Avi Nesher's PAST LIFE offers up a load of melodramatic, post-Holocaust schlock

The original story, said to be a true one, upon which the movie PAST LIFE is based, may indeed be truthful. But the manner in which writer/director Avi Nesher (below) has cobbled together his third-rate filmed version hits every possible melodramatic note so hard and so often that he turns this tale of post-Holocaust trauma into mostly schlock.

By the end of this sour and silly movie, I was left with a feeling I have rarely encountered: This would have been one Holocaust story better left untold.

TrustMovies was a fan of Mr. Nesher's earlier film, The Matchmaker, and he hopes to be of others down the road. But this current one is a clinker that, I suspect, only those who will accept anything Holocaust-oriented will be able to love. Nesher seems to thrive on melodrama, and there's nothing wrong with that (take a look at the work of Douglas Sirk). But running with it and letting it run away with you are two very different things.

The tale here tells of two sisters and two families who've suffered through and from the Holocaust and are continuing in this vein -- though the families' younger generation seems to understand this only cursorily.

The plot hinges on exactly what the father of those two sisters did during the Holocaust, and the movie jerks us back and forth as to his presumed guilt regarding some heinous crimes, as the sisters -- one a talented music student (Katie Holmes look-alike Joy Rieger, above), the other an aggressive journalist (Nelly Tagar, below, left) -- take it upon themselves to investigate.

The movie moves from Israel to Germany to Poland and back (some of the architecture and visuals are fun) and takes in that other troubled family -- mother, brother, and a son who happens to be a successful composer with eyes (and ears) for our musical sister -- all to little (or, depending on your tolerance level, way too much) avail.

The biggest problem with the movie is the character of the father (played with a My Cousin Rachel array of is-he-or-isn't-he? nonsense by Doron Tavory, above, left), who consistently lies (either outright or via omission), has been physically abusive to his elder daughter, and keeps trying to sweep everything under the carpet, as does mom (Evgenia Dodina, of One Week and a Day, above, right).

By the time all this is finally sorted out -- and, gosh, so easily via "forgiveness" -- things are beginning to border on the absurd, thanks to the constant melodramatic flourishes and the needlessly ratcheting up of would-be suspense (the scene of the two composers searching the archives for the diary is particularly silly). Performances all around are as good as the overwrought material allows.

Yes, to counter those "denialists," we must keep the Holocaust stories coming. But, come on: We're certainly able to do better than this. From Samuel Goldwyn Films, running 109 minutes, and in English, German, Polish and Hebrew (with English subtitles as necessary), Past Life, after opening on the cultural coasts, hits South Florida today, Friday, June 16, in Miami at the AMC Aventura 24, and in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters and at the Regal Shadowood.

Avi Angel's HERE I LEARNED TO LOVE: two brothers' Holocaust history explored tardily (but this time, it'll really open here in NYC)

If the review below looks vaguely familiar to you, that's because TrustMovies first posted it at the end of last October. Hurricane Sandy hit us immediately after, and as the entire lower area of Manhattan went dark, the Quad Cinema closed, and this little movie never actually appeared. Well, it opens today -- really! -- and it deserves a look-see, so here's my original post once again, with only the opening date changed and some new personal appearances added at the close....

They're arriving weekly now, these remembrances of horror and hope. The latest is another family journey made by brothers, now in their 70s, as they track their own history in the 1940s from Poland and the Jewish ghetto through escape, fleeing through local fields, impri-sonment again, and on to Hun-gary, Germany, Switzerland and finally Israel. One brother, Izhak, is much more familiar with the tale than his younger sibling, Avner, who has long preferred humor/avoidance as a means of getting by.

As written and directed by Avi Angel, shown at left, HERE I LEARNED TO LOVE is short (just 60 minutes) and to the point. Almost at the beginning we hear someone (I am guessing it's the filmma-ker) explain, "Avner Kerem (shown below, foreground), my sister-in-law's father, never spoke about his experience in the Holocaust as a child. When he turned 70, he accepted my offer to set out with his older brother Izhak (below and behind Avner) on a journey that would trace their survival route and perhaps, on the way, important insights would be gained."

The above is pretty close to exactly what the film achieves. From an early scene in which the brothers spar lightly about their various medicines (and end up toasting by clicking their pill boxes) through the journey they take, the facts that come to light, along with the feelings they engender, turn this short film into yet another unusual and moving Holocaust story.

The film is based on a memoir written by Izhak called Three Mothers for Two Brothers, and the heart of the tale involves the three women who acted as mother and protector to the siblings: their birth mother, her sister (or perhaps sister-in-law) into whose care the children were given when their parents were taken to the concentration camp, and finally another young woman, Naomi, who became their protector in one of the camps.

The details of the story are full of the kind of specificity that startles and moves, and their effect on Avner (above, who has, up to now, kept himself from leaning of them) is major. For Izhak, who already knew all this, the goal is to finally share this with his brother.

Of all the specifics we learn, probably the most moving and awful is that of the aunt who took the children from their birth mother. Already herself pregnant, how she saves the brothers and then is herself made childless, is as horrible as it is memorable.

One thing I would have liked to know, as the film moved along, was who these brother are now -- who they had become. At movie's end, the filmmaker gives us this via still photos and written information. This is a quick and efficient way to manage it; weaving the information into the film itself would probably have increased the running time to that of a full-length documentary. (Maybe not a bad idea, either.)

Here I Learned to Love, running only 55 minutes (that title and where it comes from is probably worth an entire film unto itself), finally opens this Friday, March 1, in New York City at the Quad Cinema, where the filmmaker (and others) will be making personal appearances during the run.  See below for details....

DIRECTOR AVI ANGEL WILL BE AT SELECTED SCREENINGS  Friday 3/1 - 6:35, 8pm, Saturday 3/2 - 6:35, 8pm and Sunday 3/3 - 5:10, 6:35, 8pm evening 

Special appearances on Sunday, 3/3, as representatives from ISOPC -- INTERNATIONAL STUDY OF ORGANIZED PERSECUTION OF CHILDREN, a project on child development research -- will join director Angel in discussion: Dr. Eva Fogelman at the 5:10 pm showing, and Dr. Helene Bass-Wichelhaus at the 8 pm showing. 

Chanoch Ze'evi's HITLER'S CHILDREN: best in a banner year's Holocaust documentaries

Enabling us to view the Holocaust anew, opening our eyes, mind and heart so that we can view one of history's most horrible events from a different angle, is no easy task, particularly in our current times, when we seem to have a new film on the subject -- narrative or documentary -- coming to theaters with each new week.  The beauty of young filmmaker Chanoch Ze'evi's new documentary, HITLER'S CHILDREN, is that it manages exactly this, while keeping us riveted intellectually and emotionally, hanging on every word uttered by the half-dozen participants interviewed by the filmmaker -- one of which, Eldad Beck (below), is an Israeli journalist now living in Germany and a third-generation descendant of Holocaust survivors, while the other five are the "children" of the title.

As any viewer, young or old, even mildly interested in WWII and the Holocaust will know, Adolf Hitler had no actual, fruit-of-his-loins children. The men and women we see here are the second- and third-generation offspring of some of the top Nazi officials immediately under Der Führer: Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hoess, Amon Goeth and Hans Frank.

We've had plenty of tales from Holocaust survivors (and now from the descen-dants of those survivors) and from the Germans who helped create or at least abetted this horror. Most often these are from what you might call "every-day folk" (were the Holocaust anything like an "everyday" occurrence). The difference with Hitler's Children is that here we have the descendants of those closest to Adolf Hitler and his gang: people whose guilt and shame, if undeserved, still clings to them like a second skin.

How do they deal with this? The filmmaker, pictured above, allows us to learn -- and in this learning, we're able to understand more -- to get our minds around a subject we may have imagined finished and closed. As it opens up again in front of us, we're forced to confront all sorts of subsidiary but important themes: parents, and how to properly "honor" them; DNA's connection to responsibility; the hereditary properties of good and evil; and more -- the centrifugal spin here is immense.

Göring's great-niece Bettina (above, who looks more like him than even his daughter did) retains a sense of humor and irony but had to get away from Germany and now lives in New Mexico. Make of it what you will (and the filmmaker simply allows us to learn this fact), but she and her brother had themselves sterilized so that the fami-ly line/name could not continue. This is guilt played out IMAX-size.

Katrin Himmler, grand-niece of Heinrich and now married to an Israeli Jew, tells us that her great uncle was such a monster that all other members of that family, who were also ardent Nazis, seemed so insignificant that nobody mentioned them or asked any questions. Feeling overwhelmed whenever she left Germany and had to face outsiders, she learned as many foreign languages as possible to obscure her German accent.

Adolf Hitler’s god son, Niklas Frank, was eight years old when his father, Hans was hung at Nuremburg for war crimes. His manner of honoring his father is to, fittingly, dishonor him both in a scathing book he wrote and in his visits to schools around his country, telling the students in no uncertain terms what his father did and what he, Niklas, thinks of that -- and of his dad. All this provides some of the most interesting footage in the film. If this is "penance," then more power to it!

Grandson of Rudolf Hoess -- Rainer -- makes his first trip to Auschwitz in the company of journalist Beck, and what happens there is doubly striking, both for what Hoess experiences and what Beck has to say about it. Finding "closure" -- every talk-show hosts' favorite goal -- is beginning to seem like a fool's errand, never more so than with a subject like this one. Mr. Beck, a third generation product, suggests that the Holocaust has no real ending. After all we've seen and continue to see, I'm inclined to agree. Think of Hitler's Children*, then, as one of the great "middles" of Holocaust film literature.

The documentary, from the ever-more-indispensible Film Movement and running just 80 minutes, opened theatrically in New York City this past Friday, November 16 for at least one week's run at the Quad Cinema and will open in the Miami area at the O Cinema on Thursday, November 29. As with all FM titles, a DVD will appear eventually.

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*Hitler's Children is also the name of an interesting 1943 narrative movie, a pulpy piece of anti-Nazi propaganda that stars the very cute Bonita Granville as an American girl studying in Germany who is declared "German" by the government and so cannot return home. As a typically American, WWII look at Hitler Youth and the travails of the Nazi nightmare, it's fun in its slightly silly, lured-for-its-day, manner. Netflix seems not to have it, but you can catch it from time to time on Turner Classic Movies.

Ra'anan Alexandrowicz's THE LAW IN THESE PARTS tracks Israel's 44 years of military law in the Occupied Territories

After raving last month about the extraordinarily moving narrative film set in Israel/Palestine, The Other Son, I'm doing it again -- about an equally worthwhile Israeli documentary that is dry and pointed yet every bit as meaningful and important as Lorraine Levy's emotional roller coaster. THE LAW IN THESE PARTS (Shilton Ha Chok), written and directed by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, is a film I would not have missed in any case, because Mr. Alexandrovicz (pictured below), nearly a decade ago gave us one of the most remarkable movies I have ever seen, one that has stayed with me over time (and several viewings), James Journey to Jerusalem. (If you have never seen this little knockout narrative that tackles faith, immigrants, economics and Israel today -- for film's sake, stick it on your must-see list.)

The Law in These Parts (what a funny, ironic, movie-loving title so redolent of "the old west") seems, on its surface, simplicity itself: Alexandrovicz wants to explore the law that applies to non-Israelis who live in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And after all the films we've now seen that zero in on the Occupied Territories with personal stories and much screaming and yelling, what a fine idea it is to concentrate on the law -- that object seemingly above the fray and yet the very thing from which justice, or something less, must derive.

To this end Alexandrovicz gathers together and interviews/films the men -- all ex-military and all retired now: two judges, a legal adviser, a Deputy Military Advocate General, ex-Head of the Israel Military International Law Branch, and ex-President of the Supreme Court -- who all, so far as anything resembling genuine justice is concerned, proceed to hang themselves by their own petard.

How in the world did the filmmaker get these guys to work with him? Given his history -- his other documentaries and the remarkable James' Journey... -- his stance on his own country's treatment of Palestinians is rather clear. Perhaps, once one ex-military man agreed, the others followed, thinking of course that they would be able to convince the audience of their righteous knowledge, abilities and deeds. At times, their sense of self-worth and utter self-righteousness seem either Yaweh-blessed or appalling, depending on your viewpoint.

Interviewing a half-dozen of these elderly fellows (no women, of course), the filmmaker asks them relatively simple questions about the law -- which, it appears, has changed and "broadened" over the years and which, in any case, applies only to the Arabs living in these territories, not the Israelis. This may put you in mind of the USA's own "separate-but-unequal" Jim Crow laws of the last century in our southern states.

When the topic turns to torture, you will again be reminded of the USA in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe (see Rendition, for example), as these former justices slip and slime their way out of facing almost anything head-on. Along the way, Alexandrovicz asks one of the men something to the effect of, "Would Israelis live under the conditions that occupied endure?"  "That's theoretical, isn't it?" comes the non-reply.

Worst of all is hearing these men utterly contradict international law -- as they sleaze their way of out just about everything -- from the difference between "occupied" and "held" territories to a woman prisoner tried for giving food to men in need. "This is universal human behavior," insists her defense attorney. "These terrorist are not human beings, " counters the prosecution, taking us immediately back to the Nazi Germany view of Jews.

This is shocking stuff, made all the more so by Alexandrovicz's refusal to raise his voice or grow at all out-of-sorts with the attitude of these big boys. At times, as they stare at the camera, their smar-my, self- righteous look seems to say, "You assholes just don't get it." But we do get it. And we are not fooled nor impressed by Alexander Ramatii (above), former Lieutenant Colonel and legal adviser, recalling how his came up with the idea of Mahwat or "dead" land as an excuse for the Israeli's settling in the occupied  territories.

Simultaneously with the interviews and often connecting them, the filmmaker uses historical footage of the times under discussion, as above and below, without narrative additions. No need, as these pictures are worth the proverbial thousands of words. Alexandro-vicz also goes out of his way to let us know that he understands that, while the documentary form searches for "truth," this is not always so easy a task. And so the footage of these interviews that remains on the cutting room floor (or whatever heaven or hell to which edited video footage is consigned) may be making that truth less easy to ascertain. Fine, but what we see here is probably as close to that truth as we're going to come for some time.

The Law in These Parts, 101 minutes, from The Cinema Guild, opened up this past Wednesday, November 14, for its two-week run at New York's Film Forum. Elsewhere? Nothing scheduled as yet, so far as I know. Special note: the filmmaker, Ra'anan Alexandrowicz, will be making a personal appearance at Film Forum today, Saturday, November 17, at the 6pm screening, and tomorrow, Sunday, November 18, at the 3:15 screening.

Avi Nesher's THE MATCHMAKER: an exotic, funny and moving melodrama from Israel

It's been a few years since Avi Nesher's last intriguing and transgressive Israeli movie, The Secrets, so it's terrific to have him back again with yet another wonderful, somewhat strange and rather exotic film, THE MATCHMAKER. What makes the movie seem so exotic lies in its combination of time period, place, and characters: Israel in 1968, soon after the Six-Day War, when everything from social mores to fashions to sex seems to be changing -- and way too fast for some folk. This is also an Israel vastly different from what we see today.

Nostalgia is always tricky, and while one shouldn't want to give in to that longing for a kinder, gentler time, I must say that this movie certainly had that effect on me -- at least where the state of Israel is concerned. Mr Nesher, shown at left, is among Israel's finest filmmakers. In fact, he alone among the top rank, appears to have the ability to create rich, multi-layered and -threaded stories that track some subtle, never-hammered-home ideas in a style that actually attracts and pleases a mainstream audience. He did it with The Secrets, and he's done it again with The Matchmaker -- which combines a coming-of-age tale with culture clash and The Holocaust (not the horrible event itself) but the ramifications of it, still going on more than 20 years later in a manner that Nesher shows us subtly and quietly in the increasingly desolate behavior of two of the movie's main characters.

The Matchmaker is really an ensemble piece, with one of our two heroes, the high-schooler Arik Burstein (Tuval Shafir, above) struggling with first love and a new job in the seedier side of Haifa (he and his family live in a better area of town) when he accepts employment with the very odd matchmaker of the title, a scar-faced fellow named Yankele (Adir Miller, below), our other hero, who is a smuggler and petty criminal, but who also does matchmaking on the side -- especially for folk who might otherwise have some trouble connecting.

We meet Arik's parents, good-hearted Holocaust survivors who are making the best of things; his  Iraqi neighbors and their son, Benny (Arik's best friend); Benny's very pretty, sexy and wild cousin, visiting from the USA (Neta Porat, below, center);

Arik's librarian friend Meir (Dror Keren, below), himself looking for a companion;

and the family of Romanian dwarves who run the local movie theater, the prettiest of which (Bat-El Papura, below, left) for whom Yankele has promised to find a mate.

All this makes up one pretty exotic stew, and Nesher seasons it with a sprinkling of lovely little touches, as well as drawing fine performances from his entire cast. The filmmaker adapted (or as the press release explains, "was inspired by") the 2008 novel, When Heroes Fly, by Amir Gutfreund. I have not read the novel so I can't say how well the movie adheres to Gutfreund's goals. On its own, however, it delivers a tale that is thoughtful, funny, moving and in its way original. I won't easily forget it.

The Matchmaker -- from Menemsha Films and running 112 minutes -- opens today, Friday, August 17, in New York City at the Quad Cinema and the JCC, and in Queens at the Kew Gardens Cinema, while continuing its Los Angeles run at Laemmle's Town Center 5. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters included.

Amos Kollek's CHRONICLING A CRISIS highlights the difficulties of film-making

Toward the beginning of Amos (pronounced Ah-mōs) Kollek's new and heavily autobiographical documentary, CHRONICLING A CRISIS, the filmmaker complains to Anna Thomson (Levine), a good actress (shown below, left) who has done some excellent work in his and others' films, that he would have thought by now, at his age, he would not have to struggle so much to get a film made. "Look at Cassavetes," notes the thoughtful actress, implying that the master of improvisation and by-the-bootstraps film-making never had it easy during his career, either. She's right. Except that was John Cassavetes and this is Amos Kollek.

Just last week, TrustMovies mentioned Mr. Cassavetes, in relation to a failed "art" movie that had opened and that reminded him of the many Cassavetes-inspired filmmakers whose work, despite a lot of "attempting," doesn't quite make it. Mr Kollek's movies often end up in this limbo, as well. From his first film (Goodbye New York) through Sue and Fast Food Fast Women up to the project he blames for nearly destroying his career -- that would be Happy End (from 2003) which, though it starred Audrey Tautou and Justin Theroux, has not been seen in the U.S, neither theatrically nor on DVD -- the quality of his output has been sketchy at best.

Mr. Kollek, shown at right, appears to be a filmmaker of that group of students who were taught (or came to the conclusion on their own) that if you simply point the camera, something will happen. They do, and it does -- though whether they shot much that was worthwhile is worth questioning. Kollek is up to the same stuff with this new documentary. There's little shape to movies made this way nor much sense that the filmmaker had any clear idea of what he wanted to do. Just make a movie, I guess. And yet, you cannot totally discount the guy and his efforts because he has a penchant for smart casting and he comes up with a great scene now and again.

Amos is the son of Jerusalem's most famous mayor -- Teddy Kollek (shown above, right, with Amos) -- who held that post for what seemed like an eternity. Father Teddy figures heavily into the film, as he is getting on in years and seems to remind the filmmaker of his own mortality. Amos spent seven years filming this movie; by the time it is finished, so is the elder Kollek.

We also meet, briefly, and get to know practically nothing about the filmmaker's wife and two daughters (one of these is shown above with her dad). But we do get to know a very strange and interesting woman named Robin Remias (below), a drug-addicted prostitute whom Kollek encourters during one of his many trips back and forth between Israel and New York, as he tries to find backing money to make another movie.

Robin is something else, and its little wonder Kollek begins to concentrate more and more on her as the film progresses. The woman is utterly deluded about so many things, especially her own condition, and yet she proves surprisingly good company for the filmmaker and for us. She's the one demonstration in the movie that Kollek has not lost his casting skill. Defiant, funny, sad, needy and proud, Robin sort of beggars description, and so the filmmaker's time with her opens the movie up in the same way that his casting of actresses such as Anna Thomson, Julie Haggerty and Louise Lasser has done in past movies (and years).

As pretty (in an aging, drug-addicted manner) as is Robin's face, the rest of her body -- which we see on several occasions much more fully -- looks like drug central. Rail thin, pock-marked and needle-tracked, it's cause for alarm. But that alarm never seems to ring very loudly in the filmmaker's head. Twice this woman is shown prone on the bed or sofa, eyes open, unblinking and seemingly unbreathing. Is she dead, we wonder? No announcement is made, so we're left to our own devices. It is this kind of laissez-faire movie-making, with little thought about organization or storytelling, that can drive the viewer crazy. Yet what does (and does not) happen to Robin absolutely comprises the most interesting portion of Kollek's film.

Other filmmakers have problems with this, too -- Henry Jaglom comes to mind -- yet by comparison their films are models of containment and discipline. By the end of the film, we're left with Kollek himself, aging, uncertain, still suffering from a father complex, not to mention the woman as the Madonna/Whore syndrome. But good news is on the horizon. It seems he's raised enough money to finish this film.

Chronicling a Crisis, exactly 90 minutes in length, opens this Friday, May 4, in New York City at the Quad Cinema. Further playdates? I've searched but can't find any as of now....

The photos above, with the exception 

of that of Anna Thomson Levine, are from the film itself 

and/or are taken by Osnat Shalev.