The Ring Family Wesleyan Israel Film Festival continued Tuesday with a screening of Eytan Fox’s “Walk on Water,” followed by a talk by the writer and producer Gal Uchovsky.
“Walk on Water” interlaces such large themes as sexual identity and Israeli machismo, Nazism and Jewish history, and Israeli and Palestinian relations. Fox and Uchovsky accomplish this not didactically, but rather through delicate character exploration.
Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent on assignment to track down an ex-Nazi officer, poses as a tour guide to the officer’s grandson, Axel, a gay German left-winger. As Eyal shows Axel around Israel, the audience experiences the country through both native and foreign eyes and watches a complex relationship develop between the two men.
The best scenes of the film are the intimate interactions between Eyal and Axel, two men who could not be more different yet who share a genuine curiosity and eventual respect for one another. While showering together at a beach, they candidly discuss circumcision, and a sensual inquisitiveness arises between them. In moments like this, Fox evokes the tenderness and vulnerability of his characters.
The complexity of the relationship between Israeli and German cultures surfaced during the production of the film. Germany refused to offer any funding to the film even though a large portion of the film was shot there. During the discussion, Uchovsky suggested that this resistance might have had to do with the undertones of Nazi sentiments found in some of the German characters.
Uchovsky, who has been a journalist, critic and TV host, and who is a leading commentator on gay issues in Israel, noted that the character he created was very much tied to his vision of Israel.
“All the movies we make are about us,” Uchovsky said. “We are telling our stories. This Israeli man is my brother, my father, he is me, he is everyone I know. If I didn’t think this man couldn’t grow then I wouldn’t be able to believe in Israel.”
The film becomes a personal redemptive journey for Eyal, who must grapple with his responsibility as a national citizen as well as a human being. In the beginning of the film Eyal is put off by Axel’s naiveté and sensitivity; he is plagued by a desire for vengeance. Eyal is a man who can kill with ease, who hesitates to embrace tradition, who dislikes those who are different from him, and who cannot express his emotions (at one point in the film he tells Axel that he was born without tear ducts).
Coming from a country with a rich history and strongly divided political issues, “Walk on Water” is very much preoccupied with Israeli identity. The film posits that the Jewish past is too easily dismissed by a younger generation that is caught up in hatred and retaliation against an enemy they know and care little about.
“The film is influenced by events of the Intifada and deals with the feelings that occur after such trauma,” said Ben Magarik ’06. “It shows us something vindictive that opens deep wounds and then tries to reconcile them.”
The interaction between Axel and Eyal operates within the film both personally and historically. In one scene they sit closely together in front of a campfire, intimately discussing national guilt for the Holocaust and continued anger and hate. Their words of understanding indicate that old injuries might be reconciled through open dialogue.
The emotional journey of Eyal becomes a tale of redemption as, by the film’s end, Eyal evolves into a compassionate person who is sensitive and tolerant of others. The optimistic resolution of the film speaks to the filmmakers’ hope that Israel as a nation may be able to change as well.
Leave a Reply