You look at all the film festivals going on in Boston at
this time and you wonder, why not spread them out a bit so we'll have some
alternatives in the summer to "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" and "Ice Age: Continental
Drift?" Be that as it may, at some point, in addition to the Independent Film
Festival of Boston (April 25-May 2) and the Lesbian, Gay,Bisexual, and
Transgender Festival (May 3-13), you need to
reserve some time for The National Center for Jewish Film's Jewishfilm2012, which started on Wednesday and runs through April 29.
At least make a
point of seeing Israeli director Nadav Lapid's "The Policeman," an icily meticulous and ultimately devastating thriller about members of an Israeli
anti-terrorist unit and a group of revolutionary dilettantes.
The former are a macho bunch, as you might expect, buff,
shoulder-slapping, and bonded as brothers.
Everyone seems to have the same buzz
cut haircut and wear the same sunglasses, including Yaron (Yiftach Klein),
whose wife is about to give birth. Undaunted by his pending parenthood, Yaron has
no problem asking a fifteen-year-old waitress if she wants to touch his gun. Nonetheless,
you kind of wonder if maybe these guys are trying too hard to be tough, and
cracks in their gung-ho esprit start showing when they're brought up on charges
of killing innocent civilians and they have to ask their comrade Ariel, who's
apparently dying of a brain tumor, to take a fall for them.
As for the revolutionaries, one character sizes them up pretty
well by describing them as "a bunch of children living off their parents
playing with guns" (another is more blunt: "these SOBs aren't Arabs!").
That
includes their narcissistic, charismatic leader, Nathanel (Michael Aloni), the son
of a judge, and Shira (Yaara Pelzig), a 22-year-old poet, as beautiful and
unattainable as a figure in a pre-Raphaelite painting, who lets the gang use the family
penthouse as a headquarters while the folks are away on vacation.
Both sides are
easy to dismiss and dislike until the tense, crushing final act, when the
identity of who is the oppressed, and who the oppressor, becomes tragically
ambiguous.
This is Lapid's first feature, and he demonstrates a detached but
passionate control as he lets the story consolidate slowly under a surface of
keenly observed detail, disclosing plot and character and underlying conflict,
sometimes as simply as with a camera move, a subtle cut, or the composition of
the frame. This is definitely worth fitting into your busy spring movie
schedule, and it screens tomorrow (Friday) at 8:15 pm at the Museum of Fine
Arts, and Sunday, April 29 at 7:15 pm at the West Newton Cinema.
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