The trailer of the movie "Daniel Auerbach"/Golden Cinema
There are hundreds of Jewish film festivals in the world, and most of them present really strange things.
They screen films from all over the world with a direct touch on Jewish culture and tradition, but also films about World War II that deal with Nazis and do not contain Jews - and in contrast, they also screen any Israeli film, even if it does not reflect on questions of faith and identity, and how many such Israeli films already exist ?
True, there were several Israeli films that could also be defined as "Jewish", because they dealt with Judaism in a deep way and looked to the heavens to discuss Adam, God and everything in between.
Some of them did it in a masterful way, for example "Hauspizin" and "The Overseers", but it is the exception that proves the rule, and in recent years we certainly haven't seen such works.
At the end of the week, "Daniel Auerbach" was released, and turns out to be a rare example of an Israeli film that truly deserves a place at a Jewish festival.
Perhaps it is not surprising, because this is David Wallach's second film, whose first film, the celebrated "Summer Vacation", was also like this.
The same "Summer Vacation" came out about 17 years ago.
It won many international and local awards, and Gila Almagor defined it at the time as the best Israeli film of all time.
Wallach delayed for a while until he released another film, and the fear was that he would suffer from the "second album syndrome", but "Daniel Auerbach" jumped over the obstacle.
There is nothing to talk about international success at the moment because of the situation in Israel, but his new film was the big winner in the local competition of the Jerusalem Festival last summer, and is being praised by critics in Israel.
A movie within a movie.
Producer Eyal Shirai and director David Wallach in "Daniel Auerbach"/Boaz Yonatan Yaakov
Wallach is an ultra-Orthodox who returned the question, and the film is partly about this process, which makes it an even rarer case: an Israeli film that deals with the transition between the religious and secular worlds (usually, if anything, we see films that do the opposite).
"Daniel Auerbach" also deals with the long time it took the director to create his second film: 17 years is an eternity even in terms of local cinema.
Wallach plays his character here, and the film presents him to us as he ponders and agonizes, bothers those close to him and complete strangers with theological and philosophical questions, and is trapped in limbo between the secular and religious worlds and in a never-ending writing crisis.
In the end, as in Fellini's "Half-past eight", this crisis becomes the film itself.
Wallach hangs himself with high stakes but also digs deep already in the first scene, in which his young character, at a stage of his life where he was still a yeshiva student, questions his rabbi why God even puts us through the torments of this world, instead of our soul skipping directly to the next world.
This is one of the most interesting discussions we have seen in Israeli cinema, at least in the last few years, and there are several more such fascinating discussions about the relationship between body and soul, Israel and Judaism, man and his God.
Outside the films of Schroeder and Scorsese, even in international cinema it is rare to encounter theological discourse at this level.
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Light from the homeless.
From "Daniel Auerbach"/Boaz Jonathan Yaakov
Wallach exposes himself and stands naked in front of the camera - in the full sense of the word.
In this film, he joins Assi Dayan, Haim Bozaglu, Dover Kosashvili and Hadas Ben Aroya in the list of Israeli film directors who spread themselves in their films, a strange trend that, as far as I know, has no equivalent in the world.
The nudity is physical as well as mental.
The filmmaker removes the masks and reveals himself here in all his seventy faces - as a smart student, but also as a spoiled, troublesome, idle, dull and seemingly unbearable man, but the creator knows very well that he has a winning personal charm, which allows him to afford everything and us to tolerate him.
In a way, "Daniel Auerbach" is a sort of Israeli version of "Calm down", if Larry David had grown up sitting and then came back with a question.
After all, we have before us a story about a petty and noble Jew who disturbs those around him in various different situations.
Therefore, the big mistake of this movie is that it is a movie at all.
In my opinion, it should have and maybe still can be made as a series.
Its episodic structure is suitable for this.
On top of that, watching Wallach chatter and trill for about a hundred minutes straight is an excruciating experience.
If they had broken it down into shorter episodes, we would have had more room to breathe.
That's the magic secret.
Lehi Kornovsky and Roy Nik in "Daniel Auerbach"/Boaz Yonatan Yaakov
As a film, "Daniel Auerbach" has really huge scenes, for example the opening scene or a scene towards the end,
in which a fight between the director and his landlord gets out of control and reaches rhetorical and emotional heights.
On the other hand, it also has many unpleasant moments.
Like many Israeli filmmakers, Wallach goes into murky areas when he describes his relationship with the opposite sex.
At one point in the film, a woman played by the excellent Gloria Bass enters his life.
Through his fault, the dynamic between them is aggressive, toxic and unpleasant.
Maybe it's on purpose, but it's unpleasant to watch.
In addition to Wallach, the film's producer Eyal Shirai also plays himself and does so with great grace.
On the other hand, there is also a film-within-a-film level here.
Yoav Babli plays the director as a yeshiva student, and Roy Nik plays him in his new, secular incarnation.
Lehi Kornowski, the actor's partner in real life, also plays his partner on the screen, and accordingly there is a unique and charming chemistry between them - a tenderness and tenderness that are so missing in Wallach and Bass's hard-to-watch sex scenes.
Still, a film to be embraced.
From "Daniel Auerbach"/Boaz Jonathan Yaakov
"Daniel Auerbach" is not an easy emotional and cinematic experience, but as far as its spiritual and intellectual level is concerned, it has a unique place in the annals of Israeli cinema and one can rejoice in its existence.
David Wallach makes a little profit from the homeless man, but factually he is an extraordinary figure in the local culture and we can only wish for the obvious - that it won't be another 17 years until his next film.
Since "Daniel Auerbach" is such a personal film, I will end with a personal story, about my first meeting with Wallach.
He bumped into me a few years ago at the Riviera of the Cannes Film Festival, stared at me, and then told me in his characteristic style - "I thought you were tall. Your posts on Facebook look like they were written by a tall person."
Whatever that means, I hope this review looks like it too.
More on the same topic:
Roy Nick
Leahy Kornowski
Gloria Bas
religious
Repeat the question
Judaism