A Tale of Love and Darkness
August. 19,2016 PG-13The story of young Amos Oz, growing up in Jerusalem in the years before Israeli statehood with his parents; his academic father, Arieh, and his dreamy, imaginative mother, Fania.
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Reviews
You won't be disappointed!
For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
Natalie Portman undertook the difficult task of adapting (for Film) renowned author Amos Oz's wistfully poetic, insightful and humane memoir of early life in Jerusalem just before and slightly after Israel had earned Statehood.**Spoiler Alert**This is challenging material in terms of both the deeply-personal and tumultuous historical perspectives presented as Natalie Portman courageously navigated the tragically despairing pathways encountered by Fania Mussman-Klausner, Amos Oz's beloved mother who appeared mysteriously plagued by unidentifiable but relentless emotional torment, seeking momentary escape within the World of imagination & dreams but never able to fully-reconcile the transitional upheaval from her once comfortable-cultured Life in Eastern-Europe vs. the more unpredictable-tenuous one encountered in pre & post-WWII Jerusalem.The key to this film's believability is Portman's ability to pinpoint the heart +soul of Fania Mussman (with all the inner-torment inherent), also allowing little Amos Oz's burgeoning brightness & curiosity to intermittently shine-thru at times.A slight warning to viewers is that there exists a near oppressive bleakness to some of Amos Oz's recollections, especially with regards to his beloved mother's trials & travails (but thankfully peppered with momentary respite in the form of dreamlike scenes infused with poetic escapism). In the current Day (2017), it is sometimes easy to forget the fact that the numerous pre & post WWII arrivals to Jerusalem/ Israel were mainly beleaguered refugees barely escaping the holocaust dreaming of a land where they could once again simply Live as Jews without relentless persecution and death attached to the horrific WWII Epoch. Amos Oz's book and Natalie Portman's important film ruminate on historical recollections that although sometimes deeply-painful must occupy a hallowed eternal space in memory.
"A Tale of Love and Darkness" is a co-production between Israel and the United States that resulted in a Hebrew-language film that had its world premiere last year (2015). It runs for 95 minutes approximately and was written and directed by Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman and looking at her own ethical and local background where she is from, it is no surprise that the focus is clearly on Jewry and Israel. But this is only half the truth I would say. The first 40 minutes, maybe even the first half, is the most Jewish film you will see all year with the focus on food, life, traditions, politics, phrases and many other references. They even explained some stuff to the audience in a somewhat clumsy attempt of having a father explain something to his son. The second half then is much more of a family drama as it focuses for the most part on the illness of Portman's character. Yes she also plays the female protagonist in here and only looking at the second half, you could even say the central character. In the first half, it is probably the boy. Anyway, I am not sure if my criticisms with this film are more to blame on Portman or on Amos Oz the man whose memoir the film is based on. I have not read the latter, but I guess it may be a mix of both. The really dramatic moments almost all went wrong. Kids playing around and even if one of them gets accidentally slightly hurt will not result in a crisis as it is depicted in this film with the swing scene. Another example would be the scene when Israel gets approved to exist as a country by the other countries. This was such a pivotal moment, but it was just included. It was just there and there was absolutely no build-up or mention of this process earlier and this kept it from being as effective as it could have been and felt very forgettable as a consequence. other examples would be the killings of a woman and boy which felt included just for the sake of it and in a way that we would not forget that times were harsh and dangerous. And an even bigger problem are perhaps the dialogues and also the voice-overs because these sound as pretentious as the film's title and they are there on many many occasions. One of the weakest moments was probably when the boy (in the center of the story) tells the other children this parable. It's just not working and did not feel authentic coming from a boy that age. I also don't believe it is subjective opinion, it just did not feel real and this was a problem I had on several occasions. As a consequence, I did not care half as much for the characters as I hoped I would. Overall, I believe it is an okay effort for a rookie filmmaker like Portman who has never made a full feature film before, but by general standards, this was not a good watch and if she decides to make more films in the future, i hope she can improve considerably. I don't recommend watching "A Tale of Love and Darkness". Thumbs down.
In a quiet moment in Natalie Portman's ("Knight of Cups") beautiful and poetic A Tale of Love and Darkness, a mother says to her young son "If you have to choose between telling a lie or insulting someone, choose to be generous." When the boy asks her whether or not it is alright to lie, she replies, "Sometimes... yes. It's better to be sensitive than to be honest." It is an important lesson, one I wish I had learned earlier in my life. Written and directed by Portman, who also stars as Fania, Amos' (Amir Tessler) troubled mother, the film is based on the memoir of Israeli novelist and journalist Amos Oz and is set in Jerusalem in the critical period before the transition from the British mandate in Palestine to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 following the Arab-Israeli War.Opening in 1945 after the Klausner's escape from the desecration of a once vibrant culture in Eastern Europe, it is the story of the early influences in Oz's life that propelled him to become a famous writer. As narrated by Moni Moshonov and told from the viewpoint of the older Amos Oz recollecting his past, the film attempts to probe the depths of a family whose dream of a land of milk and honey becomes darker as it progresses, telling us that the worst thing that can happen to a dream is that it is fulfilled. Amos' father Arieh (Gilad Kahana, "The Man in the Wall") is a librarian who has just published is first novel and desperately wants to achieve the success of his own father, historian Joseph Klausner. Though he does not succeed, he never stops being thankful for Israel, telling his son, "You'll be bullied in school, but not because you're Jewish." We learn early in the film that Amos' mother Fania blames herself for leaving behind a life of wealth. It is a self-inflicted wound exacerbated by her own mother's verbal cruelty, one that is manifested by insomnia, migraine headaches, and a long struggle with depression that ended with her suicide at the young age of 38. Fania is a story teller whose stories, fables, and tales of far-away lands continue to enrich Amos' life and Amos himself begins to tell stories to keep bullies from attacking him at school. The humble Amos denies that he is sensitive, saying he wants to be a farmer or a dog murderer and goes to work on a kibbutz, but the sensitive can do nothing about who they are but only attempt to share it and make it real for others.Amos' story is depicted in the context of the short-lived joy after the U.N.'s vote to partition Palestine and the Arab attacks on Jerusalem that killed many of the family's friends and neighbors. Their home becomes a shelter for those fleeing the Arab bombs and the real consequences of Zionism and the ideal of statehood become apparent, a society caught between memories of the holocaust and fears that it will happen again. As Fania's growing depression and her drift from reality dominates the landscape, the film loses a measure of dramatic impact, yet it remains compelling and literate, attesting to the way the promise of Israel has been shattered by strident voices fighting centuries-old struggles for domination.A Tale of Love and Darkness is an intimate film, a film of memory, one told in incidents and flashbacks. Like a film of Terence Malick, it talks in whispers, a language that exists only in the soul. There is little plot to describe, only moods and gestures. Fania's death is the film's central theme and it remains a mystery, buried in the enigma of a woman who has forgotten how to dream, yet it is transcended by the death of the dream of two vibrant cultures living together in peace and brotherhood. Early in the film, Amos is on his best behavior at a party in the home of a Palestinian neighbor. When he meets an Arab girl who can speak Hebrew, there is an immediate connection and he tells her that "there is room for two peoples in this land," but the dream ends suddenly when Amos, playing at being Tarzan, falls from a tree when the chains of a swing break injuring a little girl and the sudden chasm between the two cultures becomes a sad portent of the future.
Greetings again from the darkness. The establishment of the state of Israel and the memoir of Amos Oz are the foundation of the feature film directorial debut of Natalie Portman. First time directors don't typically fight over such source material, but it has always seemed that Ms. Portman was headed towards bigger (and more important) things.She was born in Jerusalem and this story opens in that city during 1945. The narrator is the elderly Amos and the story is told through the eyes of young Amos (a very effective Amir Tessler) though the focus is on his mother Fania (played by Ms. Portman).The tensions between Jews and Arabs are ever-present, but this is the mostly personal and intimate struggle of Fania and her family. She has survived the atrocities of the Holocaust, though many of her family and friends did not. In fact, her inability to overcome this past and adjust to the new world is what has the biggest impact on young Amos and his scholarly father Arieh (Gilad Kahana). Amos soon figures out that the litmus test for his mother's mood is whether she is telling stories of the old days, or staring blankly into a void.Watching someone fade away and experience death by depression/disappointment/unfulfilled dreams goes so against what we typically see on screen – the emotionally strong and heroic types. Portman's performance makes it believable, but no less difficult to watch for us or young Amos.The film is well shot and well acted, and much more is conveyed through faces and movement than spoken words somewhat unusual for the recollections of a writer. The color palette and the silence dominate many scenes, and it seems appropriate given the situation of this family. Expect to see many more projects from director Portman, as she obviously has much to say.