And on the Third Day

I have to say I enjoyed this rather unconventional movie, even if it took a while to get going. It features many people living in Israel and how their lives intertwine with one another. They are all going through harsh times, almost as if experiencing a living hell. It depicts a country where people are corrupt, society is breaking down, and even good people end up doing terrible things... things which their enemies have been doing. It's as if the film portrays Israel as a society suffering and rotting from the inside, but also affected negatively by external politics. Several scenes whisk by crying people. Looks of pain on people's faces. Strange selfish behavior is carried out by many characters in the film...

The 'hellish' existence becomes even more apparent during the film's ending, which I must say served for an excellent climax. It's interesting how the film starts with such a happy, festive scene, which really contrasts with the ending with a society on edge, and then finally, a giant breakdown.

So.. I would recommend this movie. If you get through the first 30 minutes, the rest of the movie is quite enjoyable.

Anyhow. Here's the breakdown:

Acting: 10/10 Story: 7/10 Direction: 8/10 Technical aspects such as light & sound: 9/10

A top Israeli actor, Moshe Ivgy made both his writing debut and his directing review with this film. Two other writers are credited with him, but all together they did stumble a little. This is one of those movies where a number of stories start out separately and then turn out to intertwine. The device is legitimate; generally nobody says "what an unreasonable coincidence" when the characters we've seen separately run into one another, because we all understand that's why they were all in the movie in the first place. But once the click of connection has occurred, additional scenes where chance establishes additional connections are a thing of comedy and this movie tries to set them in a drama. Dickens could get away with such stuff, but today's movies try to downplay it even when adapting Dickens.

Introducing a bunch of initially independent plot lines is a challenge that Ivgy handles pretty well. The actors are for the most part reasonably difficult to confuse with one another, and we don't spend time waiting to see whether anything will happen. On the other hand, we do have to wait to find out who, if anyone, is a character who deserves our sympathy. Perhaps intentionally, the movie starts out looking quite misanthropic, as if the scene-- Tel Aviv-- has fundamentally deteriorated into dog-eat-dog misery; but as the movie proceeds, some of the characters are shown to have sympathetic facets and to be capable of worthy acts. Maybe that's the point of the movie-- that goodness endures-- but it doesn't easily carry the weight of the whole movie; though individually each scene holds interest, you can wind up wondering what you watched it all for and the answer may be that it was Moshe Ivgy's first exercise in movie-making.

From descriptions by other people, I had the impression that the setting for this movie was in some way post-apocalyptic or at least post- ruination in some way, but it is only exaggerated, as if a lot of common everyday pleasure has been filtered away and a lot of common everyday roughness and sadness has been injected to take its place.