3-Iron Director: Ki-doc-kim 2004 from the 3rdear at the cinemateque Jerusalem seen Tue 2nd Dec.
Extraordinary people, no matter how good they are or how gentle they are towards others, even towards plants and the environment, must live according to the laws that govern society, however harsh these may be, or face the consequences. The law can even mete out cruel punishments to criminals. The only way a person can live contrary to the laws of society is by becoming invisible, which is possible, as this beautiful movie shows.
All of Me "Llévate mis amores" (original title) Arturo Gonzales Vilaseñor 2014
This documentary is about the poor helping the very poor. Poor women, practically starving themselves, prepare plastic bags filled with rice. They stand at the side of railway tracks, where freight trains rumble past with starving migrants hanging from their sides and balancing on their roofs, and hold out the bags so that the starving migrants can reach out and grab them as the train passes by.
1. Baran Director Majid Majidi 2001
This powerful movie brings us into an atmosphere of suffering, like Dante’s Inferno, the skeleton of a high-level building with fires at each level. The labourers interminably push wheelbarrows and carry heavy bags of cement from one level to another. At the same time, they live in fear that labour inspectors will have them dismissed. The film, by showing modern buildings and cars in a far distance, makes a point that not everybody in Iran lives like this, only the outsiders, like the refugees from Afghanistan. The impossible happens, and a beautiful young girl enters this hell, and a young man falls in love with her. This feeling of love lifts him to happiness, and he performs heroism for his beloved. It doesn’t matter that she can’t requite his passion because his life is sustained by his joy and love.
Children of Heaven Majid Majidi 1997
This movie is full of interesting and exciting, unforgettable scenes, such as the opening scene of the cobbler repairing a girl’s pink shoe, which is the crux of the matter. Later, the picture of the little girl, sitting like a Buddha, dressed in vivid red and yellow velvet, with a crown on her head, looks like a princess. Later, she proves worthy of such a title; she is kind, patient and determined. This is especially evident in a scene when she eventually catches up with the girl who wears her shoes. Then, the scene of her chasing her brother’s sneaker, carried away by a stream of water, is exciting and brings us relief and happiness. Throughout the movie, we are kept in alternating suspense and relief. It’s like an emotional roller coaster and is excellent entertainment.
Conrack. Director: Martin Ritt. 1974 from YouTube. Seen: Thu 3rdNov 2015
Good teachers are rare breeds. Not only is it challenging to find people with the training and ability to be good teachers, but there’s a more complex problem to overcome in finding a good teacher, which is the resistance of communities to accept the change that good teachers bring about in society. They are scared of change because they see it as a threat to their livelihood, which in many communities depends on exploiting ignorant, uneducated people; they are forced by their uneducated situation to accept menial jobs and so aren’t a threat to their higher-paid jobs. They threaten employers because the more educated they are, the more they’d have to be paid. So teachers, trying to educate and raise the poorer people to a higher level in society, have a difficult job.
The Good Heart Director Dagur Kári 2009 From the Third Ear at the Cinematheque. Seen Mon 1
st Dec 2016
People mainly exploit the good actions of kind-hearted people toward them, which turns the kind-hearted person bitter and unwilling to perform any more acts of kindness. Notwithstanding, however, this movie shows that it’s always worthwhile to act kind when the opportunity presents itself because the ultimate result can be as good as this excellent. This is a most entertaining movie.
The Gunman. Pierre Morel 2015
I’m amazed at how often I can feel tension and excitement looking at movies showing the war between the forces of evil and the forces of justice. Even though I know that the forces of evil stand no chance of destroying the forces of good, represented by Shean Penn, especially considering that we get regular views of muscular physique, I’m still tense because the forces of evil, this time, are really powerful while the forces of good have the added burden of needing to protect a beautiful woman (that really proves that they are on the good side), our tension is also increased by the knowledge we receive from the doctor that our hero is suffering from a debilitating illness, so even while he’s on top we dread that the deadly disease will strike him down. Naturally, this doesn’t happen, but it does cause us some concern. The pursuit takes us through Barcelona and Granada, with massive high-power shooting, fast driving and amazing stunts, which end in the bullring of Granada, with a magnificent scene worthy of the defeat of evil; the bull gores the evil leader. Shean Penn is excellent; he’s a regular one-man army. This movie ultimately held my attention, but it might not be for some viewers.
The Bedroom. Todd Field 2001
The mystery in this excellent movie isn’t about who did it, which is expected, and we know who it is, but the beauty of the film lies in the eventual explanation of why things happened the way they did. This explanation may be evident to some viewers at the movie's beginning. Still, it came to me as a surprise and added immensely to my enjoyment of the film, which also lay in the excellent acting.
Cure - The Life of another Director: Andrea Staka 2014 Cinemateque Jerusalem Wed November 25 2015
Some societies have customs that perpetuate the memory of a loved one, making it seem as if he or she is still alive. For example, the custom of showing pictures of the deceased or the custom, shown in this movie, of dressing up in clothes that the departed would enjoy, as the widow of a man killed in the war does. She dresses in a beautiful white wedding dress that the deceased husband loved.
The idea of not accepting the fact of death is quite foreign in Jewish society. Jews actually have customs that reinforce the idea that death is final; it is a Jewish custom for each mourner to place spadesful of earth on the coffin, all pictures of the deceased are hidden from view during the seven days of morning, and it is a custom that on seeing a grave, one must put stones on it. All of these customs tend to reinforce the certainty of death.
This is why Jews might not easily understand why the family is so eager to transfer the identity of their daughter to her friend, who killed her during an argument and accidentally pushed her over the edge of a cliff over the raging sea. The friend is a foreign migrant to Croatia and is searching for a way to be accepted by the people in her new homeland. She readily adopts the identity of her dead friend that the family attach to her, without even being aware, for a while, that she is doing this.
London River, a movie Directed By Rachid Bouchareb 2012 Cinemateque Jerusalem November 24 2015, 19:00
My friend Shaul sent me a link to a humorous page where John Cleese discusses how different countries classify terrorist alerts. Unfortunately, I've lost my sense of humour about these things, especially after seeing the movie London River last night.
As if we didn't know, this movie demonstrates, or I should say that the events depicted in this movie (because they are true), show that the modern world is, more than ever, guided by religious aphorisms, which in my opinion, screw up our sense of moral values.
The movie is directed by Rachid Bouchareb. His biography only tells us that he was born in Algeria, but judging from the message in the film, I presume he's a Muslim. It begins, naturally, as would befit the message, with Matthew (5:44): "Love thine enemy." Terrorists, even though they may be Moslems, seem to like this Christian doctrine because it ensures their acceptance in a Christian world.
It's about two people coming together (that is very beautiful, like the lion lying down with the wolf) after their children were killed in a terrorist attack in London (that is very bad, like the apocalypse). The one is a Moslem, the father of the boy, a black Moslem from somewhere in Africa, looking as if he had just jumped out of a tree, who lives in France, and the other is an English lady from the isle of Guernsey. All the people featured in the movie are Moslems, including the police, except the girl's mother.
The actual terrorist attack is pushed into the background but cannot be moved out of our minds.
In my humble opinion. I think that my emotions are jerked into shock, disgust and anger by the juxtapositioning of a ghastly terror attack on the one hand and the pure, idealistic harmony of two human beings from different cultures coming together on the other. Suggesting that there is good in the bad.
The movie is telling us that something good comes from something wrong. As if it was the will of Allah that caused the terror attack and the will of Allah to bring two good people together. The movie suggests that the boy was the suicide bomber, but that information is pushed aside.
The Long Hot Summer. Director: Martin Ritt 1958 from the Third Ear at the Cinematheque Nov 2016
A good man will always come out on top and eventually confound preconceived opinions, leading to dangerous hotheadedness. The movie sharply criticizes the tendency of many ignorant people to jump to conclusions about somebody’s character. A man’s character doesn’t necessarily match his reputation, and we should be careful about prejudging people based on hearsay evidence. As this excellent movie shows, that only makes life very hot and uncomfortable.
Meek’s Cut off Kelly Reichardt 2010A
family of high Biblical morals trekking through the desert on their way to their promised land is wary of immorality, which they think is all around them in this barren wilderness and suspect their rough-looking scout of misleading them into a trap. Hesitantly, they put their trust in an Indian, who the scout wants to kill because he is convinced that he is the one who will lead them into a trap to kill and rob them. Tuesday, November 10, 2015
Poetry Chang Dong Lee 2010 available at the Third Ear Cinemateque Jerusalem Nov 2015
After seeing this movie, I conclude that only a person with deep feelings about his/her life experiences can write a good poem. The feeling can be about something simple like seeing an apple or a tree or a leaf, or it can be about a terrible tragedy, such as a young girl committing suicide because of suffering caused by our son and the grandmother committing an immoral act to get money to compensate the girl’s parents.
Poetry is the expression of deep feelings brought on by events and experiences that happen to us through no fault of ours. Everybody has deep feelings about these experiences. Some people hide them, while there are some (very few) who record them as poetry for all the world to share.
