A Film about Shellshock is Particularly Relevant Today

Last week, I had the opportunity to view the documentary film, 50 Broken Pieces, directed by Micha Amitai, produced and co-edited by Aner Preminger.  The film was screened at an event at Hebrew University in honor of Aner Preminger who is retiring from his faculty post after 30 years in academia.  In addition to his work teaching, Preminger is also well-known for his feature films -- Blind Man’s Bluff and Present Continuous – both of which have been reviewed on this blog.

In his remarks, Preminger spoke about how this latest film was conceived.  In 2017, Micha Amitai was a film student at Sapir College, and he proposed the idea of this film as a student project and it developed into a full film and a successful partnership.

Although 50 Broken Pieces was produced in 2022, it is particularly relevant today, especially since so many Israeli soldiers are once again suffering from emotional problems, as a result of the current long war. This film is about the pain, loneliness, and memories of post trauma stress disorder (PTSD).   It is also about the unique friendship that develops between two men who have both experienced trauma.

The filmmaker has chosen to focus his film on Meir, who still has terrible guilt over not having been able to prevent the multiple deaths that resulted from a terrorist bombing, which took place in 1995 on a bus carrying soldiers and civilians, on its way to Kfar Darom, a former settlement in the Gaza Strip.

Today, Meir lives in Sderot with Nadia and his dog.  His everyday life is a constant struggle for a normal balancedd life.  He divides his time between a part-time job fire-guarding on top of a watchtower, and his therapeutic work creating wood sculptures from the stumps of old trees and writing stunningly beautiful and meaningful poetry.  For example, he writes about matches as a metaphor, all lined up in a box, with burnt heads. Meir talks about the nightmares, the trauma, and the guilt.

Amitai, the filmmaker, is also the photographer, scriptwriter, narrator, and is in dialogue with Meir during the film.  He also exposes his own story – as an Airforce helicopter pilot in 2010, he planned a training exercise in which there was a terrible air crash. 

A friendship develops between Meir and Amitai and they seem to find a way through their traumas together.  It seems to me that the making of the film is a therapeutic activity for both of them.

50 Broken Pieces is a strikingly moving documentary film (70 minutes, 2022) which provides a portrayal of two men in crisis and offers us a glimpse into how shellshock can affect a person’s life.  In the post-October 7^th, 2023 period, we must learn together to talk more openly about such terrible effects of war and trauma. 

The film is distributed by Aner Preminger at anerp@zahav.net.il

 

A New Israeli Musical Film: Victory

 Victory (Hebrew title: The Victors המנצחים), directed by Eliran Peled, is a musical which takes place in the period following the Six Day War of 1967. The film is a parody about war, about bereavement, and about post-trauma. The musical style parodies the euphoria of the post Six Day War period.  The film uses a number of strategies to emphasize the parody – stylized sets, soundstage musical numbers, black and white period footage, some of which is shot with the actors in the scenes, and clips from an historical anti-war cabaret number (by Hanoch Levin) which was performed to an angry audience at Kibbutz Netzer Sereni in 1968.

Neta (Yael Stollman) is a kibbutznik who decides to leave the kibbutz, with her husband, to move to Tel Aviv to become an actress.  As her star rises, and she gets some big parts, her husband returns from the war with PTSD and her best friend’s husband is killed.  She becomes absorbed in his illness, but the euphoria after the great victory of the IDF in this war wins out.

The film was made last year, but is now showing in Israeli cinemas.  It was particularly difficult watching it during this period of the war in Gaza.  We are so far from being in a euphoric state at this time. Watching the soldiers in this film dancing and singing, seeing the suffering of one soldier with post trauma distress, viewing the brit of a baby born to a newly widowed woman, and watching the anti-war cabaret scene, were all difficult in these troubled times.

New Film by Lior Ashkenazi

Lior Ashkenazi is well-known as one of the most outstanding actors in the Israeli film world.  He has starred in numerous excellent Israeli films, including Late Marriage, Walk on Water, Norman, Footnote, Foxtrot.  With his directing debut, Perfect Strangers, we see his talent also as a director!  This film is both humorous and serious, it is fast-paced, strongly directed and edited, and superbly acted. 

The film is based on the Italian award-winning film of the same title directed by Paolo Genovese (2016), which seats a bunch of couples around a table, and one suggests putting their cellphones in the middle.  Thus, all the participants end up sharing their messages and phone calls that come in during the evening.  Certainly, a recipe for disaster! Would you share all the details of your life with your friends?

Lior Ashkenazi’s local cultural version of the film is full of twists and turns.  It offers us insights into seven friends, all of them around a dinner table, and makes the outcome into a uniquely Israeli story, with secrets big and small.  The film takes place in a comfortable suburb, where upper middle-class friends joke about how terrible it would be to live in Tel Aviv.  They have a real suburban lifestyle and the host of the evening is very proud of his new gas grill on his beautiful balcony, on which he cooks all kinds of ostentatious meat dishes, reflecting his over-the-top cultural milieu.   

The conversation begins as lightweight and humorous, and at first, I thought the film was a great comedy, but we soon discover it has a dark side to it as well. Slowly there arises a real competition among the participants and many personal problems are brought up, including lying about how one’s business is doing, and sharing problems with regard to child-rearing. After the cellphones are placed in the middle of the table, the tone of the banter begins to shift from light to heavy, as some sensational secrets emerge. 

We all live behind a curtain of a certain amount of fiction. I will not reveal any spoilers about some of the secrets that are revealed that lead to more and more complications among the friends at the table. Nor will I share anything about the remarkable denouement, which gives the plot a whole new paradoxical meaning. Suffice it to say that the film is full of surprises.

I really enjoyed this film.  The script was tight and complex – it deals with many issues in Israeli society, including problems of post-trauma from experiences in the army and the nuanced nature of Israel society’s struggles relating to people in the LGBTQ community. It is labelled as both a comedy and a drama, and I now understand why. Freud would have loved this film as well!

Take a look at the trailer (Hebrew only).