Nadav Lapid’s new film, about a brooding director much like himself, is a howl of rage at the state of Israeli society.
“Ahed’s Knee” is the Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s fourth feature film. The first three — “Policeman” (2014), “The Kindergarten Teacher” (2015) and “Synonyms” (2019) — are in their different ways works of social criticism. They take aim at what Lapid sees as modern Israel’s political, moral and spiritual shortcomings, focusing on characters whose personal agonies mirror the national crisis.
Though its themes are the same, this movie is different. It’s a howl of rage. The person doing the howling isn’t exactly Lapid, but someone who might easily be mistaken for him: a filmmaker in his 40s working on a project called “Ahed’s Knee.” There are other biographical details that link this fellow, known only as Y (and played by the raggedly charismatic Avshalom Pollak), with his creator. He’s in close contact with his mother, who works on his films with him and who is dying of lung cancer. Lapid’s mother, Era, who died of that disease in 2018, was his regular editor.
The plot of “Ahed’s Knee” arises from a professional conflict that really happened to Lapid. (Y’s project is based on a more public event: a widely reported confrontation between Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian teenager, and Israeli soldiers in 2017.) There’s no doubt that this is, in several senses, a personal film. But that doesn’t mean that the character is simply the author’s mouthpiece; one of the things that gives this movie its raw, unbalanced energy is the indeterminacy of the distance between them.
Y has a habit of standing too close. This is evident as soon as he meets Yahalom (Nur Fibak), a young woman who has organized a screening of one of his films. She is a big fan of his work, and also an employee of the Ministry of Culture, commitments that turn out not to be entirely compatible. The immediate, unnerving intensity that springs up between them is both a portent and a misdirection. Will this turn into the story of a troubled artist finding a new muse, or perhaps a #MeToo parable of male entitlement run amok?
Both seem plausible, but what happens is more unsettling. Y’s movie is being shown at a public library in a village in the Arava, a sparsely populated, austerely beautiful desert region in southern Israel. Y, who is (like Lapid) from Tel Aviv, has never been there before. The strangeness of the landscape and the blazing heat may contribute to his emotionally volatile state, but what pushes him to the edge is a document Yahalom asks him to sign. It’s a list of approved topics for his post-screening talk, and a promise that he’ll stick to them.
Is this a bureaucratic formality or a sign of creeping fascism? Yahalom’s request seems to confirm Y’s darkest suspicions about Israel’s drift away from democracy and cultural vitality, a brooding, passionate pessimism that will be familiar to anyone who has seen Lapid’s previous films. Unlike other politically minded Israeli filmmakers, he doesn’t concentrate on the Palestinian conflict or on the simmering culture war between Israel’s secular and religious citizens. When those matters come up, they appear as symptoms of a larger, less easily defined malaise having to do with the sacrifice of Jewish ethical norms, political ideals and intellectual traditions on the altars of power and materialism.
There is something deeply conservative about this attitude, even if Lapid’s allegiances — and Y’s — are clearly on the left. The difference between the two directors might just be that Lapid gives vent to his despair by making a movie — with beautiful, hallucinatory shots of the Arava and splinters of comic absurdism — whereas Y throws a tantrum, alienating his audience and humiliating his biggest fan.
Or: the real filmmaker retreats into his art, whereas his fictional counterpart is bold enough to make a scene, hurt some feelings and possibly risk his own comfort and career. Neither one asks to be taken as a hero. Y, on a dating app during the pre-screening reception, boasts to a potential companion that he won a prize at the Berlin Film Festival. That’s where “Synonyms” was awarded the Golden Bear. The privileges granted to artists can always be held against their art, and so can their personalities. It’s possible to reach the end of “Ahed’s Knee” with just one question in mind: What is this guy’s problem? The answer is complicated, because it isn’t only one guy’s problem.
Ahed’s Knee
Not rated. In Hebrew, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
