Finally, a Festival Worth Seeing

Waltham is not, perhaps, the most diverting destination serviced by the MBTA. Many of the most prominent signs in town announce the distance to Lexington, and at midday the busiest stretch of the sleepy streets is the outbound to Boston commuter rail station. But just steps from the train stop, in a nondescript office building overlooking the deserted Waltham common, pulses the heartbeat of one of Boston's most exciting cultural events.

Entering the office of the Boston Jewish Film Festival after a walk around Waltham is like stepping into Technicolor Oz from black-and-white Kansas. A barely repressed sense of manic energy pervades the tiny office, as well it should. The ninth annual Festival, which closes November 16, has brought a vibrant array of marvelous contemporary film to the Boston area.

The Festival may revolve around Judaism, but the Festival films are only incidentally Jewish. Certainly they will provoke discussion not only about Judaism but also about more universal subjects: politics, love, family relations.

How I Learned to Overcome My Fear and Love Arik Sharon, a strange blend of fact and fiction, traces the odyssey of Avi Mograbi, a politically leftist filmmaker, as he attempts to document right-winger Ariel "Arik" Sharon during the 1996 Israeli election campaign. Mograbi intends to reveal a harsher side of the publicly charming Sharon. But Mograbi's plan unravels as he too is seduced by Sharon's charisma.

Mograbi really began his project as a documentary but soon realized that he was not fulfilling his aim of exposing Sharon's unsavory side. So the focus of the film shifts from Sharon to a fictional version of Mograbi himself. Between shots of Sharon on the campaign trail, the fictional Mograbi sits in his bland yellow den and describes the transformation he underwent in the course of filming.

Mograbi's metamorphosis is hilarious. Initially an unwelcome member of the Sharon entourage, his sheer persistence in shadowing Sharon wins Mograbi a modicum of acceptance from staffers and finally from Sharon himself. He starts to dream of Sharon, picturing himself an intimate of the Sharon family. Some shots of Mograbi as he supervises the filming of campaign events show him nodding his head as he intently listens to Sharon;s speeches. By the end of the film he is out of control, dancing wildly to an Israeli pop version of "Na Na, Hey Hey, Kiss Him Goodbye" at a political rally at which Sharon never even appears.

Despite the on-screen Mograbi's complete about-face with respect to Sharon, Mograbi in real life still abhors the man and his politics. In a statement released about the film, Mograbi notes with some regret that this film may give Sharon "a free ride into the hearts of some who have a monstrous image of him." Mograbi is a master mimic and manipulator of film, but his occasional imitations or unflattering shots of Sharon do not leave a negative impression of the politician. Even when the camera lingers on Sharon's portly belly or dwells on his ungraceful manner of eating Sharon maintains his dignity. As a critique or a satire of Sharon, Arik Sharon fails, but as a comedy, it is a resounding success.

Mendel, the sellout second film of the festival, takes place nearly 50 years and a continent away from Arik Sharon. The German Jews Aron and Bela Trotzig move with their children David and Mendel to Norway from Germany in 1954 in an effort to escape the lingering horror of the Holocaust. Mendel, born after the war ended and temporarily shielded from knowledge of the Holocaust by his parents, confronts a world where much remains incomprehensible and the past is a blank. His main concern becomes his struggle to decipher the story he has only half-heard in whispers his whole life.

Thomas Jungling Sorenson is superb as Mendel, playing him as an impish yet innocent scamp. Mendel knows perfectly well what lines he is not supposed to cross, yet time after time he turns big puppy eyes on his mother or father and asks some outrageous question that causes an eruption. Yet despite his mischievous intentions, Mendel asks his questions out of a sincere desire to ferret out the mystery surrounding him.

Director and writer Alexander Rosler, who based the film on his own childhood experiences, shares Mendel's point of view with the audience by revealing only what Mendel knows. Conversations stop abruptly for the camera as well as for Mendel. Mendel has a habit of shouting "Click!" as he gazes on a place for the last time; Rosler prolongs his shot of the scene as Mendel makes his mental picture.

The gem of opening weekend, Russian Ragtime has perhaps the most tenuous link to Judaism of any film in the festival. It is suggested that the father of Misha, the protagonist, left Misha's mother because she was Jewish. That's it. Ragtime would fit more easily into a Communist or Russian Film Festival than a Jewish Film Festival, and any festival would be glad to have it.

Russian ragtime is a type of Russian 70s music that, like its American counterpart, evokes nostalgia for a seemingly golden era which never actually existed. 1974 Russia indeed seems golden to Misha, a 20-year-old who dreams of living in New York, Misha starts working on the black market in an attempt to raise money for a black market ticket to New York. His work doesn't seem too taxing, and he spends most of his time cavorting exuberantly with his two best friends.

But the gilt surface of Misha's seemingly charmed existence begins to corrode. The gangster whom Misha works for starts to threaten his life, and, even worse, Misha is captured by the police and urged to implicate his friends for tearing down a Soviet flag in exchange for a ticket to New York.

Nikolai Dobrynin's Misha is a man of a hundred smiling faces and several dozen frowns. His face is an open book, mirroring exactly Misha's emotions. One character comments on Misha's unwavering optimism by noting that his America is "in the nuthouse." But as Misha loses his innocence, his face becomes steadily grimmer. Dobrynin's virtuoso performance cements the film. The entire cast, in fact, merits special praise for their acting. Spotty subtitles cause the full meaning of the Russian dialogue to be lost on English speakers, but the marvelous performances transcend language.

Sergei Ursulyak is a visually daring director, and his film features many arresting sequences. Misha meets a stunning mystery woman on his first night in Moscow and later encounters her again alone on the subway. Too dejected to speak, he stays in the car. The camera moves away with the car, filming the solitary woman until blackness engulfs her.

The beginning of the film contains another visual treat: a sly reference to Saturday Night Fever. As Misha steps off the train in Moscow clad in beige plaid and an orange scraf, he participates in a crazed dance sequence before Ursulyak rapidly cuts to a more somberly dressed Misha, stripped of his fantasies, standing in a drizzle outside the train station. At the end of the film, Misha's brightly colored Moscow fades into gray.

Unlike Arik Sharon, Blood Money is a real documentary. It resembles nothing so much as the document-based question on the Advanced Placement history exams, in which students are given an assortment of primary sources and are told to weave them together in an essay. An especially clever student may form an essay of surprising depth and insight from the varied information given.

Blood Money is one of those clever essays, smoothly incorporating a large amount of footage into a clear summary of the Swiss involvement with Nazi gold during and after World War II. Film clips from Europe and America, from World War II and present, are neatly combined to form a cohesive synthesis. Blood Money makes a coherent and damaging, if biased, argument against the Swiss for their role in helping the Nazis hide the plunder they took from Jews and other victims of their regime. The moving testimony of many Holocaust survivors who are still seeking to recover money trapped by the secretive Swiss banking system is far more powerful than any exculpatory evidence the Swiss could produce.

This film was made for the "Investigative Reports" series, which doubtless explains the abrupt endings of various segments of the film (insert commercial here) and the ominous narration. A startled viewer might initially mistake Blood Money for "Unsolved Mysteries": even the most innocuous events are made to sound sinister, and phrases like "the darker questions [about Swiss neutrality] are beginning to emerge" abound.

At times, the film presents too much of its excellent source material at once and becomes tedious. Nonetheless, Blood Money is a solid, thorough treatment of a very timely topic.

The Boston Jewish Film Festival runs through November 16. As of November 14, seven films are still to play at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Call 734-2500 for information.

One film contains a sly reference to Saturday Night Fever.