Hurricane by Eden Golan at the Eurovision Song Contest 2024!

It’s that time of year again. Our phone vote later today will be going to the wonderful Eden Golan and her song Hurricane. Go Israel!

Lynne Reid Banks 21st July 1929 – 4th April 2024

For a writer to achieve excellence and bestsellerdom in one sphere is miracle enough. To do it twice is something else. Lynne Reid Banks did that with her first novel, The L-Shaped Room, a kind of female version of the kitchen sink phenomenon. Twenty years later she did it again and became a children’s favourite with The Indian Cupboard. Both novels were adapted for the big screen. In between the woman who trained as an actress and was one of British TV’s first interviewers wrote wonderful books set in Israel, making her one of this reader’s favourites, humanising the Promised Land with their depictions of realpolitik. Her death was announced by her children a few days ago. She made a difference. Rest in peace.

Golda (2023)

I’m a politician not a soldier. October 1973. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad receives intelligence suggesting that Egypt and Syria are preparing to commence a military campaign against Israel, which it promptly relays to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Helen Mirren). Meir is dismissive of the intelligence, noting her inability to initiate a counter-plan without the support of her defence minister Moshe Dayan (Rami Heuberger) who is as sceptical as she is. 6th October: the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. Meir’s inner circle informs her that Egypt has amassed a large force opposite the Suez Canal, concluding that hostilities would begin by sundown. Even though she knows her tardiness in preparing adequately has put them on the back foot, Meir refuses to make a pre-emptive move, instead ordering a partial mobilisation to face the threat. Nonetheless she is surprised when the attack begins early. Dayan, who is sent to inspect the Golan Heights on the Syrian border, is horrified to discover that Syria has launched a thorough attack against the ill-prepared Israeli troops. Shocked, he attempts to resign and Meir talks him out of it but loses confidence in him. Between 7-8 October, with Egypt and Syria making gains into Israel, Israeli Defence Force chief of staff Lieutenant General David ‘Dado’ Elazar (Lior Ashkenazi) proposes to relieve Israeli fortifications in the Sinai Peninsula using the 162nd Division. Despite opposition from Mossad chief Zvi Zamir (Rotam Keinan) the plan proceeds but the IDF is defeated by the Egyptians. The following day, with the Syrian offensive having slowed, Dayan proposes an air strike on Syrian capital Damascus to put pressure on Egypt. However, with a shortage of planes, the Israeli Air Force is unable to proceed. In response, Meir asks United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Liev Schreiber) to provide surplus jets, to which he reluctantly agrees but he expresses the view that it is problematic for the United States to increase its support for Israel in light of the 1973 oil crisis. On the fifth day, amidst increasing tensions, Major General Ariel ‘Arik’ Sharon (Ohad Knoller) proposes an operation to cross the Suez Canal using the 143rd Division to challenge the Egyptian 2nd and 3rd Armies. Zvi informs Meir that the Egyptian 4th and 21st Divisions would cross the canal in two days, leaving the capital Cairo undefended in the event of an attack. According to the intelligence, the Egyptians cross the canal, are met with resistance from Israeli tank forces led by Lieutenant General Haim Bar-Lev (Dominic Mafham) and are defeated. On 15 October, Sharon’s forces cross the canal at an undefended point called the Chinese Farm. They are ambushed by Egyptian units … This is 1948 again. We are fighting for our lives. Biographical films usually make the mistake of trying to fill in all the gaps of a Great Man’s life: here we have a crucial period in the career of Israel’s first (and to date, last and only) female Prime Minister. Non-Jewish Mirren was horribly criticised for donning a prosthetic nose to play the Jewish woman who held her own in a roomful of male experts which is just silly particularly since it was Meir’s grandson Gideon who wanted her cast. In any case this is not the reason this film doesn’t entirely work. For the most part it’s a low-budget talking shop, a war room convened at a distance while bad news is conveyed in the usual fashion. They say history doesn’t repeat itself in exactly the same way but in 2024 there’s something very familiar about the fifty-year old scenario in which Israel suffers a horrible surprise attack and is forced to respond in self-defence: We are facing an unholy alliance between the Soviets and the Arabs that must be defeated. In the midst of what looks like imminent disaster Golda is dealing with medical issues but drags herself (and is dragged by her secretary Lou Kaddar, played by Camille Cottin) to face down the enemy on a daily basis – sometimes in her own team. She has to rally Dayan when he loses faith in himself and finally agrees to visit the front line – and some archive footage verifies the event. If we have to we will fight alone. There’s some fun (kinda) banter when Kissinger arrives and Schreiber enjoys the cut and thrust of conversation with the woman occasionally known as the Iron Lady of Israel: Madam Prime Minister, in terms of our work together, I think it’s important for you to remember that I am first an American, second I’m Secretary of State, and third, I am a Jew/You forget that in Israel we read from right to left. Nothing if not pragmatic, we are firmly in the world of realpolitik. Mirren does well but is not particularly well supported by the setup or the direction by Guy Nattiv. Otherwise this is filled with tension but the suspense per se is thin on the ground despite this hastily constructed plan falling apart time and again in a race against imminent destruction and the world’s oil supply lines are up in the air. At a time when Jews are in more danger than at any time since the Shoah this portrait in miniature is flawed but essential viewing, a reminder that the state of Israel is permanently at risk while geopolitics continue to slash and burn. Written by Nicholas Martin. Knowing when you’ve lost is easy. It’s knowing when you’ve won that’s hard

The Operative (2019)

We do not execute at any cost. If something is not according to plan you have the right to call it off.  British-Jewish Mossad agent Thomas (Martin Freeman) who is based in Germany is summoned to try and figure out the whereabouts of an agent he recruited following her father’s funeral in London because she is a valuable asset who has vanished without trace.  He met and persuaded this mysterious woman Anne/Rachel (Diane Kruger) to become an agent, sending her to Tehran on an undercover mission where she falls in love with Farhad (Casvar) whose business Mossad are hoping to use as cover for a nuclear weapons exchange to destabilise the national programme. When her missions become more dangerous and Farhad is kidnapped by her colleagues, she decides to quit, forcing her boss to find her before she becomes a threat to Israel… You should visit Israel. To connect to the place. The people. Adapted from the Hebrew novel The English Teacher by former intelligence officer Yiftach Reicher-Atir, writer/director Yuval Adler has made a smartly told, nuanced story benefitting from a defining performance by an almost unrecognisable dressed-down Kruger. The Tehran section is as educative as it is narrative, with Rachel’s love story an echo of her real feelings about the city and its people. Her enigmatic persona – she persists in telling people she’s adopted even though she isn’t – is not properly explored which suggests a hinterland the film doesn’t entirely reconcile. The letdown is Freeman, who apparently replaced Eric Bana as Rachel’s handler. Refreshing mainly because of its insights into the region’s geopolitics from a new perspective. I can’t believe I’m here. Doing this

Damascus Cover (2017)

 

When missions go bad, there’s only one rule – protect your partner.  Following the murder of his colleague in Damascus by Syrian Secret Police Chief Sarraj (Navid Negahban) Israeli agent Ari Ben-Sion aka Hans Hoffman (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is deployed to Syria by his overseer Miki (John Hurt) to exfiltrate a spy and his family and runs into American photographer Kim (Olivia Thirlby) with whom he becomes involved before realising she is part of a much bigger plot and the real target of his mission is an entirely different individual in deep cover but hiding in plain sight … It’s a real maze. Adapted by director Daniel Zelik Berk and Samantha Newton from Howard Kaplan’s 1977 bestseller this is updated to 1989, the year of revolutions, so that the action happens in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall (although they’re not exactly celebrating Christmas here). The characterisation is undercooked and the storytelling is a little clunky – you feel that Hans/Ari should have figured out a lot quicker that something bigger is going on than his purported task. It’s the textural matters that are more interesting – the maze-like construction of a city where Jews are only permitted to leave their quarter one at a time, where streets lead you to dead ends like a rat; the depicting of the secret police under the original Assad; the post-war Nazis doing business in an Islamic haven (the role of Moslems in the Holocaust has yet to be dramatised); the issue of identity in a region where anti-semitism is writ large: when Ari enters Syria he is asked, Have you ever visited Occupied Palestine? He is already displaced in Israel after moving from Germany as a child and is suffering the bereavement any father would following the breakdown of his marriage in the wake of the death of his young son (although we don’t know how that happened, there are several shots of children at play as well as his haunting nightmares about the boy).  He doesn’t exhibit true emotion until he’s engaged with Kim who herself has issues with being distanced from her young son and who has a father whose actions for his Syrian overlords has resulted in his death.  She appears to be repaying a debt to the intelligence service, willingly or not. Berk is the former talent agent who introduced John Travolta to Quentin Tarantino for which we are all truly grateful and this has a slick look and a trim running time. It’s beautifully shot by Chloë Thomson.  Despite the welcome complexities in Ari and his mistakes, and the issue of Syria versus Israel, it doesn’t plumb the resonant depths of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – the echo casting of John Hurt in the perfunctory but dramatically significant role of Miki has a sorrowfulness because it is that great actor’s final part. It is fitting therefore that he should have the last word in the film’s signing off, Goodbye my friend

Entebbe (2018)

How many Israelis?  How many hijackers?  Where are they going?  In July 1976 an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris is hijacked by Islamic terrorists (the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) including two Baader-Meinhof supporting Germans Wilfred Böse aka Boni (Daniel Brühl) and Brigitte Kuhlmann (Rosamund Pike) who find out that Ulrike Meinhof has hanged herself in prison (it is rather more likely that she was murdered) and want to take their anti-fascist beliefs out on some innocent Israelis in exchange for the release of Palestinian terrorists.  They take over the plane in Athens and the Palestinians order the French pilots to land in Entebbe, Uganda, where they believe murderous maniac Idi Amin (Nonso Anozie) will influence negotiations with the Israeli government. In Israel, the tensions between Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (Lior Ashkenazi) and Shimon Peres (Eddie Marsan in a hilarious wig) are played out during stalled negotiations (the Israelis do not negotiate with terrorists) while a commando unit prepares for an assault on the African airport … Germans killing Jews. Have you thought how this looks?  Playwright Gregory Burke’s screenplay teases out all the issues with on-the-nose dialogue in this historical reconstruction which perhaps does too many things at once – the dance motif which threads through the narrative because one of the commandos Zeev Hirsch (Ben Schnetzer) has a girlfriend preparing for a difficult performance of Echad Mi Yodea is perhaps a trope too far – and ends up straddled between one too many stools. The Germans are not exactly naive – their ideological struggle against their parents’ generation has itself a rather sickly unironic anti-semitic root (let’s call him Adolf Hitler or Martin Luther, whomsoever you prefer, they call it anti-fascist). However they are out of their depth with the Islamists who quickly put the Jewish hostages in one room and prepare to kill them first. French pilot Jacques Le Moine (Denis Ménochet) is the voice of reason in Boni’s ear – an engineer is worth fifty revolutionaries, he tells him. And what about dignity?  Drinking water gives people dignity, he cautions as he fixes the dirty water supply at the rear end of Entebbe Airport while the regular business goes on at the public end. It is his subtle finger wagging that gets Boni to desist from a genocidal spree. There are nice supporting performances – including Peter Sullivan as Amos Eran, Rabin’s right-hand man – and a real clunker from Pike whose conversation into a dead telephone after she’s run out of uppers gives new meaning to the term phoning it in.  The hostages’ terror is more or less ignored even when one French-Israeli is returned to the group by the Palestinians in a shambolic state after they have tortured him. Everything is defused by cutting back to the dancer girlfriend and her psychological issues with her job (boo bloody hoo). The one man killed in Operation Thunderbolt was Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother Yonathan (played here by Angel Bonanni) which precipitated the young man’s return from the United States and his elevation to PM for the first time in 1996, as the end credits remind us over another dance performance (why?). Rabin was eventually murdered by a Jewish extremist who didn’t want him to carry on dialogue with the Palestinians. And so it goes on. This was a fabulously daring rescue mission but you wouldn’t know it from watching this film.  It’s loose enough with the truth but one story that isn’t included is a woman hostage who choked on a bone and was sent to hospital. After the raid, Amin had her murdered. Directed by José Padilha. There are three other films on this subject and I’ll bet anything they’re all better than this. Shalom.

The Robe (1953)

You crucified him. You, my master. Yet you freed me. I’ll never serve you again, you Roman pig. Masters of the world, you call yourselves. Thieves! Murderers! Jungle animals! A curse on you! A curse on your empire!  Drunk and disillusioned Roman centurion Marcellus Gallio (Richard Burton), wins Jesus’ robe in a dice game after the crucifixion. Marcellus has never been a man of faith like his slave, Demetrius (Victor Mature), but when Demetrius escapes with the robe, Marcellus experiences disturbing visions and feels guilty for his actions. Convinced that destroying the robe will cure him, Marcellus sets out to find Demetrius and discovers his Christian faith along the way… This widescreen epic was adapted from Lloyd C. Douglas’ 1942 novel by Gina Kaus, Albert Maltz and Philip Dunne and it has a sense of enormity and place as it is set over 6 years in Rome, Judea – inaccurately called Palestine here – Capri and Galilee, with the might of the Empire amplified by Alfred Newman’s classical score. At its best this is a film of conscience and faith and the origins of Christianity;  at its most entertaining it’s a marvellous sword and sandals outing, among the very best of its era. Directed by Henry Koster, this was the first film made in CinemaScope.

The Odessa File (1974)

I had hoped President Kennedy’s death would give us more time. The faction novel by Frederick Forsyth has a special place in my heart because it was the first book I borrowed when I finally got a ticket to join the Adult section of my local public library after I turned 12. And it stunned me when I discovered that Forsyth was merely fictionalising in very approximate fashion the story of the Butcher of Riga, Eduard Roschman (Maximilian Schell) who is protected by the Organisation der Ehemaligen SS-Angehoerigen (Former SS Members) in winter 1963. Journalist Peter Milller (Jon Voight) happens upon the story by simple expedient of pulling over in a Hamburg street to hear that President Kennedy has died and then literally chases an ambulance to an apartment building where an elderly Holocaust survivor has gassed himself. A policeman friend hands him the man’s diary and he uncovers the story behind the suicide of Salomon Tauber which contains one gleaming detail:  the murder by Roschmann at Riga port of a colleague who won a very rare German military medal. After meeting many unhelpful people in authority in a Germany still clearly run by the Nazis (there were 12 million of them after all, and they all just returned to civilian life and kept their pensions) he goes to Vienna where he visits Simon Wiesenthal who tells him about the ODESSA. He is beaten up, his dancer girlfriend (Mary Tamm) is threatened by some ex-Nazis and then ‘befriended’ by a policewoman when Miller goes off grid. He’s kidnapped by Mossad agents who want to know who he is and why he’s after Roschmann, supposedly dead almost two decades ago.  Then he dons a disguise … There are a few alterations to the source by Kenneth Ross and George (The Prisoner) Markstein and this is a fairly conventional procedural but still satisfying considering the strength of the subject matter (a topic plundered years later by novelist Sam Bourne aka Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland.) Voight is very good in what could be a difficult part and he gets a superb twist ending – when we learn the deeply personal reason for his search in addition to the quest for a great story. In a nice touch Maria Schell plays Voight’s mother, making this the only time she and Maximilian acted in the same film. The lovely Mary Tamm would later become a notable assistant to BBC’s Doctor Who and would have a good role as Blanche Ingram in TV’s Jane Eyre opposite Timothy Dalton. She died too soon.  There is an interesting score by Andrew Lloyd Webber (you’ll recognise phrases which would appear in the forthcoming musical Evita) with a special mention for Perry Como’s rendition of Christmas Dream and some superb cinematography by the great Oswald Morris and scene-setting by production designer Rolf Zehetbauer in this Anglo-German production – which might just account for the somewhat cleaned-up account of post-war Nazism. As it’s directed by multi-hyphenate Ronald Neame you wouldn’t expect anything less than a great-looking movie.  In another pleasing twist to the narrative, this prompted the tracking down of the real Roschmann to South America. But you’ll have to consult the history books to find out what happened next …

A Tale of Love and Darkness (2016)

Natalie Portman returns to her homeland of Israel for this touching adaptation of the Amos Oz memoir of their country’s  violent post-WW2 transition to statehood after the ending of the British Mandate. She plays his mother, a Polish woman whose relationship with her own vicious mother is more than a little tricky and finds her suffused with survivor’s guilt;  her husband is an academic writer, a weak-minded man envious of a novelist friend’s success and tempted to play an active part in the forthcoming actions to create Israel;  young Amos observes and listens; being told stories; and creating his own impressions of adults, their relationships and rivalries, and what they do to survive; and how marriage works. There’s even a budding romance with an Arabic girl who talks to him of poetry. The performances are uniformly good but remarkably, given her busy behind the scenes role (adapting and directing) it’s Portman who surprises in her interpretation of a woman who finally goes off the rails in the most understandable way possible.  Strangely, it is her voice that alerts you:  she speaks Hebrew in an entirely different and lower register than in her English-language performances and her persona achieves a different kind of depth as a result. Who knew? A beautifully made and fascinating piece of work.

להסתגלות נגיעה זו של הזיכרונות העמוסים העוז של המעבר שלאחר WW2 האלים של נטלי פורטמן חוזרת למולדתה ישראל  ארצם למדינה לאחר סיום המנדט הבריטי. היא משחקת אמו, פולני שיחסיה עם אמה הקסמים שלה הוא קצת יותר מסובך ומוצא אותה רווי האשמה של הניצול; בעלה הוא סופר אקדמי, יתפתה לשחק חלק פעיל בפעולות הקרובות ליצור בישראל; צעיר עמוס מעירה ומקשיב, להיות סיפורים ויצירת יתרשם בעצמו של מבוגרים, יחסים ויריבויות שלהם, ומה הם עושים כדי לשרוד. ואיך נישואים עובדים. יש אפילו רומן ניצנים עם נערת ערבית מי שמדבר אליו שירה. ההופעות הן אחיד טובות אבל להפליא, בהתחשב עסק אותה מאחורי קלעי התפקיד (התאמה ובימוי) זה פורטמן מי שמפתיע בפרשנות שלה של אישה סוף הסוף הולכת מהפסים באופן המובן ביותר האפשרי. באופן מוזר, זה קולה שמתריעה: היא מדברת עברית ב מרשם שונה לחלוטין ונמוך בהופעות שלה בשפה האנגלית והאישיות שלה משיגה סוג אחר של עומק כתוצאה מכך. מי ידע? חתיכה יפה עשתה ומרתקת של עבודה.