who has read the book a worthwhile experience, the movie needs to either capture many of the fine points of the story or present a unique refreshing aspect of it. In our opinion, this film did neither so it will probably disappoint those who read the book but may intrigue those who approach it with a fresh mind.  The film was mostly in Hebrew with subtitles, while English was spoken occasionally. There was a  subtle movie score  by Cyril Morin who attempted to weave a faint suggestion of gypsy music against the bleak Romanian background. (2011)

Comment » | 3 Stars, Drama

Waltz with Bashir

January 17th, 2010 — 2:05am

Waltz with Bashir* * *
Waltz with Bashir
– nf – We had never seen an animated documentary before but that is the essence of this movie. It won many film festival awards as well as a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and an Academy Award nomination in this category. Israeli Director Ari Folman set out to fill in the gaps in his memory concerning his experience in the Israeli army during the first war in Lebanon in the 1980s. He does this by interviewing soldiers who served with him at that time, some of whom he hasn’t seen in more than twenty years, plus others who went through this experience, whom he recruits by newspaper advertisements. In most cases he uses their recorded voices in the film but his team has a done a brilliant job developing techniques for depicting the story in cartoon animation which is based mostly on scenes recreated in a studio. The result is a realistic dramatic account of what was a very traumatic experience as this 19-year-old man went through the war and witnessed frightening horrible things. This presumably is why he has these memory gaps and why some of the narrators up until now have had difficulty in saying what they had seen. The key event is the massacre at Sabria and Shatila where the Christian Phalangists murdered Palestinian and Lebanese civilians. This group was a Lebanese political faction allied with the Israeli army who are shown stationed on the periphery of this area but voicing objections once they realized what was happening. The more you understand the history and the politics of this time the better you can appreciate the movie. However, the anti war theme is loud and clear and is punctuated by the massacre scene transitioning into actual newsreel footage of the aftermath of this horrific event. (2008)

Comment » | 3 Stars, Documentary, War

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