A Tramway in Jerusalem

Twenty years ago, Amos Gitai was one of the flagships of an Israeli cinema that had not yet crossed borders.

His first films opened the door to worldwide fame.

But in the last ten years, while Israeli cinema has become known through other directors, Amos Gitai's artistic vein has dried up.

Always working with the same scriptwriter and always in the same catch-all drawer. What a bore this "Tramway in Jerusalem" is, with a succession of sketches according to the schedule.

Most of the time, the conversations lead to nothingness, without any depth. The city of Jerusalem is never highlighted because we suffocate in this transport where situations go from one to the other. In short, it's messy, confused. Unfortunately, we find here the usual background of Gitai, namely, the bashing of Israel and the denunciation of the living conditions of the poor Palestinians occupied by the Israelis, making fun of the nationalists so proud of their army. One really wonders how the great Yaël Abecassis could have fallen into the absurd discourse of Amos Gitaï. As for Mathieu Amalric, a very good actor, there are about thirty years but he does not renew himself, he is as empty as his exorbitantly blissful eyes. The other actors are interchangeable, no interest. A French actress, Anne Parillaud, said of Amos Gitai that he was a dictator on the set. I would add spoiled child! These are certainly a few leads to follow in order to understand the emptiness of Amos Gitai's films in recent years.

A tramway is certainly a great way to connect people, and even to make new acquaintances within Jerusalem, Paris, ... wherever. Nevertheless, beyond these disconcerting banalities, ... well, well, well, ... this film is desperately boring. Indeed, it can objectively be reduced to a succession of skits as naive as insignificant. If you need a sleeping pill, this movie might be the solution.

The Jerusalem tramway (more commonly called the "light rail") is the setting for a series of vignettes, songs, and even literary readings. One passenger reads at length from Flaubert to his son, another from Trotsky to his friends. The end credits name several other authors as "inspiration"-- Sayed Kashua, Hanoch Levin... I didn't catch them all, but I suppose they're the sources of some of the scenes and monologues. Maybe none of the material is completely original? I don't know. Regarding the tramway itself, you will learn very little from the movie, which doesn't even begin with the expected establishing shot. Toward the end, any logical relation between the tramway and the content is discarded as a woman simply recites a poem in German to the camera. The people are all photographed very nicely; Jerusalem itself is sometimes clear and picturesque and sometimes goes by in a blur. The international audience may or may not understand that the tramway passes both through Jewish neighborhoods and through Arab neighborhoods, but the movie makes a point of presenting Arab grievances dramatically while the Jewish side of the conflict is presented only satirically. The presentation of the Jewish religious sector is perhaps the weakest element in the movie; the moviemakers go for the low-hanging fruit, presenting a religious song that is extremely well known anyway and a Talmudic passage that is also extremely well known anyway. The movie invites comparison with Gitai's 2013 film Ana Arabia, in which a reporter circulates through a Jaffa neighborhood interviewing people one after another-- except that in this case there is no connecting character. It would be tempting to say aha, the connecting character is the tramway. But other than a possible gnomic significance in the announcement of the stations along the way, there's no reason that this anthology of mini-performances-- some more engrossing, some less engrossing, but certainly none overlong-- takes place in a tram rather than in a café or in a bowling alley.

Honestly a waste of an hour and a half of my life. Pointless film, crap directing and too many people talking about mundane issues. Also, the film is entirely set in a single tram. The WHOLE HOUR AND A HALF.

Spare yourself the misery.