There Was No War in '72

After completing "There Was No War in '72" I think I've found a pattern or a theme that goes along with Israeli movies. I've watched a few recently, and the two heavily pushed points are as follows: Guilt, and people are normal.

The few Israeli movies Ive watched all seem to revolve around normal everyday people doing normal everyday things, and most of the story is under dramatized. This film, made in 1995, but looks like its from the 70's focuses on a kid shortly after the 6 Day War, who is basically a fuck up. He gets kicked out of school, runs away, bothers everyone in his family as they try to help him. His father is sick of him, but his mother is still trying to coax him out of it, they play good cop/ bad cop. None of it seems to work though. That is the story in a nutshell, and so it right away made me think of "The 400 Blows" even the ending shot seems to be taken from 400.

The cast does a fair job, and there is an interesting mix of English and Hebrew in it. Although as a foreign film I saw no significant cultural difference, it could have been in America or in most of Europe. They only mention Arabs a few times, most of the focus is on the family dynamic. They don't even mention the war in it. It was boring for the most part, and I chalk that up to the fact that it's not telling an extraordinary tale, its just life. "Yom Yom" another Israeli movie I watched a few months ago had some of the same cast, specifically Natali Atiya, who is gorgeous. There is just something about her face, she really made the movie a lot better even though she isn't in it a lot. I must not be alone on finding her attractive since they put her on the cover of the box for "Yom Yom" and she is by no means even close to being a central character.

Like I said earlier the movie was sort of boring, and I kept getting annoyed with the kid for not just manning up and taking some responsibility, then again he was only 14. He's like an emo kid, everything is everyone else's fault and he just wants to play his guitar. Although if you look at it from the perspective that perhaps he is stupid then his behavior makes sense, and he is just not going to function that well.

Overall it was good, but if you want to see something blow up, or aliens or a comedy this isn't going to be what you want to pop in. 6/10 stars.

Here is a picture of the girl I was talking about so you see what I mean by gorgeous.

Director: Davis Kreiner

Starring: Adam Abulafia, Tova Asher, Samuel Edelman