Big big thanks go out to guest reviewers for their thoughts on the latest batch of Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival screenings. The Infidel, a comedy about mistaken identities screening tonight at the Sabes JCC at 6pm, was reviewed here by Greg Hunter. Following that screening is the movie Seven Minutes In Heaven, an Israeli film about suicide bombings, which is reviewed here by Kelly Carlin. Check out their reviews here, and do forget to check out there other work (click on there names for that). Enjoy:
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The Infidel
Review by Greg Hunter
Screening at the Sabes JCC March 31st at 6pm
A great movie waits to be made about the challenges facing moderate Muslims--a portrait of the people who live far removed from the violence of radical Islam and yet remain objects of obsession for fear-mongering Peter King types. In its opening scenes, Josh Appignanesi's The Infidel closely resembles this movie: viewers meet Mahmud (Omid Djalili), a middle aged, working class, barely observant Muslim who lives in London's East End and teaches his littlest child phrases like "a jihad on the Great Satan" for a laugh. But Appignanesi isn't sure exactly what he wants The Infidel to be--the film vacillates between political farce, family melodrama, and extended sitcom episode.
In the course of The Infidel, Mahmud learns that he was born Jewish and was later adopted by Muslim parents. Despite his basic religious laxness, the news confounds Mahmud's sense of self. To make matters worse, his son hopes to marry a girl whose new stepdad is an infamous militant Islamic cleric. With the help of Lenny (Richard Schiff), an American Jew, Mahmud begins a crash course in Judaism. He also poses as an Islamic hardliner in front of the cleric for the sake of his son's marriage prospects. Mahmud's new double life leads to some strong comedic moments (as Djalili practices "Jewish" gestures in the mirror), and some groan-inducing ones (it's not enough for him to panic and set a yarmulke on fire--he also has to burn his finger).
Although The Infidel's jokes occasionally fall flat, it works better as a comedy than as a message movie. Once Mahmud decides to stand against the cleric and for religious tolerance, the film displays an odd lack of conviction. A bizarre third-act twist turns the already broadly-drawn villain into a cartoonier version of himself, and The Infidel abandons any attempt at really addressing the dangers of radical Islam. In other words: any effective critique of religious fundamentalism ought to acknowledge the allure it has for many people, and the film shies away from this conversation. Despite The Infidel's flaws, though, it's an effective reminder that in times of polarization and partisan noisiness, being a moderate is hard work. And, with any luck, it's the type of movie we'll see more of in years to come.
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Seven Minutes In Heaven
Review by Kelly Carlin
Screening at Sabes JCC March 31st at 8:15
Seven Minutes in Heaven – if it clearly refers to anything – is a jokey, sexual game that high school kids and college students play where two people go into a closet and fool around for 7 minutes. Although you’ve got to assume that Omri Givon is aware (or even more likely, deliberately aware) of the double entendre in the title of his movie, there’s really nothing funny or explicitly sexual about the film. Instead, Givon’s harrowing movie follows a young Israeli woman struggling through her grief a year after a suicide bomber kills her fiancée and leaves her with severe burns covering her torso. The lead is well played by Reymonde Amsellem, and her captivating, repressed struggle is reason enough to see this film. It comes across as a little peculiar that Galia (Reymonde Amsellem) doesn’t quite know the basic or personal effects leading up to or following the attack, despite having a year of grief to figure things out, but Galia’s stiff-lipped, calm way of regarding the effects of the attack and the people around her make it compelling and believable.
That said, there isn’t necessarily new ground being covered by Givon in this, his first film – the post-traumatic haunting ghost/grief motif is familiar, as is the reconstructing-the-scene-of-the-accident arc. Still, it’s a wisely constructed movie. As Galia gets closer to understanding every detail of her personal life immediately before and after the attack, the more absorbed I became. There’s a romantic plot ably woven into the story; a plot that gets more tangled (along with a sense of reality) as the movie draws to a close. Shots of crowded marketplaces, tense buses, and dark sidewalks underscore the lingering effects of the attack on Amsellem’s character.
There’s virtually no attention given to the politics, or even the source of the attack. The suicide bomber appears on screen for about ten seconds, where he is silent and essentially characterless. For better and for worse, Givon’s focus is exclusively on Galia’s grief and her struggle to comprehend the loss of her fiancée. As a viewer, it can be difficult to watch a director so cleanly pare a grief from politics.
In an interview, Givon has said that the inspiration for the movie was a news story about a junkyard devoted exclusively to discarded, bombed buses. He was first struck by the thought of a young woman returning to one of these buses as a return to the source of her trauma. Seven Minutes in Heaven is the dark, meditative product of that original thought. It was released in April of 2008 in Israel.
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