Arts & Entertainment
Mighty 'Messenger'
Israeli-born filmmaker Oren Moverman talks about his new film.
Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster in The Messenger, a film about the repercussions of the Iraq War.
N
Michael Fox
Special to the Jewish News
of one of the many American
movies about the Iraq War has
been made by a former soldier
— until now The Israeli-born, U.S.-based
writer/director Oren Moverman earns that
distinction with his powerhouse directo-
rial debut feature, The Messenger.
The quietly riveting — and exception-
ally well reviewed — independent film
stars Ben Foster, in his first leading role,
as a U.S. Army officer just returned from
a tour in Iraq, who is paired with Woody
Harrelson as casualty notification officers
whose job entails delivering the news to
the next of kin that a loved one has died.
The script offers no hint that the direc-
tor/co-writer served in the Israel Defense
Forces, although that experience helped
Moverman immeasurably on the set.
"These are different countries, different
wars, different eras, different types of ter-
rorism; everything's different, but funda-
mentally I felt that I could communicate
to the actors what it meant to be a soldier:'
Moverman says, "and to communicate
with the film the emotional landscape of
fear and anger and guilt and the inability
to express a lot of the experiences you go
through in combat. That stuff I felt very
comfortable with:'
Moverman, born in 1966, lived in the
States from ages 13 to 18, when his fam-
ily moved back to Israel and he entered
the army. ("There's nothing in the movie
that's per se my own personal experience
he saysAnd even if there is, it's probably
stuff that I don't notice or I'm too afraid to
talk about:')
He returned to New York four years later,
after he completed his service, to pursue
a career in film and has now lived more
than half his life here. Moverman's credits
include collaborating on the screenplay for
I'm Not There, which explored the life and
myth of Bob Dylan.
A good deal of The Messenger was shot
at Fort Dix in New Jersey with a military
adviser and photographer on the set, as
well as extras supplied by the U.S. Army.
Moverman was surprised at the reaction
he received.
"I got a lot of respect for being an Israeli
soldier," the soft-spoken, hyper-articulate
filmmaker recalls with a wry smile. "Much
more than I deserved. There's definitely
a feeling of camaraderie and a feeling of
`you're an ally, and your experiences are
real. I didn't expect that, but I only ben-
efited from it:'
Moverman was received with parallel
good will when he returned to Israel to
show The Messenger at the Jerusalem Film
Festival. "Partially they see me as a rep-
resentative of Israel, because that's what
happens with anyone Israeli who works
outside the country and does OTC he says,
laughing. "But partially they identified
with what the movie was about, and they
felt it was very much about them."
While the U.S. Army sends two men to
break the news to the soldier's parents or
spouse and then leave, the Israeli team
consists of four people, including a doctor
and a psychologist, who stay and provide
for the family. Many, many Israeli films,
especially in the 1970s and '80s, centered
on the army, and a few include a notifica-
tion scene.
"I grew up watching all those movies:'
Moverman remembers, "and for a while
Israeli cinema was just stuck in the army
experience, which makes perfect sense
because that was central to Israeli life.
Everyone was connected through the
army. It took a different generation to start
developing other stories. But I had those
movies in my mind. In approaching this
[film], I remembered the pitfalls and what
happened when a movie was political and
how easily dismissed it was."
Some viewers will view The Messenger as
anti-war simply by virtue of its acknowl-
edgement of combat deaths. But Moverman
worked and reworked the screenplay (with
Alessandro Camon) to provoke a more
complex and thoughtful reaction.
"What we wanted to do was make a film
that's not political, that's not pro-war or
Filmmaker Oren Moverman
anti-war but in wai' Moverman explains.
"If the movie becomes political, then it's
part of an argument. And being Israeli,
I've had my healthy share of experience in
arguments."
Moverman's parents were born in
British-mandated Palestine. His grand-
parents had left Poland in 1935, and their
entire family was subsequently wiped out.
"The first thing that I knew in my con-
scious life was the Holocaust — the war
and what the war did:' Moverman says. "At
least, that was the beginning of my search
for what the war did."
His fascination with the world of his
grandparents led to his immersion in
the great Yiddish writers, such as Jacob
Glatstein (whom he reads in Hebrew). And
it has more than a little to do with his next
assignment, adapting Daniel Mendelsohn's
nonfiction epic The Lost: A Search For Six
of Six Million for the screen.
Although he doesn't say so, one discerns
that his new project shares an underlying
theme with The Messenger.
"Life has pain, there's grief, there's loss,
and the question is how do you get back
to being alive Moverman muses. "You do
it through very, very simple mechanisms,
such as love and friendship and shared
emotions and shared experiences." 7
The Messenger opens Wednesday,
Nov. 25.
November 26 2009
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