Arts & Entertainment

AT THE MOVIES

Clara Khoury as Mona

in The Syrian Bride

•

Crossing Borders

Israeli director Eran Riklis makes
films that straddle the personal and
the political.

Liel Leibovitz

The Jewish Week

I

n a lighthearted scene in Eran Riklis'
otherwise serious drama, The
Syrian Bride, two young women
posit a theory claiming that a man's teeth
say much about his abilities as a lover.
Small teeth, they chirp, mean trouble,
while men with buckteeth make excellent
companions. If, one woman tells the other,
a man has a gap between his front teeth,
beware; such men are warm and passion-
ate, perhaps too passionate for any one
woman to contain.
The first thing one notices about Riklis
himself, then, is the wide gap between his
front teeth. So, is there any truth to the
•
theory?
Riklis laughs it off.
'Absolutely not',' he says, a boyish wink
nonetheless sending the opposite message.
The anecdote illuminates, perhaps, the
director's relation to his film: He set out to
make a commercial film, one, he boasts,
that has a "classic Hollywood structure','
but beneath the surface lies the ever pres-
ent wink, exposing Riklis' commitment to
issues much deeper than box-office intake.

62

April 6 • 2006

The film, running April 7-9 at the
Detroit Film Theatre, also will be part of
the lineup at this year's Lenore Marwil
Detroit Jewish Film Festival, which takes
place April 30-May 11 in area theaters.
Bride was a smash hit in Israel, draw-
ing in more than 100,000 viewers before
playing to full houses in Italy, France
and Canada. It tells the story of Mona, a
young Druze woman from a Golan Heights
village, who lives under Israeli control
yet remains loyal, like most of the area's
Druze, to Syria, the Golan's previous land-
lord.
The film follows Mona on her wedding
day as she marries Tallel, a young Syrian
man. To the ordinary anxieties of any
wedding is added the fact that once Mona
crosses the border to be with her groom,
she will never be able to cross back and
see her family again.
It's precisely the metier with which
Riklis, one of Israel's most prolific direc-
tors, feels comfortable. His previous films
— particularly 1991's critically acclaimed
Cup Final — share a basic structure with
The Syrian Bride.
All are tightly wound family dramas set
against the vast, bleeding canvas of the

various conflicts that define Israel's exis-
tence in the Middle East. Played against
such a backdrop, the miniscule familial
affairs seem at once harrowingly particu-
lar and lavishly universal, specific enough
to elicit sympathy, yet broad enough to
serve as a metaphor.
Hence, Riklis' wink: The film, he stress-
es, must be entertaining — that is para-
mount, as preachy and dreary films, how-
ever well intentioned, never attract people
to the movie theater. But it must also, on a
more subtle almost dormant, level, engage
the political reality in which it is rooted.
For Riklis, there simply isn't another
way of making movies.
"I feel that today it is very difficult to
make political films as such:' he says. "The
audience is too sophisticated, too well
informed. My films, I feel, are not politi-
cal, but relevant. They are based in a very
specific reality. I can't do a love story like
a New York director would. I am aware of
what's going on around me. My solution,
then, is to make what I call 'democratic
films' — they bring you face to face with
the issues, but trust you to make up your
own mind."

says, as conduits to this kind of coexis-
tence.
"I believe he adds, "that you must over-
come emotional boundaries before you
can cross physical ones!'

Multicultural Approach
Riklis is an old hand at crossing borders,
both physical and emotional. The son of
an Israeli scientist and professor, he was
born in Israel but grew up moving from
one place to another, spending his child-
hood years in Manhattan before moving to
New Haven and then to Brazil.
After serving in the Israeli army and
spending two years in Tel Aviv University's
film school, he was admitted to Britain's
prestigious National Film and Television
School. He returned to Israel in the early
.1980s, infused with a thick dose of multi-
culturalism and ready to make films.
His debut, On a Clear Day You Can
See Damascus, was based on the true
story of Udi Adiv, an Israeli peace activ-
ist jailed for spying for Syria. The film, an
extended version of Riklis ) final project for
school, made up in premise what it lacked
in technical prowess: The drama of a man
willing to subvert the law in order to pro-
mote peace proved compelling to Israeli
Striking A Balance
moviegoers, and Riklis' career received a
In a reality as divisive as Israel's, such a
task borders on the impossible, and Riklis' substantial boost.
He found himself in demand, directing
Olympian effort to strike a balance is evi-
dent in every scene. In The Syrian Bride, hundreds of commercials, television shows
and documentaries, establishing his repu-
for example, even the villains — the
tation as a lion in Israel's then burgeoning
patronizing, pigheaded Israeli policeman
film industry.
and the haughty, useless Syrian officer
By the time he was ready to make his
— are well-rounded characters, extracting
a few ounces of sympathy for every pound second film, Riklis found himself going in
the opposite direction of most of his peers.
of contempt.
The trend was normalcy, imposing the
And yet, having made a number of films
soothing escapism of American cinema
that pit Israel's perspective against that
on Israel's unquiet reality. While his con-
of its neighbors — Syria, Lebanon, the
temporaries Were making such films as
Palestinians — whose side is Riklis on?
"I'm on the people's side he says, laugh- Shuroo, a blockbuster detailing the hazy,
surreal nightlife of a few Tel Aviv barflies,
ing heartily, his Falstaffian frame quiver-
Riklis released his second film, Cup
ing gently. "I don't want to sound like a
Final.
socialist, but I really care about the people
The film, which was a box-office disap-
— Israelis, Syrians, whatever — more
pointment but a hit with critics worldwide,
than anything else. It's important to me
tells the story of Cohen, an Israeli man
never to have cardboard characters."
called for reserve duty in Lebanon. Cohen
This approach, he adds, makes not only
is upset; an avid soccer fan, he had bought
for good moviemaking, but also for great
a ticket to the World Cup finals*, a game he
politics.
must now miss on account of his military
"Most Israelis and Arabs — put them
obligations.
together without the burden of religion
Things get even worse when he is
and land and history, and they get together
very well. They're all Middle Eastern."
His films, therefore, and The Syrian
Crossing Borders on page 64
Bride in particular, were all designed, he