Heads higher than most Israeli films, Broken Wings has that International FIlm Festival feeling of something that'd seem pretty great if you were part of the captive audience under the big screen, but it's too damned serious by a factor of ten to fully appreciate outside a film-festival.
This is a humorless story of uninterupted family grief for a struggling widow & her disruptive or misery-laden daughter & son. Though it strives for a hopeful though by no means happy conclusion, the sustained misery & dysfunction was the part that was the most convincing.
It is also well photographed, though the cinematography makes Isreal look as stark & hopeless as the lives of these characters. And while it's mainly a relief to see an Israeli filmmaker tackling something other than political situations, it's at the same time unsettling that none of these characters seem to have any connection to terrors & injustices, in an alternative Israel where there is no Palestinian question & no Palestinians, which gave me the same feeling as I got from Das boat which took place during an alternative World War II where there was no Jewish question & no Jews -- which is probably why the majority of Israeli films are stuck being political since to not be is itself political.
copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl
|
