35 Downhill

It's a shock that after David Lynch's "The Straight Story," anyone would make another movie about an old man taking a long journey by tractor. But there's no law against it. This movie, although filmed in Israel with Israeli actors, is a French co-production, and it's one of the Frenchest Israeli movies that I've seen. If it feels like stopping for a monologue by an intriguing stranger, it'll stop for a monologue by an intriguing stranger.

In the French New Wave tradition, the filmmaker's effort pays off at the level of the scene, not in the overall plot or character development. And the characters are constantly failing to find a connection with one another and even with any purpose greater than themselves. The man on the tractor is ostensibly fine with that; he's an "I did it my way" kind of guy. He just wishes he could be prouder of his son.

As the road trip progresses, often there's not a very strong sense of where we are and how far we've travelled. The man doesn't set out on the tractor alone, his son sets out with him, so by Hollywood standards we could expect that the trip will turn out to be a metaphor for a journey into mutual understanding, but if it is, it's not a very smoothly executed journey in that sense.

There's a lot of melancholy in the movie, maybe more than the public will like, but the industry gave it eight best-of-year nominations in important categories, with one win-- Best Supporting Actor, for the tractor man's role (which could very well have been considered a lead).