Archive for November 21st, 2010

Jerusalema

All the hype surrounding the 2008 South African film, Jerusalema, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival is well deserved. A gangster tale to rival Goodfellas and surely proved inspirational to such films as District 9 and any future South African gangster films in the making. Whilst as local locations go, Cape Town could be used for the French Riveira or Toronto, but Johannesburg as a film location is uniquely South African, so brilliantly captured in Jerusalema and District 9, a vast urban sprawl of cosmopolitan energy to rival Rio, Mumbai or Los Angeles. Jerusalema follows the rise of Lucky Kunene from novice car jacker to Hillbrow slum lord who follows two mantras in life those by Karl Marx that all property is theft and by Al Capone, that violence is a means to the end. Not exactly savoury role models. A gangster and the founder of communism. Lucky Kunene sees himself as the Robin Hood of Hillbrow taking some dignity back to the urban slums of downtown Johannesburg, kicking out drug dealers and prostitutes and claiming the high rise buildings as his own, whilst neglected tenants languish in the outer suburbs of the urban sprawl, too afraid to venture into Hillbrow and fix up the severely neglected tenement buildings.

Gangsters Paradise Hillbow style

Where Jerusalema triumphs is Ralph Ziman’s uncompromising  and skillful direction, depicting some serious social issues in downtown Johannesburg ranging from poverty, crime, drug addiction, xenophobia and inter-racial love, whilst never losing the sense that Johannesburg is a thriving and massively industrious city, where all its citizens are earning money to survive some by less scrupulous means. Johannesburg is as much a character in the film as Lucky Kunene, played with relish by Rapulana Seiphemo with a great supporting cast of South African actors.

The violence is uncompromising, the story gripping and the humanity undeniable all packed into a frenetically shifting urban landscape which remains as uncertain as the characters which inhabit Hillbrow. Jerusalema is heavy on action, great on story line and could rival such crime epics as Goodfellas or The Departed, depicting one man’s attempt to raise above the poverty he was born in and the environment he hopes to escape. Success is naturally as elusive as forgiveness, but the point is made that quite often men can shape their environment, seize opportunities as much as circumstances can shape or break a man’s future.

The fact that Jerusalema was not selected as a contender for the 2008 Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards is more  to do with it not entirely being in Xhosa, whilst the thought-provoking subject matter could rival any recent Foreign Language Film winners, like The White Ribbon and Pan’s Labyrinth.

Never be ashamed of lust…

Eyes Wide Open

In a staunch and insular Orthodox Jewish community, a drifter arrives, Ezri looking for work and accommodation. Aaron, a married father who has re-opened his father’s Kosher butcher shop in Jerusalem offers Ezri a place to work and to sleep upstairs from the business. Ezri is young, handsome and seems out of place in an essentially conservative society, harbouring a talent to draw and a deeper homosexual feeling towards Aaron. Initially their relationship is purely platonic, but its very difficult to separate feelings when they work, pray and basically spend all their time together. The sexual tension is rife, especially in a neighbourhood which has already demonized another man for having an affair with a young woman, contracted to be married to someone else.

Ezri invites Aaron to step out of his comfort zone and travel out of Jerusalem to some sacred waters for spiritual cleansing. Soon their intimacy turns to passion in the backrooms of the Kosher butchery, and Aaron enters a forbidden relationship with Ezri in a tightly-knit neighbourhood which is already threatening to boycott his business for being unorthodox. Elders from the synagogue advise Aaron to let Ezri go as his reputation suffers, for the sake of the moral fibre of a community that cannot suffer from the foolish love between men.

To have a window into another belief system so different to one’s own is a privilege enough, and this Israeli film is remarkable that it was ever made in the first place, with the financial backing of the Israel Film Fund and is fascinating not just at the perceptive look at an orthodox community, the strict social customs and the religious traditions which bind it, but also at the taboos which also threaten to dissolve the very strands that hold that community together.

Marriage, family and children are sacred and non-conformity is frowned upon as a deviancy left to drifters. Eyes Wide Open is a riveting film, held together by the brooding and simmering performances of Ran Danker, who shines  as the seductive and outgoing  Ezri and Zohar Strauss as the morally conflicted and claustrophobic Aaron  both entwined in a relationship as doomed as that portrayed by the Wyoming cowboys Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar.

Herding cattle and desire at Brokeback

Both Eyes Wide Open and Brokeback Mountain depict forbidden relationships between men that are at supreme odds with the environment that they are forced to inhabit but cannot relinquish. As for Ezri, like Jack Twist, both would be more comfortable in cities like Paris, Toronto and Rio de Janeiro, but have to accept the consequences of taking risks for the sake of desire in a hostile world.