NYJFF: Eran Riklis' HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER--Israel's shot for BFLF Oscar

When TrustMovies interviewed Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis upon the NYC theatrical opening of his last film, Lemon Tree, in April of 2009 (that interview is here), the writer/director (shown below) told us about his next project, a film he was to direct based on a screenplay he had recently read and loved called The Mission of the Human Resources Manager (from the novel of the same name). That filmed version, complete with an appropriately shortened title, is now making its New York debut as part of this year's New York Jewish Film Festival (which will host three screenings in the4 coming week). It has also been picked by the distributor Film Movement, and will have a theatrical debut soon, before going onto DVD release. This is good news all around because Riklis' new film is, I think, his best so far: serious, smart, occasionally funny, thought-provoking and finally profoundly moving. That it is Israel's selection to represent that county is our Best Foreign Language Film "Oscar" derby was a wise choice.

THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER begins in media res as the titlular character at a large Israeli industrial-strength bakery is given the assignment to head off a very bad newspaper article about that bakery and one of the foreign workers in its employ. (Evidently, in Israel, human resources sometimes does double duty as PR flack.) Viewers are promptly put smack in the middle of this manager's life, as he scrambles first to learn what exactly has transpired, and then find out why and how before he can begin to do anything about it. A journalist ready to pounce on bad corporate behavior has his recorder, camera and steel-trap mind turned on, to better crucify the company and its flack.

Playing the manager, in a very private performance that only slowly lets the humanity of the character leak into view, Mark Ivanir (above, right, last seen here playing Jesse Eisenberg's dad in Holy Rollers) is terrific -- quick on his feet and with his brain, but coming up against things he finds enormously difficult to handle. The employee in question was a woman (above, left), and women are key in this movie: from the manager's boss, with whom he may have (or have had) more than a working relationship, to his estranged wife and the daughter he loves so much and who mirrors somewhat that foreign employee, to whom he becomes a kind of after-the-fact father. Even the employee's own mother (below, shown in foreground, right) rattles this movie's cage rather fiercely.

This is Israel, so yes, terrorism rears its head by starting off the action. Yet like so much else in the film, it acts only obliquely in this tale that is about "home" and "borders." The biggest theme here is probably "family," but in a much broader sense than our own nuclear version: the family of Jewish culture/religion, of the workplace and of the world at large.

In the course of the movie we travel with the manager from his own country to another, and what we see and learn is heartbreaking and enriching. By the end of this relatively short film (103 minutes), our hero has changed in a surprisingly believable manner. And if we, being spectators rather than participants, have not quite done the same, the film has nonetheless set us to considering a world beyond our own in a way that we would not have imagined when we first sat down in our seat to watch.

I'll have more to say when The Human Resources Manager makes its theatrical debut.  Right now you can see it at the Walter Reade on Saturday, January 15, at 6:30 and again on Thursday, January 20, at 3:30 and 8:30. If you can't make these screenings, you 'll have the chance again, as the film will definitely be opening later this year. I suspect our Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will look highly upon Mr. Riklis' movie.

All photos are from the film itself, except that of Mr. Riklis, top,

which was found on the web, credited to Jesús Uriarte.

NYJFF: The Adlons' MAHLER on the COUCH pairs the composer with Alma -- and Freud

A fine choice for the NYJFF's opening night (opening afternoon, too), MAHLER ON THE COUCH, from the father/son film-making team of and Percy and Felix O. Adlon, is admirable for a number of reasons. Primarily it will -- due to its cinematic smarts, humor and energy--help rid us film buffs of memories of that ridiculous, 2001 attempt, Bride of the Wind, to provide a movie about Alma and Gustav Mahler. Interestingly enough, what the two films have most in common is one important actor -- Johannes Silberschneider -- who, in Bride, played the role of Alma's earlier love, her piano teacher Alexander von Zemlinsky, whom Alma gave up to be with Gustav. In Couch, Herr Silberschneider (shown below, right) graduates to the great man himself. And a damn good Mahler he makes.

The Adlons (shown at right, with Felix on the left) begin their movie with a charmingly imagined meeting between Mahler and Sigmund Freud (according to Freud's journals, a meeting actually took place), in which the composer, who has already cancelled two earlier meetings, now tries -- after Freud asks him his first personal question -- to wiggle out of this one, too. The daddy of all shrinks, however (played quite well by Karl Markovics, below, right) won't let him off so easily. The proverbial -- and titular -- couch is not used initially. Instead the two men walk around the grounds and then into town, as Mahler relaxes into reminiscing. Whereupon flashbacks appear, and keep appearing throughout, coupled to direct addresses to the camera by a number of subsidiary characters from Alma's mom and dad to Gustav's sister and others, as they fill us in on everything from history to gossip.

All this handled with a surprisingly light touch and enough humor and wit, particularly in the scenes between Mahler and Freud, to keep us amused and entertained, as we slowly enter the not-so-happy lives of this fabled pair. The filmmakers keep their cameras moving, ever alert for details of the active life, especially in the scene of Alma's and her mother's first visit backstage at the opera house. Later we watch a musicale, below, in attendance at which are the most prominent exes of both Gustav and Alma. Again, there is boundless energy and life on display.

As to the veracity of much of what we see, "Are you making this up?" Freud asks Mahler at one point in a flashback sequence, and so the Adlons very cleverly hedge their bets. For if the master questions the story, we don't have to. As the flashbacks grow longer, the time spent with Freud grows less. Initially, we miss this; finally, as we're pulled ever farther into the lives of Alma and Gustav, we don't.

As good as is Silberschneider as Mahler, newcomer Barbara Romaner (at left) is ever better as Alma. Romaner brings all the complications of a real woman to the role: She's needy, smart, sexual, selfish, ambitious, loving and wild. We see her initially as the lover of Walter Gropius (played by Friedrich Mücke, below). This is the affair that appears to bring on Mahler's need for therapy, but it is Mahler's letter to Alma, early on in the relationship, that acts as the catalyst for her change and growth. In it, he tells her that it is his work that counts; hers is paltry. He needs a wife. The movie is feminist simply by virtue of being true to its time.

We've also seen, in so many earlier films, the artist in the doldrums of composition, the pangs of composition, as the composer is surrounded by reams of blank or wrong-headed pages. But here, given to us in the midst of all else -- sexual passion, therapy, death, music and more -- it works anew. Perhaps the most moving scene is Alma's simple declaration of herself as being in, a part of, Mahler's music. By the finale, you'll realize that, above all, the film is a kind of love story. And a good one. It's a good bio-pic, too.

Mahler on the Couch, screens at the Walter Reader Theater opening day of the NYJFF, Wednesday, January 12, at 1 and 6pm. Click this link for the entire NYJFF program and for online ticket purchases.

NYJFF: Kevin McNeer's long-gestating documentary STALIN THOUGHT OF YOU

The near-irresistible title of Kevin McNeer's documentary STALIN THOUGHT OF YOU -- back in the days of the infamous, mustachioed dictator -- would have sent politically-aware Russians (along with any of us who knew current events) running for the hills. The recipient of Stalin's thoughts and the subject of McNeer's fascinating if necessarily incomplete documentary is one, Boris Efimov, a talented political cartoonist who, along with his journalist brother Mikhail Koltsov (who was the editor of Pravda for a time), caught the attention of Joseph Stalin early on. This became, for one of them, at least, his road to glory. For the other? Not so much. (Why these two related-by-blood brothers have different last names is one of the fascinating details explained in the film.)

Born in 1900, Efimov was already 103 years old when McNeer, shown at right, began filming in 2003. By 2008, when the ancient gentleman died, having reached 108, the filmmaker has managed a number of interviews with the cartoonist, who (up until 2006, at least, when the filming seems to have stopped) retained much of his brain function and was able to recall with surprising facility and speed the memories of his life from the 1920s onward. McNeer asks Efimov questions, and the man answers, sometimes with surprising honesty and perspicacity. A sheep-like fellow who, despite his great talent, never made waves of any kind, Efimov lasted out The Czar, the Revolution, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and was surviving even Putin, when he finally bit the dust. This continued success -- for a man who was prominent, "political" (this description cuts two ways) and in the public eye nearly his entire life -- has got to be some sort of record. Particularly in Russia.

Efimov, shown above in his younger years, had to have been crafty -- give him that. McNeer gives him a lot more, some of it rope with which to hang himself.  That Efimov does not is due as much to the history of Russia, and how its people survive, as to anything else. Much of the film is narrated by Boris himself, as he tells of the decades gone by. McNeer pipes up with questions from time to time, and historical footage from the various periods also make up much of the film. This footage -- which includes Boris and Mikhail in their early years, but only Boris in his later -- are particularly fascinating, as they come from the Russian State Film Archives and have not been much seen, I think, by Americans.

The most interesting part of this history, by far, is that devoted to the Spanish Civil War -- from the Russian perspec-tive. Brother Mikhail (shown at left), before he fell from favor, was sent to Spain as one of the top Russians-in-charge, and what we learn here should fuel yet more fire regarding what Stalin wanted out of this war and just how important were the Communists in the fight against Franco. From the time of Stalin's earliest purges, Efimov was asked to create political cartoons (one such is shown at bottom) against men both at home and abroad, from Trotsky and Lenin to Hitler and Eisen-hower -- some of whom he and his brother thought to be decent and innocent. How he managed to do the dictator's bidding and still live with himself comes up again and again during the movie.

Toward film's end, the cartoonist (shown above) goes to the studio of a younger and successful artist and sees the man's caricatures of the famous -- from Khrushchev and Kennedy to Castro and even... Putin.  "What do you think?" the artist slyly asks Efimov about his drawing of Putin.  "Was this done with 'love'?" There is a very long pause, during which it seems that all of the older artist's 104 years might be passing in front of his eyes.  "No," he answers at last. Do we detect a bit of shame in his eyes? Hard to say. Whatever, this fellow's life and career prove a gold mine of interest and oddness, of history, negotiation and concession.

Stalin Thought of You will screen at the Walter Reade Theater, Wednesday, January 12, at 3:30 and 8:30pm. See the entire NYJFF program listing here.