Ulpan Videos

In ulpan, my teacher, Estie, thought it would be a great idea for us to see movies during class. Hebrew movies, of course, that way, we could pick up the language. There are a couple of problems however. One problem that comes to mind is that Israeli movies suck. There are a few people can name. There's the "One with Tevya, thata's thoroughly racist about Sephardim," there's "Lemon Popsicle," or whatever it's called, that for some sick reason, is being remade. There's "Casablanca," which is not the Bogart one, but a movie that is a bad remake of "West Side Story," and there was one, about fifteen years ago, that nobody remembers, but was actually nominated for an Oscar.

There is another problem with Israeli movies as well. See, it has to do with the whole Dati-Chiloni fight going on. The chiloni feeling is that the Datiim are sexist, and therefore, anything that angers the Dati'im, is feminist. Ergo, nudity and sex scenes are feminist. ^Brilliant.^ Well, no, actually it is. "Yeah Honey, strip! It'll show those stupid religious guys!"

Whatever. In any case, any film we saw seemed to be highly...strange. The first film we saw was called "Layl Haseder." The Hebrew was simple enough, but, it was a bit difficult to understand. As I understood it, there is a large chiloni family getting ready for the first night of Pesach. One subplot involves the grandfather buying a necklace, which the grandmother has found out about, but thinks it is for his (non-existant) girlfriend. Then you have the mute girl, the boy suffering while has divorced parents are together, a boy who tries as hard as he can to make it snow that night, and an irrelevant set of flying flowers. It tried to be a Christmas movie set on Pesach. It was a bit too odd.

Then there was this movie that was an animated version of this Hebrew children classic. Called, Nechama haKinah, it's about a louse named Nechama. Nechama jumps around from head to head, the story describes the various hosts she lives on, until she finally finds happiness on the head of a bald man.

In between, we saw a few movies that the teacher had not seen, but had "heard good things about." They wound up being 75% English, with a great deal of sex. No, I'm not complaining.

I'm not one to complain about nudity, I just find it strange. I mentioned in another class that nearly any good Israeli movie seems to have nudity in it. "As oppose to American movies?"

Well, yeah...I mean, most good movies talk about sex, but that doesn't mean that it has nudity in it. Can you not think of at least twenty good adult movies without nudity? Even Pulp Fiction was (barely) without nudity.

Then there was the one that was set during Desert Storm. Cute romance, the girl has to choose between two guys, a schvitzer, somebody who is way too impressed with himself, and a kibbutznik type. It had some funny parts, but it was too sappy. I was impressed because the guy who she finally picks never actually says, "I love you." The other interesting thing about were the two stars. The woman, I found out during the elections, was a spokesman for the political party Chadash, the Arab\Jewish Communist party, that, as they proudly proclaimed in their ads, was the only party to advocate a split Jerusalem. The Shvitzer was played by Yair Lapid. Yair Lapid is a talk show host/political commentater, sort of a Larry King, who's good lucking, young, witty, hip, and worth listening too. His father, however, Tommy Lapid, is one of the latest members of Israel's Knesset. He has been compared (quite convincingly, in my opinion) to Pat Buchanan. Proof that everything in Israel is political.

The last full movie we saw was "Happiness to the End." The movie was a retelling of the story of Baruch Spinoza, sent into modern Israel. It went through a lot of his story, his girlfriend, the war, Shabatai Tzvi, etc. The problem was that the movie did not know how to control itself. It started out as a spoof of From Dusk Till Dawn, with two Mossadniks shooting a terrorist in the wrist as he is dropping a grenade from the car, then the terrorist spurting over much of the rush hour traffic of Tel Aviv. It then follows the story of everybody, making fun of virtually every group in Israeli society, with a lot of Spinoza quotes mixed in. It then ends with this huge musical number.

Maybe we got the reject rack...but, I can sort of see why Israeli cinematography is not more celebrated...

Get me outa here!!!

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Michael Kadish

"Between the ages of 16 and 60 no man is completely sane except for the 10 minutes immediately following orgasm."-Dapper Dan Collins

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