I have a hard time trying to pass a judgment about this six part series broadcast by the European culture channel ARTE which is as far as I know yet to be broadcast in Israel. I am trying to guess who it is addressed to and how would the different audiences react to it. The Israeli audiences know the epic. It is being told more or less in the same manner in which that period of the history of Palestine which led to the birth of the State of Israel is taught in schools. For the Israeli public most of the scenes and situations are known, and the emotions as genuine as they can be have been already felt by many times. The audiences out of Israel will react differently according to their own origin and political views. I am sure that Jews out of Israel and folks who support Israel will be moved by many of the things happening on screen, while people who are not that sympathetic to the Jewish version of the events will feel irritated. All would certainly have many details to learn, as the film is quite detailed and accurate in presenting the aftermath of the war and of the Holocaust in Europe, the illegal immigration in the years before the birth of Israel, the British blockade and the events in Palestine / Eretz Israel prior to the UN decision to partition the mandatory Palestine.
How much good cinema (or good television) we can find in this film? Not that much I am afraid. The Israeli viewers will find an incredibly rich collection of all clichés in the Israeli and non-Israeli cinema. Dialogs are especially bad in many instances, characters speaking on rhetoric terms rather than real life language. Actually the hollywoodian 'Exodus' seems to be the ultimate model of the film, but the question is whether we need another 'Exodus'-like movie today. Maybe we do, and if we do we should not minimize the professionalism of the production team, the fluency of the story telling, the dedication and passion put by the majority of the actors in bringing to life their characters. Director Haim Buzaglu, one of the talented and experienced directors today in the Israeli cinema and TV led the production team with a sure hand. The script is quite well written, although it does not avoid at all the beaten path. I think that the theme of the Ashkenazim - Sephardi conflicts was overplayed, the director and the script authors certainly have an opinion which they made clear enough but too much insistence makes the message less credible.
It is yet an emotional film, and if there is such a thing as historic melodrama this is a beautiful piece of the genre. I could not avoid getting caught by strong emotions in many moments. Also, in the four and a half screen hours there are at least two scenes of great cinema - the opening shot, with the hand, and then the body of the Jewish woman surging our of the earth of Europe at the end of the Holocaust, and the reunification of the mother with her lost daughter in the kibbutz, the morning after the emigrants reach Eretz Israel. Are these two splendid scenes enough for remembering a six series TV drama? Maybe yes!
