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Hyperchondriac
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I Have Fun Everywhere I Go
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Brian Frazer
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    Rabbi Levi Brackman and Sam Jaffe
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    Jonathan Garfinkel
  • 10/20:
    Rabbi Robert Levine
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    Danit Brown
  • 10/27:
    Joshua Henkin
  • 11/03:
    Craig Glazer
  • 11/10:
    Max Gross
  • 11/17:
    Seth Greenland

Culture

"Live and Become": An "Exodus" for Modern Israel?

by Izzy Grinspan, February 1, 2008

5 comments
 
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Sirak Sabahat is cute, but he's no Paul Newman: Two of the stars of "Live and Become"Sirak Sabahat is cute, but he's no Paul Newman: Two of the stars of "Live and Become"Exodus is practically a sixth book of Moses for many American Jews, but we can probably all agree that its vision of Israel could use an update. I’m not even talking about the film’s depiction of Israeli Arabs (all both of them) – I just mean that Israel’s modern population consists of people whose parents fled continents other than Europe. So when The New York Times says Live and Become, an Israeli epic about an African immigrant, “aspires to be something like a contemporary Exodus from an outsider’s point of view,” that sounds like a good thing.

Unfortunately, the Times isn’t convinced – a shame not only because we could use some good Ethiopian Jewish stories, but also because the movie LOOKS really excellent. Its hero is a Sudanese boy whose mother, in a desperate attempt to help him escape their refugee camp, sneaks him onto an Israel-bound plane of Ethiopian Jews. The boy, now called Shlomo, gets adopted by a French-Israeli couple and grows up as a black Jew, facing casual racism and ongoing questions about his Jewish identity.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film garnered an average rating of 84 out of 100 from an audience of mostly international reviewers, which gives me hope because I really want to like this movie. But it’s hard to get past details like this:

Armand Amar’s score, a wailing pastiche of Middle Eastern and Western styles, helps evoke his suffering and longing, but it is both annoyingly repetitive and, like Shlomo’s monologues to the moon, mawkish.

Monologues to the moon? Really? Maybe for now we should stick to Paul Newman.



5 comments | leave a comment
 

Cavanaugh

02/01/08 7:55 pm
Comments: 85
Friends: 3

The Newfound Art of the Metareview

Izzy, I'm not sure because you don't come right out and say, but are you reviewing a movie you haven't seen by reviewing the reviews of the movie you haven't seen? Or if you have seen it, can you tell us what YOU thought? I'd like to know, because I definitely think we need to see more stories of Black Jewish experience... good ones, by my preference, even if they are sentimental.



Izzy Grinspan

02/01/08 8:05 pm
Comments: 158
Friends: 50

yeah, haven't seen it

Just wanted to point you guys to the review.  If any readers have seen it, though, I'd love to hear what you think.



Anonymous

02/02/08 12:53 am

re: Va, Vis, et Deviens review

Live and Become won the audience choice award at the 2005 Vancouver International Film Fest, and there was no way that would be due solely to Jewish voting, because there aren't enough of us out here.  The movie is incredibly moving, if melodramatic.  Not to be cliché, but Live and Become is an excellent film about the human condition, and certainly about what it means to be Jewish. The film is close to equally split between Hebrew, French, and Amharic. And skip the trailer on Youtube—it's gives away what I think is a shocking surprise late in the film.  



zbird

02/04/08 12:12 pm
Comments: 273
Friends: 4

couldn't you at least say "no pun intended"?

"Exodus is practically a sixth book of Moses for many American Jews"

 Funny, I thought it was the second book.

 

--Z



Anonymous

02/08/08 2:42 pm

I saw it

I saw this film at the Sephardic Jewish Film Festival in LA last year
and it's excellent. IT brings up issues within Jewish culture about
racism, levels of religious observance and adolescence. I was truly
moved and learned so much about Ethiopian culture. If you like this
movie, you should explore the Idan Raichel Project, an Israeli band
that fuses western, middle eastern and Ethiopian styles.