Erez Laufer's RABIN IN HIS OWN WORDS gives us exactly that -- with excellent visuals, too

This seems to be the year of Yitzhak Rabin, movie-wise, at least, as we now have two fine films that feature this hero of Israel and that country's public figure most dedicated to seeking a lasting peace among Israel and its neighbors: Amos Gitai's combo doc/narrative, Rabin: The Last Day, and now Erez Laufer's more personal documentary, RABIN IN HIS OWN WORDS. Do we really get this man's actual words over an entire movie? Absolutely -- along with accompanying and mostly quite appropriate visuals.

Rabin was a highly intelligent man, a gifted writer given to a lot of personal musings, and so we have a collection of letters, speeches, and other recorded history in which we hear him and are made conscious of his ideas and beliefs on a range of subjects. Filmmaker Laufer, shown at left, has done a commendable job of weaving all this together in a time line that goes from Rabin's early family history through his service in the military, his courtship and marriage, his two rounds as the country's Prime Minister and his eventual assassination -- which Laufer does no more than mention. (We get plenty of 'the end' from Gitai's film.)

The manner in which the movie-maker presents all this, however, gives us the most complete picture I've yet seen of Rabin and his dedication and importance to his country. Yes, the film is pro-Rabin, as I think any intelligent and humane viewer today would also be. But the beauty of the documentary lies in how it enfolds us in the personality, psychology and humanity of its subject.

The film is full of so many specifics of the leader's life -- from how he and his father were placed in a detention camp by the British to the manner in which he handled the would-be "scandal" about his wife having a bank account here in the U.S. (after the time in which Rabin served as Ambassador to the U.S.).  Along the way we see the early Moshe Dayan (without eye patch), learn of the death of Rabin's stern but much loved mother, and discover how this military commander felt about having, at the time of Israel's problematic birth, to send 15- and 16-year-old boys off to fight. There is even a moving love letter to his wife, Leah, after 24 years of marriage. And -- oh, yes -- this guy was quite a smoker, too.

Watching the film is very like reliving an enormous amount of history-making moments from the past half-century (many of them involving, gosh, Yasser Arafat). Rabin's take on America's involvement in Vietnam is short and priceless, and his opposition to the Israeli "settlements" (he explains that ensuring the safety of some of these settlement families could cost as much as $250,000 each) makes sense from perspectives both moral and practical.

This is an eye-opening, sometimes amusing, finally very moving tribute to an Israeli who did all he could toward hastening peace. As we hear him say at one point, "I have no doubt that the risks of peace are a thousand times preferable to the bitter certainty of war." Would that current Israeli leaders shared that view.

Rabin in His Own Words -- a gift from Menemsha Films and running 100 minutes -- opens this Friday, May 6, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal, and here in South Florida at five locations: in Boca Raton at the Living Room Theaters, in Delray Beach at the Movies of Delray, in Lake Worth at the Movies of Lake Worth, and in Tamarac at The Last Picture Show. In the weeks and month to come, I hope the documentary will find its way to other cities across country. You can click here and scroll down to follow any further scheduled playdates. 

Mor Loushy's CENSORED VOICES: Can 48-year-old audio tapes become a visual experience?

The answer to that question in the headline above, if you had much doubt to begin with, is a resounding no. At least not as given us in the new documentary, CENSORED VOICES, by director/co-writer Mor Loushy (shown below). This does not makes the movie a failure, exactly, because those audio tapes -- of conversations recorded in 1967 between Israeli soldiers (just coming off their experience in the immediately historic Six Day War between Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbors) and future writer Amos Oz and editor Avraham Shapira -- prove too interesting and full of a very different sense of reality than the nation-building tale we've heard ever since Israel decisively won that war, in which five countries, aided by another nine, arrayed themselves against Israel with more than double the troops of that tiny country, and promptly went down to ignominious defeat.

As the Israeli nation cheered, the powers-that-be went to work immediately to begin the legend-building. The tapes that Oz and Shapira produced were quickly censored and only now, via this new documentary, are they being heard, at least fitfully and at last uncensored. But how do you take audio tapes and turn them into the kind of visual experience that moviegoers expect, if not demand? Ms Loushy's answer is to begin with a shot of the now elderly Mr. Oz and what looks like one of the tapes itself, then stick that tape into an old-fashioned player, and away we go. But what about the remaining visuals?

The filmmaker begins fairly quickly cutting back and forth between now and then, showing us -- without any identification -- old men whom we imagine may be the aged counterparts to the voices we hear on the tapes. This back and forth uses plenty of archival footage, too, which we very soon begin to realize is not necessarily connected to the actual voices we hear. This is unsettling to begin with and simply grows more so as the movie continues.

The archival footage is not uninteresting, and it seems to follow to some extent what is being told us via the tapes. But all specificity is missing. And the movie's sound design is such that we get ramped up by sounds that play upon cliché to produce the desired effect. For their part, the old men we see all look glum and concerned by what they are apparently hearing. But so what?  Around the halfway point I realized that I would have preferred simply hearing the translated tapes and dispensing with the visuals entirely.

What we hear is certainly worth our while, as these soldiers talk about how the events of the war left them, well, something less than feeling thrilled and victorious. Instead we hear of massacres and atrocities, and of the "other side" being treated, as one soldier points out, like victims of the WWII Holocaust. "Don't think about it; just kill everyone you see," one soldier recalls being told. To their credit, the soldiers do acknowledge that, had the other side been victorious, just as bad (and maybe worse) might have occurred.

Mixed feelings surface often here. "Perhaps the tragedy," notes one fellow,"is that I identified with the other side." And while, early on, we're told that these interviews "may not do the best service to what they call 'national morale,' we may do a small service to the truth," one does wonder if the small group of soldiers represented here can be made to actually stand for the entire Israeli army? As I recall, Mister Oz has been a peace-nik for quite some time now, as also, I suspect, has Mister Shapira. As am I, for that matter.

Along the way, one solider recalls the mother of another dead Israeli soldier crying out that the western wall is not worth even her dead son's fingernail. And finally, an American reporter for ABC News, in covering the largest of the Six Day War's refugee camps, notes that "The only thing growing here are seeds of revenge." Amen to that bit of prescience.

At this documentary's end, we finally see the names of these elderly men we've been viewing, and as the end credits roll, we are told, "The archival footage used in this documentary was collected from many sources. The people shown in the archival footage are not the same individuals speaking on, or described in, the audio tapes created in 1967." So:
Piece all those visuals together as you're able.

Censored Voices, from Music Box Films and running 87 minutes, opens this coming Friday, November 20, in both New York City (at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema) and in Los Angeles on Friday, November 27 (at Laemmle's Royal), followed by a national roll-out.

Dror Moreh's THE GATEKEEPERS expands in NYC and L.A., while opening elsewhere

"Interesting -- but it didn't tell us anything we didn't already know -- or couldn't figure out," said the friend who accompanied me to the screening of THE GATEKEEPERS, which has just expanded in New York City to Film Forum and City Cinema 123. She's right, but the thing that makes this film worth seeing and considering is just who is doing the telling. The talking-heads here are six men who, over the years, have led the Shin Bet, Israel's secret service organization in charge of overseeing the country's "war on terror" -- initially against Arabs but later against Israelis, too. (Remember the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a super-right-wing Israeli law student?)

The new documentary, nominated for an Oscar this year and directed and co-produced by Dror Moreh (shown at right), brings together these Shin Bet leaders (all six are shown below) and gets them to talk on record for the first time. Why did they do it? I am guessing (and from what they say, this would seem to be the case) that they feel the current and recent past Israeli governments are going down exactly the wrong path -- toward further war, death and destruction rather than toward anything peaceful. And since these are the men who, over the decades, have had to deal with leaders on both sides of the fence and who understand what is going on perhaps better than any others -- including, especially, most politicians -- one might think that attention should be paid.

The message here is no read-between-the-line kind of thing. Instead, it's rather clear, really, and is evidently felt -- to some degree, at least -- by all six of the men interviewed.  While these interviews are done individually, it might have been even more eye-and-ear-opening to have had these guys together in one room at the same time. No doubt they'd not have agreed to that one.

As it is, some of things they say seem a tad self-serving, and occasionally contradictory, but the most important thing to Mr. Moreh (and to most of us viewers, too, I suspect) is the sense that a change in policy by the Israeli government is necessary and long past due. Looking the other way, turning a blind eye, and allowing the settlements in the occupied territory of the Palestinians to move forward and the settlers to get away with most anything they want: All of this must end. The men appear to have come to a more conciliatory stance, with -- yes! -- a Palestinian/Arab state as part of the solution.

Not that these guys seem in any way "soft" on terrorists. Though, as noted by the most recent Shin Bet leader, Yuval Diskin (above), Israel and the Shin Bet themselves are perceived by the other side as "terrorists." Even to an Israeli intelligence agent, it would seem, there are limits. The six men are clearly smart, well-spoken and surprisingly open; it is difficult to imagine top men from our own CIA being half as honest as what we see here. (That's Avraham Shalom, below, who reigned from 1980-86 and was, according to one of the other fellows interviewed, something of a "bully.")

In the course of the film's 95 minutes, we hear pieces of the interviews and see some historic footage pliced in for variety and additional substance. This includes photos (in each case, the one below the current shot of the man) of the older men in their younger days, which has a certain charm and interest. We hear and see (in what I take to be staged recreations, as below) something of the Shin Bet's greatest hits (the assassination of one of the top "terrorists" Yahya Ayyash) and greatest misses (a one-ton bomb dropped on a house that killed a bunch of civilians but missed its intended target, and of course the Rabin assassination, for which, we are told, the Shin Bet was totally unprepared).

Last November another Israeli documentary opened here in New York City (also at Film Forum) that accomplished, I think, quite a bit more than does The Gatekeepers. Made by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz and titled The Law in These Parts (my full review from the time is here), this documentary -- in which the filmmaker interviews retired judges who enacted the laws that have ruled and still rule the occupied territories quite differently for Arabs and Jews -- is much harder-hitting and of a more "activist" slant. It does not allow its interviewees leeway to set their own stage. Alexandrowicz asks specific questions, for which he demands real answers and won't accept anything less.

Mr. Moreh's movie has, I think, an agenda, and it's a good and sensible one of pushing Israel and us viewers toward conciliation and a dual state. The Law in These Parts may have something similar in mind down the road, but it is first concerned with justice now, and it demonstrates pretty thoroughly why this does not look likely any time soon. By all means, see The Gatekeepers, but don't stop there. Watch The Law in These Parts, as well (it's from Cinema Guild and I hope will be available soon on DVD, VOD and/or streaming), for a fuller understanding of the situation.

The Gatekeepers, from Sony Pictures Classics, is playing at three theaters each in New York City and the Los Angeles area. Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters, around the country.

The penulitmate photo above is of Carmi Gillon, who served as Shin Bet head from 1994-96; the final photo, just above, is of Ami Ayaon, who served after Gillon, from 1996-2000. The photo of Dror Moreh, second from top, is by Kevork Djansezian, courtesy of Getty Images.

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.

Toby Perl Freilich's INVENTING OUR LIFE explores the Israeli Kibbutz--then and now

Has it really been one hundred years since the first Kibbutz was created? More actually: 102. Watching the new documentary --INVENTING OUR LIFE: The Kibbutz Experiment-- written, produced and directed by first-time director Toby Perl Freilich, this non-Jew discovered more about Kibbutz life, its history and how it has changed over the years, than he had learned so far in his perhaps too-sheltered life. As a kind of celebration of its century-long tradition, Ms Freilich (shown below) fills us in on the very first of the kibbutzes (1910), the purpose of which, as then declaimed, was to create a fledgling socialist state. Indeed, as found in the film's description on the IMDB, the kibbutz is "one of the world's longest running and most successful experiments in pure Communism." Take that, Eric Cantor! And let's hear it for the old Israel -- and a Zionism that was meant to be, according to some of the folk interviewed in this movie, a lot more inclusive than many of us imagined.

Ms Freilich shows us what various events -- from the creation of the state of Israel to the War of Independence and onwards has done to the kibbutz, which, in order to survive, has had to keep changing. That change, as we clearly see by the end of the movie, is still going on and is perhaps more important than ever for the survival of the kibbutzim (that's the plural, for you other non-Jews). Her film is but 80 minutes long yet it packs in an extraordinary amount of good informa-tion and statistics, interesting ideas, and even a non-pushy questioning of where Israel, Judaism, Capitalism and communal living might be headed. For instance, though some of us might strongly associate Israel with the kibbutz, even at their prime, kibbutzim made up only five per cent of the Israeli community.

Via narration and some old film footage, we learn of the early kibbutzim (the kids above are from kibbutz Hulda, circa 1948), and then visit some of the more recent occupants, like Dana Shani and her daughter Romi (below). Initially inclusive, the Kibbutzim became more arrogant, particularly toward Muslims, when immigration to Israel began in earnest (sounds familiar, no?)

We learn some of the differences between country or desert kibbutz and the urban variety, how difficult the earlier version could be toward couples and any kind of "standard" family upbringing, and of the first all-Americian kibbutz, called Sasa, founded on the former Arab village of Sa'sa'. Following the Six-Day War came a kind of seismic shift in the control of Israel, and the kibbutz, long associated with the Labor Party. Now it's more likely to be a community made up of private families. At the end of the film we see one kibbutz being made to come to terms with this increased privatization, which for its older members is simply anathema.

Inventing Our Life, like most really good documentaries, is an education. It forces you to think, consider and decide, and you leave the film chastened, maybe saddened but definitely provoked. The movie -- from First Run Features and one of its better documentaries of late -- opens this Wednesday, April 25, in New York City at the Quad Cinema. You can click here to see other currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters.