|
| • Advanced Search • Help |
Kedma | Year: 2002 Classification: Foreign Film - Other Directed: - Amos Gitai A seminal film with a few flaws This wonderful film is yet another tour de force of Gatai's epics regarding Israel wars. In Kippur he showed us the sting of battle on the Golan. In Kedma we are shown the all to real story of Jewish Holocaust survivors arriving in 1948 and being instantly thrown into battle for the new state. The beginnings are on the Kedma, a leaking old ship transporting hundreds of survivors. They are met at the shore by Jewish Palmach Guerillas, and are immediately fired upon by English soldiers. This begins one of may scenes that seems more fit for the stage then film, and perhaps is indicative of the writer being more familiar with theatre production. While shots are heard of camera the English soldiers are seen on Camera trying to hold the Kedma survivors. Why aren't the Palmach firing on the English soldiers? Why aren't the English shooting the Pamachniks? Who is shooting? Its not entirely clear why the Palmach didn't lay down covering fire and get the survivors away from the beach, and the 'battle' doesn't seem realistic. Nevertheless it paints the symbolic picture of the English, who are leaving Palestine in three days, still trying to interdict refugees who have no where to go. Throughout the rest of the film we follow the new arrivals as they go from survivors to soldiers. Several scenes tell the symbolic tale of the founding of Israel. Many of the longer speeches seem fit more for the stage then screen. For instance one Haganah Jewish resistance leader proclaims "Thank God we got rid of Religion'. IS the statement an irony, or is it simply translated wrong into the subtitles? Several other 'scenes' that appear on the back of the film don't even seem to be included. For instance the cover shows a woman helping 'Manachem' load his rifle. While we see plenty of this main character we don't seem to ever see his fried help him load his rifle. The Battle scenes are perfectly fine and show the large numbers of holocaust survivors who sacrificed so much so that their children would have a chance to live free. Also several scenes show the fleeing Arabs and their interaction with the new arrivals, presaging the current peace problems. Two long monologues symbolize both peoples feelings. One loan Arab claims that his people will become a 'wall' while a Jewish school teacher proclaims that Jewish history should never again be taught the way it had been in Europe. In the end this seminal work is a wonderful story of the founding of the state, on the personal level, in the same style as Kippur. Seth J. Frantzman DISAPPOINTING -- EXCEPT FOR LAST FIVE MINUTES Amos Gitai has lost something since his directorial debut film ESTHER. In 1985, he took the biblical story of the book of ESTHER and placed it in the ruins of former Arab and Middle-Eastern Jewish area of Haifa, Wadi Salib, that had been destroyed in a 1950s riot. Also Gitai's fast moving action film KIPPUR, released in 2000, about the war that Gitai had personally survived as an Israeli soldier, had been 27 years later turned into this movie from his war experiences. (In fact, the final scene of the intense action-adventure war movie KIPPUR actually comes directly from Gitai's personal experience.) ESTHER and KIPPUR were outstandingly good films that made Gitai's career. Now comes KEDMA (in Hebrew meaning, "towards the East"). What a cinematic disaster! Basic story: Opening with a wordless sequence, set in May 1948, in which surviving, Holocaust-traumatized European Jews arrive by boat (named Kedma) in Palestine, eight days before creation of the state of Israel, the oft times controversial Gitaï's latest examining of his nation's history and challenging contemporary reality focuses on Israel's founding moments. The passengers are anxious to get off the awful Kedma. But British troops try to stop them. They get caught up in poorly scripted retaliatory fire by the Jewish secret army (Irgun?) who try to help the arriving Jews get settled in a kibbutz -- in the middle of nowhere. Attempting to follow the immigrant/refugees on their first steps in the 'promised land', Gitaï casts an unflinching eye over the justifications for his country's existence. Putting the issue of Arab territory and their grievances centre-screen [given extra resonance by the current situation in the Middle East] it's also telling about British imperial responsibility for the mess in Palestine. However, at its heart is the story of Jewish and Arab displacements, anticipation, endurance and comradeship; demanding of all sides in its understanding. There are three small groups of Jewish refugees (two to three per group) from a boatload of people. The movie follows them in an amateurish manner and never drops a hint as to what ever happened to the other few hundred Kedma arrivals. By amateurish I mean, the leader of a detachment of British soldiers urges his men on in American accented English, while one of the Brit soldiers carries an unfurled Union Jack -- presumably so you'll know who the British soldiers are. Other segements are just plain silly. With British soldiers after them, each of the three groups makes camp fires at each of their rest stops -- as though the British wouldn't spot smoke in the middle of a desert, and the camp fire ashes wouldn't give their positions and directions away. Then the British are equally stupid: every time they begin closing in on the fleeing Jews (schelpping their heavy valises) and their Israeli commandos -- who rarely fire their weapons -- they begin firing shots at them off camera (presumabaly from a d Buy Kedma at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Kedma Search with the Priority Search Engine on Kedma This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
|
