Ha'har

The life in its gray essence. a family, the mother, solitude and refuges. and the poetry of small things defining us. it is more than a beautiful film. it reminds states, impressions, memories. in the most delicate and precise way. it is a film about poetry. poem itself. not only for eulogy to Zelda, not only for the sound of a Jewish poem in Koreean, but for an inspired form of minimalism. not new. but real useful. for define realities out of definitions. the sadness could be the fundamental taste. or crumbs from Fellini, Pasolini . or the images of Jerusalem. or the stones, tombs, nights, dialogues. it is the film of the silence after its end. and this does it real seductive.

"For out of the scent of nothingness, the tree blossoms, glorious, beautiful, and in its crown, an enchanted bird." – Zelda

Tzvia lives at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem's Old City and at the center of an Orthodox family of six. Contrary to what one might think, each is a lonely place. Her home is well within a sprawling Jewish cemetery and a maze of ancient graves, and her husband, Reuven, is indifferent as the stone. He treats Tzvia more like a servant than spouse. Reuven leaves her questions and concerns in rigid silence. Walks through the cemetery, encounters with strangers and Zelda's poetry bring comfort to Tzvia in her loneliness. As Reuven's intransigence grows, Tzvia begins to walk among the graves at night. The distant bells, poems, calls to prayer, silence of night, intriguing conversations and voyeur-like existence become as much a part of her as anything else. She struggles to reconcile this with the rest of her life.

Mountain is the first film of Yaelle Kayam. This is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing in that Kayam takes a path beholden to no one, and a curse in that she is seeking her footing and it is a little shaky. One of the things I like most about this film is that its characters are not one-dimensional. Many films, especially those that portray ultra-religious personalities, fall into this trap. Kayam's characters are not so black and white, and that is refreshing and truer to life. While it is a slow-moving film that could use more depth in a variety of places, it provides compelling insight into loneliness, the Mount of Olives cemetery, the Orthodox Jewish culture and – most poignantly – a woman in crisis. Seen at the 2016 Miami International Film Festival.

The story here is kind of slight, and worst of all it's possible-- particularly on the small screen and in the absence of an explanatory subtitle-- to miss an important incident in the final minutes. But it's a wonderful movie to watch for the play of geometry and for the colors (although at least in the print I saw, several times it seemed as if a strong light off screen was turning on or off). One reviewer mentions the movie's "frankness about its protagonist's un-Hollywood body" as if many people would see it as a minus, but the light and shadow on the musculature of her naked back in one scene make for a marvelous dynamic element in the frame's strongly vertical composition.

If the movie had any kind of commercial release in Israel at all, I guess it didn't last more than a week or two. I saw "The Mountain" in a special web-based showing sponsored by a cinematheque that was closed on account of the coronavirus. The lead actress, Shani Klein, is very well liked in Israel and for me she certainly helped to carry the picture, but it's certainly not a natural crowd-pleaser in terms of laughs or thrills or suspense.