GFF Reviews

Author: gffreviews

  • The Black Book

    The Black Book was a collection of first-person accounts of the Nazi extermination of Soviet Jews during the war. A detailed documentation of antisemitism, it itself became the target of antisemitism within the USSR.

    This is a fantastic documentary, utilising a huge amount of contemporary footage, and the writings of the people directly involved. Rather than using a talking head format, it lets the past speak for itself throughout. It is deeply moving.

    When the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941, the Soviets were caught totally unprepared. They had placed faith in the non-aggression pact, and on a basic level, they didn’t have the money and machinery to meet the incoming forces. The blitzkrieg was swift and brutal.

    Reports of Nazi crimes against Jews began coming from the provinces, and a Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was formed. It involved all the most prominent Soviet Jews, including Solomon Mikhoels, the famous actor, comedian, and theatre director, and Itsik Fefer, the poet. Because they were Jews, they could appeal for help from American Jews without it being seen as Stalin turning to America for help. This saved face, while at the same time he was desperate to bring the Americans into the war.

    Mikhoels did his best and more, returning with shedloads of money, enough to buy planes and tanks that were sorely needed. While in America, he held the biggest ever Soviet address to an American audience. He attracted the interest of high profile figures like Paul Robeson.

    And there the idea of The Black Book was born. To make a permanent collection of the accounts of Nazi atrocities, so that it might be disseminated to inspire anti-Nazi fervour now, and be used as evidence in the prosecution of German war criminals later. The JAC enthusiastically proposed the idea, and it received approval from Stalin to be created.

    The writer Ilya Ehrenburg has been a correspondent in Berlin in the years before the second war, witnessing the rise of the Nazis, and had sent reports back that their ambition for dominance would soon turn its eye to Russia. In those days both he and his work were favoured by Stalin, so him contributing to The Black Book was seen as a boon.

    Another writer, one without Ilya’s stature yet, but brimfull of passion and talent, was Vasili Grossman. He was exempt from service, but volunteered for the Red Army. He rose to prominence as a battle reporter embedded with the troops during the Siege of Stalingrad. His mother was murdered by the Nazis, although he never found out how, where, or the location of her remains. Grossman was dedicated to giving the dead a voice through the Black Book.

    This was not an easy endeavour, there were so few survivors. In areas where tens of thousands of Jews had resided, only a handful remained. People who had been buried alive in mass graves were the only witnesses left to the eradication of entire villages.

    The Germans were trying to cover up their crimes on their retreat, destroying even the remains of their victims. Vasili saw Babi Yar, a ravine in the Ukraine where the Jews of Kiev were massacred, some 100, 000 people. When the Nazis withdrew, they exhumed the corpses and cremated them so that all that remained was black ash scattered for miles around. Vasili was also there for the liberation of Treblinka, and saw horrors beyond imagining. He took a full nervous breakdown afterwards and had to be sent home to his family.

    Nonetheless he resumed his work when he recovered, although never fully. His writings on it became The Hell of Treblinka, which was published as a seperate pamphlet and distributed during the Nuremberg trials as evidence for the prosecution. It was intended to be eventually included in the final published version of The Black Book.

    But things seemed to have stalled in that area. For one, Stalin was resentful that Vasili’s articles on the Battle of Stalingrad had engrandised the sacrifices and bravery of ordinary soldiers and citizens, instead of Stalin as a master strategist. For another, there were too many reports for Stalin’s liking of Soviets collaborating with the Nazis in the extermination of Jews. It was okay to expose the vicious antisemitism of the enemy, but suspect to do it for their own society.

    Also, the leash was off antisemitism in the USSR. The Nazis had shown what antisemites could get away with, and the native antisemitism had been allowed to be brought right to the fore of society, and normalised to such an extent. Simultaneously Stalin, now the formal front was no longer being fought, turned his attentions back to his own country, and fighting his own supposed enemies at home. It was decided that Soviet Jews were now the enemy.

    Ilya was removed from his post at the Red Star, as it was deemed to have “too many” Jews. Mikhoels and Fefer were deemed to be potential traitors for having been in America, despite only going because Stalin wanted them to, in a classic Stalin move. And the Black Book, it was remembered, had been devised as an idea on the American trip, which meant it too was now tainted with suspicion.

    Stalin refused to publish the Black Book, and banned any copies from the USSR. Mikhoels was assassinated on Stalin’s orders, and his body left in the street. The members of JAC were rounded, arrested, imprisoned and tortured. During this time, Paul Robeson visited from America and asked to see his good friends from the anti-fascism trip, Mikhoels and Fefer. No one could tell him that Mikhoels was already dead, and they had to pull Fefer out the KGB dungeons, and cover his injuries with makeup to make him presentable to produce for Robeson. Fefer was in such a state he couldn’t even speak, and tried to desperately make gestures to Robeson about his safety.

    Eventually all but 2 of JAC’s members were put to death. Vasili survived because the soldiers of the Red Army remembered his conduct and support during the Battle of Stalingrad. But he was blacklisted and his work was suppressed for the majority of his life. Ilya managed to survive by caving to state pressure and becoming a voicepiece, seeming to validate the antisemitism coming out the Kremlin. However, he campaigned to have the Black Book released until his dying day.

    So what became of the Black Book? Some copies managed to be smuggled abroad, but the book itself would not be published in Russia until 20-fucking-14. Yeah, you heard me. The Black Book got published in Russia at the same time The Lego Movie was in cinemas.

    An absolutely insane story, about the unbelievable cruelty of human beings, but also the perseverance and bravery of a few. The truth will out and some manuscripts will not burn.

  • Delicious

    This movie is so French.

    It’s about a cook who is fired from the service of an evil Duke, and opens the first restaurant in France. It’s basically about the first Frenchman to French. It’s great.

    Delicious is a feast for the eyes, even with its almost fable-like plot. Every shot is sumptuous, tracing light like dripping honey. The palette is warm, with earthy hues of peasant life. The kitchen glows like the beaming of homely joy. The cook’s cottage is illuminated in the pocket of country fields.

    And the food! My god, eat immediately before seeing it, or you’ll come out ravenous. I wanted to taste everything I saw. The walnuts, the chorizo, the omelettes, the roast pig, the salmon, O! This is a film that really asks you to smell what is before you.

    The plot is hilariously tropish, but in a way that is so wholesome, like a bedtime tale. The evil Duke spurns the cook, and humiliates him. But the cook returns to his cottage in the country with all the skills he learnt, and opens a roadside tavern, which grows into a new kind of idea as the film goes on – a restaurant. Influenced by his son’s burgeoning class consciousness, and his own awakening sense of the unfairness of the situation, he decides to throw open the ability to enjoy his cooking to the people, of any status, who may come and eat anything they like for equal payment.

    Perhaps the best revenge is living well.

  • Between Two Worlds

    Based on George Orwell’s The Road To Wigan Pier, Juliette Binoche stars as an undercover journalist reporting on work instability and poverty in France. The first half of the film shows the realities of work on the tenuous end of the breadline in 21st century France, while the latter half of the film deals with the ethics of such an investigation.

    I didn’t read The Road To Wigan Pier, but I did read Down and out in Paris and London, which had a similar premise. Orwell was an aristocrat’s son who committed to his socialist principles, and decided to work in the entry-level jobs open at the time. He hoped to expose the appalling conditions the working class endured. I suppose because it was long ago, and we know Orwell spent his life fully committed to those principles, we don’t question really the ethics of what he did.

    But Juliette Binoche’s character really does bring the morality of it starkly to the fore. By setting it in the here and now, it actually reminded me more of something like Black Like Me, another book in which a white Northerner went undercover as a Black American in the South during segregation. That books attracts a lot more scrutiny, and for good reason. It begs the question of Binoche’s character, why do we need the middle-class to translate the working-class experience? Why do we need her to expose it? It is already here for anyone to see. And when she justifies it by saying she wants to raise awareness of it as an issue, you just want to ask, are people really unaware of the fact folk are broke? Or is the issue that all the people with the power to change it don’t give a fuck?

    After all, the journalist walks away at the end of the day with a best-selling book, reaping the rewards of purveying a look at these people’s poverty, and the people themselves go right back to work every day, scrubbing shit off toilets and stripping beds. What money do they see off their story? A story they could easily tell for themselves if they weren’t busy being exploited all fucking day.

    The character you feel sorriest for is Christele, who doesn’t have much, living hand to mouth to feed her kids, but who feels like she’s finally found a friend. Of course, that turns out to be bullshit too, and ends in disappointment as so much in her life has.

    An interesting look at journalist ethics and class in today’s France.

  • Maverick Modigliani

    Ugh. First dud of the UK Jewish Film Festival.

    The opening scene of the movie is of a young woman trying to drown herself in a tin tub. She introduces herself as the narrator, and she addresses Modigliani in second person. She is Jeanne Hebuterne. She was an artist and a painter, and Modigliani knocked her up as a teenager, getting her disowned by her conservative religious family, and she died committing suicide while unwed and pregnant with her second child, two days after his death. So this movie that is titled Modigliani, which is about Modigliani, uses the suicide of a 21-year-old young woman as a dramatic attention-grabber for its documentary about this man. This got my back up immediately.

    I like art and I like documentaries about artists, but every time I hear the world ‘genius’ used, it just sets my teeth on edge. Genius is the early 20th century art equivalent of bro. It usually means you fuck teenagers, but are a great laugh when drunk. It’s like a get-out clause which wallpapers over a lot of human damage, usually harm to women.

    Modigliani is no different. What you think of his art aside, his story’s really not that interesting. He wanted to be an artist and he became an artist. There’s not a whole more to it that isn’t just name-dropping. He got TB as a kid, and it eventually killed him at 35. In between times he drank, womanised, and was broke. There, I just saved you 90 minutes.

    Maverick Modigliani fills up the lack of actual events with detailed analysis of artistic influences, and what his contribution was within larger artistic movements. Again, if it’s done well, I can find that interesting, but if it’s not, it just drags. Plus the discussion around Primativism was just clang-clang with that incredibly problematic subject.

    Honestly don’t know what else to add, because I honestly don’t feel like there’s a lot to address. Passable as a documentary, if you ignore everything other than the intellectual fapping over this dude.

  • Sublet

    Oh, that was so good!

    Sublet is about middle-aged, fastidious travel writer Michael who sublets an apartment in Tel Aviv from Tomer, 20-something hipster. It’s basically an Air BnB meet-cute.

    This film is basically an ode to inter-generational friendship. Tomer wakes Michael up to the world around him, giving him healing and hope, and Michael makes Tomer consider things a little more deeply, feel things a little more sincerely. It’s just beautiful. It takes place over 5 days, and it’s a love story, just the love of friendship.

    Michael is married, monogamous, and still recovering from the loss of a pregnancy. Tomer is supping from the bi banquet of life, ordering guys off Grindr. They’re in completely different places in their life, and completely different people, but they have an affinity for one another.

    My favourite scene in this was Tomer taking Michael to see his friend Daria’s dance production with her Palestinian lover, who she has a very intense on-again-off-again relationship. Pure Pina Bausch Tanztheater. Like fucking with your clothes on. And barely that.

    Speaking of fucking, my other favourite scenes are any scene where Tomer gets his kit off. The sexy scenes are hawt. And the guy who plays Tomer – delicious.

    I liked seeing hipsters portrayed positively, creative and passionate, appreciative of overlooked or forgotten things, even if there still is gentle humour about their foibles. And I like seeing queer inter-generational interaction portrayed positively, instead of focusing on ideological rifts.

    A warm and lovely film about the healing effects of the love of friendship.

  • Wood

    Yeah, I didn’t like this.

    I didn’t like how it was filmed more than anything else. It smacks heavily of white saviour. The film follows Alexander von Bismark of the Environmental Investigation Agency, an America activist who works to expose illegal logging practices. I think it was a mistake to make him the film’s main character, because there are a lot of local partners, who are the ones with the local expertise and who are taking the biggest risks, whose stories don’t need told through the cipher of explaining it to a visiting white guy.

    The film has 3 stories running through the course of the film. The first is the exposure of Lumber Liquidators, a US company, as being complicit in illegal logging in Russia. The second is the exposure of Holzindustrie Schweighofer, an Austrian company, as being complicit in illegal logging in Romania. The third is of them trying to help indigenous Peruvians by providing them with an app to track illegal loggers. In my opinion, it would have better to pick one of these stories and stick with it. Switching between the 3 makes Alexander look like a helicopter activist, dropping into places to make a big splash, then fucking off when the death threats come rolling in. It would also mean that we could spend more time with the local activists and journalists when Alexander goes, and get a fuller picture of the situation.

    Also, a lot of the white saviour vibes comes purely from filmmaking choices. The opening scenes are in Russia, and instead of subtitling the local Russian guides, it instead has Alexander relay what the translator has told him they’ve said to the camera. This is one of my biggest pet peeves of documentary filmmaking and is just so disrespectful, as well as really bringing to the fore the presumption that a white English-speaking audience would rather hear information from a white English speaker.

    Although Alexander also speaks German, a lot of the time he has to work through a local translator. Or he relies on local people speaking to him in struggling English. You get a whole different story when speak to someone in their own language than when you force their story through the pinhole of an unfamiliar tongue. Again, all the priority is on the presumed white, English-speaking listener, and the actual people affected by these issues are being made to serve the observer/camera. It’s not a good dynamic.

    Finally is just the way Alexander and other activists conduct themselves. At one point when visiting indigenous people in Peru and hearing their stories of intimidation and violence, Alexander discusses it with another activist who’s lying reclining in a hammock. The guy’s laid out in this hammock, like, “What do think? They’ll be killed when we go?” And it’s like mate, take this shit seriously, don’t lie there in a motherfucking hammock like your gap year is going rad.

    Another part of it might just be a cultural thing. Americans have the optimism of puppies. Being born in Scotland, I don’t, and find it incredibly irritating. It feels like listening to a child explain to you that all your problems can be fixed with a smile. So when Alexander and Co start touting this new app system as being able to end illegal logging, you just kinda die inside. Like, criminals already forge illegal certificates, why do you think a QR code is going to be any different?

    And watching them cack-handedly launch it to a village of indigenous people is just cringeworthy. There is a real racial tone-deafness to this film. Dropping this white saviour figure down into a place where he doesn’t speak the language and having him tell indigenous folks that a new app will solve their problems. There’s tons of moments like that, like when a Black guy at the EIA office asks about how to keep safe during undercover investigations, and Alexander starts explaining about just using common sense, and how that’s always worked for him. Like, could someone please acknowledge the relative differences in risk here?

    I’d love to bring this review to a conclusion about how, I didn’t enjoy the filmmaking choices, but overall, Wood shows the EIA doing good work. But I don’t feel I can even go that far. As we go to credits at the end, info flashes up saying the investigation into Lumber Liquidators is ongoing (being kicked into the long grass), that Romania passed legislation that would stop the miracle app from working (total loss), and that several Romanian journalist-activists had been killed following the high-profile attention. That sounds like the achievement of nothing, nothing, and the actual loss of human life.

    My takeaway from Wood is you really need to scrutinise your praxis, whether you’re an activist, a journalist, or a filmmaker.

  • Journey to Utopia

    Yikes!

    Ok. Well. My takeaway from that was probably not the one the director intended. Journey to Utopia is about a Norwegian family moving to live in a self-sustaining climate-neutral community in Denmark. I however felt like the story of the film was about a domineering and emotionally manipulative person who buys into what is clearly a scam, and moves her family to live in a cult-like environment. For me this film was just red flags, red flags, red flags.

    It starts on the director’s family farm in Norway. The trees are green, the soft rolling hills, the carved wooden homes with grass growing on the roof. And then he announces they are moving to a utopian community. And I’m like, “Wait, so this isn’t it?” What more could you ask for than living on your family farm, nature’s splendour all around you?

    Apparently not. This isn’t good enough for his wife, Ingeborg, who has unilaterally decided that their carbon footprint is too large, and has invested in a start-up, self-sustaining community. Red flags everywhere. The community is called Permatopia. A siren. And so far all that exists of it is an artist’s impression on the pamphlet. A klaxon, a def-con 1 sign, and in the background, cannons.

    There are ways to be concerned about the climate crisis, and there are ways. If you listen to people actually affected by climate change, in movies like The Ants and the Grasshopper, or The Last Forest, there is an urgency yes, but not the frantic panic-stirring in the way Ingeborg talks. She sounds like someone in the Cold War convinced the nukes are going to drop any moment and is desperate to build a fallout shelter. These people, in my experience, tend to have recently been in touch with fallout shelter salesmen.

    When the director, Erland, expresses doubts about moving to a community lifestyle radically different from their current one, one which is not yet built, and taking 3 children in tow, Ingeborg shuts him down by saying he’s too indecisive so she’s had to make the decision on her own. Which is a really good way of making yourself out to be the victim for totally domineering crucial choices about the family’s future. Red flags, Erland.

    He is a director and she is an opera singer. They’re well-to-do middle-class. Ingeborg insists that, because they both travel by plane for work, they owe it to the planet to reduce their carbon footprint. But not in some general way, only in this specific way that she’s decided for all of them.

    They pack up their life and move to Denmark, and don’t you know it? You’ll never guess! The self-sustaining community isn’t built yet. Shocker, I know. Bet you never saw that coming. Not from the first moment you heard the name Permatopia.

    Now, here’s the good thing about growing up broke working class. There are almost no upsides, but one did occur to me watching this. When there is no money, you have to prioritise. And in this situation, what is your priority as a parent? Keeping a roof over your kids’ heads. So you would immediately move back to your old place, if you could, and demand your money back off the Permatopia folk, preferably through a lawyer if you can afford one, or through a big fella if you can’t.

    They are in temporary accommodation in Denmark for TWO YEARS. I was amazed when I realised they still hadn’t sold the farm in Norway, that they could have gone home that whole time and saved 2 years of rent. That’s insane.

    No, Ingeborg insists that Permatopia will be finished any day now. Despite a total lack of even beginning. And berates her husband for making out like this is only her dream, when he wants to live sustainability too. Which again, acts like the person making all the decisions is the victim, and that any suggestion of a solution which doesn’t buy into total devotion to the vision of this new cult lifestyle is cowardice and selfishness. Guilt and shame is Ingeborg consistent tool of silence. Every time they meet with another delay, or Erland dares to point out the emperor has no clothes, she reminds him of how comfortable they are, how many people have it much worse, and how they don’t deserve to feel miserable. Run mate, run.

    So skip forward 2 years and it’s moving day. They pack up their life once again and drive up to their new home and … it’s a building site. There’s folk still drilling and banging away in the upstairs. Outside is diggers and overturned muck. They’re not in the door 5 minutes before they and their neighbours notice absolutely nothing’s been done right. The filler’s not set, there’s no ventilation in the roofs, there’s no power, no hot water, no light fillings, the floor’s uneven and drifting, the list goes on and on.

    And so the second part of the nightmare begins. Erland, a bit of a introvert, finds the new community with its mandatory participation sessions, collective meals, and the panopticon design of the houses suffocating. He’s moved away from the home where his father lived and died, where his mother still is. He’s doing this all in a second language, Danish, which is progressing painfully slowly. And when he expresses his struggles to his wife, she immediately brings up refugees out of nowhere. LEAVE THIS WOMAN.

    Watching Erland internalise everything his partner is saying is just painful to watch. He starts hiding behind his sofa for some privacy and talking to the camera about how anti-social he is, how it’s a selfish trait, how lazy he is for not wanting to spend more time on communal work than what is mandatorily required. He is indecisive because he doesn’t think this has been a good decision to move here, but he doesn’t want the earth to become uninhabitable for the next generation, and those are two perfectly equatable things, and the only two options.

    The only hero in this is his sullen teenage daughter Aslaug. She manages to keep enough detachment from her parents’ toing and froing to actually make her own decisions about what she thinks of Permatopia. That must take some force of personality, given how her mother is determined to bend the family to her will over the course of several years. Aslaug thinks the whole thing has obviously been a disastrous scam, but has nonetheless turned out for the best, as their neighbours have really banded together to make the place fulfil their dreams. It hasn’t worked because it was the right decision. It’s worked because people co-operated together to make it work. And although she is an introvert like her father, she finds her own way to be in this new place, standing in the fields with her earpods in, singing to herself. Heavy identify pal.

    So in conclusion, this film is barely about climate change, not really. It’s about social panic and projection of idealised self-image. It’s about middle-class project making. It’s about how old ideas and well-worn scams are taking hold in the new green economy. And it’s about a man who really needs to leave his wife, because she reads like an emotional abuser’s checklist.

  • The Policeman

    My Papa would have loved this film.

    Proper classic style comedy, from the very first scene, with the main character espousing his efficacious detecting methods, while in the background a store is pilfered by half a dozen people. Officer Azulai is clueless, with a heart of gold. His naivety is matched only by his honesty. He is what the police should be, so is blind to what they are, and fails to uphold his orders at every turn. In short, his character is a satire on the idea that the better a human being you are, the worse cop you are.

    He is moved by every sob story, writing folk traffic tickets, then paying the fines himself. He has a beggar that follows him around, and Azulai keeps hustling him out and putting money in his hand at the same time. He’s drafted in suited up in riot gear to break up a crowd of Orthodox zealots who are chucking rocks at motors driving on the Sabbath, but instead engages them in a lengthy religious debate on whether their actions are permissible according to the Torah. He’s taken to raid a bunch of hookers, but he makes pals with a lassie, ends up talking to her about her work, and comes to agree that there’s nothing shameful about it and it should be legalised.

    Everyone likes him. The climbers above him who want him fired for incompetence are constantly being thwarted by his guileless appeal to the community and others. A delegation of polis from France show up, and try to take him out on the bevvy. He wrongly tries to arrest a dude for being a terrorist, and the guy takes him out for a steak dinner and dancing. His childlike earnestness renders him endearing even to the criminals in the neighbourhood.

    So when it looks like his contract won’t be renewed, they decide to set him up for a big bust to make him look good to the brass. However this proves more difficult than thought, due to the aforementioned incompetence.

    Just a classic comedy, that gives satire a heart.

  • The Dinner

    This movie is so fucking Russian.

    Like Dostoyevsky levels of Russian. Like just short of a fallen noblewoman driving her shoeless children through the snow, singing the songs she recited at court. It feels like a play. You know, the ones called Winter, and you’re just waiting for everyone to get tuberculosis.

    With the feel of a Russian classic set in the 21st century, the film is about two lovers, Emma and Gregory. Genuinely devoted to one another, they have lost everything in the old country and come to Israel to start a new life. But whereas in Russia they were Jews, in Israel they are Russians. And life as new immigrants is a hand-to-mouth affair. Gregory was an engineer, and now works two jobs, both of them security, trading on the stereotype of Russian toughness. In reality though, both of these jobs are emasculating, taking shit from members of the public, who barely see him, for next to no money.

    Emma starts the film with a job handing out leaflets, which I’ve done and hey – I hear you – it’s soul-destroying. When her boss sexually harasses her, offering a promotion for a fuck, she tells him where to get off on the spot. But she repents at her leisure as she watches Gregory drown in their threadbare poverty.

    He has lost his hope, and so lost his faith. He sets his sights on teaching their pet parrot to speak, which if you’ve read any Russian literature you know means that parrot’s days are numbered.

    When the offer of work appears as a life drawing model, Emma feels she can’t refuse. Despite the fact she’s clearly not thrilled to be doing it, despite the fact she knows Gregory would flip his shit if he knew she was taking off her clothes for money, she feels she cannot let her pride get in the way of their finances again.

    Enter Alon, and the second couple in this film. Alon is a wealthy, middle-class businessman, who dabbles in art to maintain his cultured persona. Whenever he neglects his wife (or it’s heavily implied gets some stray) he shows up with something expensive as an apology.

    Alon has everything Gregory does not have, and nothing that he does. Alon’s marriage is one where either partner barely registers each other. His wife is schtupping his best friend, an aging, vaping emo. Meanwhile Gregory clings to his wife as his only reason for living, the only thing that makes him feel good or alive, the only person who sees him with dignity.

    Alon tries to pursue Emma, overtly as a private model for his paintings, but with a constant undercurrent that, of course, this will lead to fucking. Emma initially poses for the money, but bails when she feels like there’s more hanging in the air, and the pressure of keeping what she’s doing from Gregory becomes too much.

    Finally things look up when Gregory lands a well-paying job at a tech company, and even looks set to get a promotion. The boss invites him to his house for dinner, and, you guessed it, his new boss is Alon. Coincidence is a bitch, no?

    You know if a film is called The Dinner, then everything you’re watching is just dominoes being lined up for the absolute shitshow that will go down at this dinner. And needless to say, this follows the garment-rending traditions of the classics.

    Thoroughly satisfying slice of Russian misery. Raw with emotion, a bitter portrait of class.

  • Shalom Taiwan

    Shalom Taiwan is a real heartwarmer. A rabbi’s temple is about to be foreclosed on in the latest financial crisis, and his usual round of donation-pleading to wealthy Americans falls on deaf ears, as they too feel the pinch. In his desperation, he follows a connection to Taiwan, where he tries everything to raise the funds needed.

    I love that Rabbi Aaron is clearly a sincere man, wanting to do good, but there’s also a streak of ego which has found its way in, and contributed to this downfall. He’s clearly trying to live up to the reputation of the last rabbi, and has overextended the temple financially to do so. And everywhere he goes, he talks about what the temple does for the community, how it supports the community, how it holds together the community. But when it comes to saving the temple, he feels it is all on him. It shows a huge amount of sincere devotion and sense of responsibility, but also a conceit, that he alone holds up the temple. If the temple belongs to the community, why not let the community save it?

    I love it because it is such a realistic and human flaw. And his journey to Taiwan makes him realise his mistakes. That there are more important things than money. That a community is a community whether it is in a upscale building or a one-room shack. That home is the place you put your priorities.

    I was a bit worried going into it that the film might be a bit, you know, Live Laugh Love. But it manages not to stray too far into that territory, showing travel as a nourishing and transformative experience, without getting icky objectification vibes.

    With a nice dusting of humour over it, Shalom Taiwan is just a simple and uplifting morality tale.