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ROSH HASHANAH

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FABULOUS SINNERS
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YOM KIPPUR

BREAK THE FAST TRAYS

the Bolshoi orchestra, in order to play
a concert in Paris.
Like his earlier films, he says, The
Concert is not the linear story of
Mihaileanu's life but an autobiogra-
phy of his soul. "I'm a storyteller. I'm
always hiding behind my stories:' he
says in a telephone interview from
Paris.
Always with some deception.
All his scripts, Mihaileanu, 52, says,
are based on two lies — the lie about
his father's name and identity that
helped save his father's life and the lie
that helped Mihaileanu leave Romania
in 1980.
An aspiring actor who had per-
formed with the Yiddish theater in
Bucharest, he was leading a clan-
destine play about a 15th-century
king and queen that was a thinly
disguised attack on Nicolae and Elena
Ceausescu, the despised ruling couple
who met their death at their coun-
trymen's hands when Romania's
Communist regime was overthrown
in 1989.
Mihaileanu's play was the last of
several, all anti-government, he had
helped produce, he says.
In a police state, where criticism of
the leaders was forbidden, it would be
dangerous for Mihaileanu to stay. "You
have to leave his father warned.
He would have left, "anyways,"
Mihaileanu says. "I was not a hero. I
needed to be free; it was not my way
to shut up." Otherwise, "I would find a
prison:'
At 22, he applied for permission to
go to Israel on a short visit.
The second lie — "I knew I would
never come back."
After a short time in Israel, he
moved to Paris, studied at the Institute
for the Advanced Cinematographic
Studies, worked as an assistant for
prominent directors then began
directing his own films.
Each of Mihaileanu's films is influ-
enced by a sense of outsider-ness. His
father, who was a communist under
Nazism and an anti-communist under
Communism, was, the filmmaker
says, "always on the wrong side."
And he himself — a dissident in his
Communist homeland and an emigre
in France — easily wore an outsider's
clothes.
"In all my movies, people become
imposters in some way, simply to sur-
vive," he says. "All my movies are about
escaping, surviving, fighting, search-
ing for identity, racial integration."
Mihaileanu walks, as a direc-
tor, in the footsteps of Abraham the

Patriarch, the first Hebrew, he says.
"Hebrew" comes from the word for
someone who has crossed over, who is
on the other side.
Now, Mihaileanu says, he appreci-
ates his days as an outsider. People
who had to hide their true identity at
one time "are richer," more apprecia-
tive, more sensitive when they are free
to be themselves, he says.
Hence, in Train of Life, whose depic-
tion of Jews' freedom exists in the
narrator's imagination, salvation turns
out to be a fantasy.
"You have to be free," Mihaileanu
says, "even if in a dream."
Optimist or pessimist?
"I am very sad but optimistic," he
says. Life presents problems, "but you
can't give up." It amounts, he says, to a
Jewish attitude. "I'm deeply happy to
be alive."
"The Concert," like his earlier films,
has elements of humor, sometimes
mocking, sometimes bittersweet.
"I'm not a violent person ... humor
is the ultimate weapon I have against
the dictators that have marked my
life and the lives of my loved ones,"
he said in a 2009 interview with the
Cineuropa website."I use it to battle
barbarism and death, to show that
we're stronger than they are, that we're
still alive so we've won."
His goal: "To make people laugh, to
make people happy"
His next film, about Arab women
and their rights, has no obvious theme
of Jewish identity.
"The culture is Arabic. The film is
still me — Jewish, Romanian, French:'
Mihaileanu says; some familiar refer-
ences are sure to surface.
In Mihaileanu's home, he says,
there are no secrets. His children were
raised with Jewish educations, with
Jewish identities, with the family's
stories of name changes and hidden
identities. "They know everything."
Knighted in 2006 by Romania
and in 2007 by France, Mihaileanu
discusses all his movie ideas with
his father, who has become a trusted
adviser.
Mihaileanu has drawn criticism for
using humor where some people think
humor doesn't belong, in productions
about totalitarian societies.
His father approves all his films, he
says. "He loves them. Because he is
subjective. He's a Jewish father:'

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The Concert, in Russian and
French with subtitles, is due to
open in Detroit this fall.

from
Mayor Brenda L. Lawrence
City of Southfield

Wishing you and yours a very
joyous and prosperous New Year

1619650

September 2 • 2010

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