Broken Wings

"Broken Wings (Knafayim Shvurot)" is a frank, involving portrait of a family coping with grief and stress.

Even more than such films as "Ordinary People," debut writer/director Nir Bergman has a sure touch in showing us the pressures and responses of a full range of individual family members, from the depressed working mother to her children -- five year old daughter, ten year old son, and and their teen brother and sister.

Within very realistic crowded and complicated living, working, school, and peer friendship environments, we see each as distinct individuals with guilts, needs, issues, and talents, and as the dependent members of a family unit dealing with past and present pain and crises, including through music.

I don't know the technicalities of the film stock, but the grittiness of the cinematography contributes to the naturalism, as well as the un-Hollywood, un-pretty look of the actors.

As an Israeli film what also adds to how touching it is is its non-political, non-geographically-necessary-specific content. This is just a beautiful human story of love and responsibility.

While the opening credits are bilingual Hebrew and English, the closing credits, annoyingly, are not.

There seems to be a whole genre of films recently ,the theme of which is young people's daunting search for purpose in life in a world where external sources of values are no longer accepted. I am thinking of "Garden State," "I Heart Huckabees," "Closer " etc. The consensus, so to speak, if these movies are to be taken as a mirror of reality, is that there is no purpose to be found, and the only grounds for relating to other human beings at all is sexual attraction, or its concomitant sexual competition. In fact, I watched this film and "Thirteen" together, and found them strangely parallel. I mention all this because Knafayim Shvurot is different from all the others in a small but fundamental respect: here the characters have not quite given up the search. Perhaps this reflects a difference between Israeli culture which, jaded though it is, is indisputably younger, and American culture which seems to be declining into both hedonism and vicious religiosity. I didn't realize it while I was watching, but was somehow not surprised to notice afterward that the "family" of characters is played by a real-life family. I couldn't help wondering how the experience affected them...

This film was a surprise. Israel's film industry is doing just fine, and judging by some of the latest movies that we have seen from that country, they have a very promising future.

Director Nir Bergman knows a thing or two about how to reach an audience. The story that he presents here is one about the tremendous pain this family is going through after the beloved father dies in a freakish manner, leaving behind a wife and four children that without him are at the breaking point.

Dafna, the mother, is sleepwalking through life; she appears to be sleepy most of the time. Having to work odd hours, she is losing the grip of things at home. Maya, the oldest daughter, is the logical choice for Dafna to rely on, but this teen ager feels her life is being torn between the family loyalty and her own singing ambition. The older son, Yair, also is facing very hard times adapting to a life that is uncertain, at best. The other two children are just plain lost because everyone else is absorbed in his own conflict.

The acting is first rate. Dafna, played with conviction by Orly Silbersatz Banai, is excellent as the over burdened mother. Maya Maron is the rebellious Maya, basically the central role of the story. Miss Maron plays convincingly. The rest of the cast is very good.

We can expect other fine films from Mr. Bergman in the future, I'm sure.

Going into this movie i had little knowledge regarding the film just the basic plot and that it had won some awards in Israel. In fact it's the first ever Israeli film i've ever seen.

Looking at the rather simple plot line I was worried that it would be too boring. I gotta say that despite the simple plotline that it was still rather meaningful as I'm sure many families around the world experience such trials in their lives. Parents and their children fighting even over the smallest things.

I just thought they could have expounded a little more on the lives of the family after the death of the father. Indeed too short at 80 mins. I thought the acting was pretty good especially from the two lead actresses. You could really feel the tension between the two as they argue.

Nice film overall with good acting performances

One of the best Israeli films ever. Israel had good actors, and good drama but never before have I seen such a well developed script. I guess the secret belongs to the fact that the movie started as a short film when Nir Bergman studied cinema, and then he developed it to a full length movie. Moreover, this movie is one of the representatives of the new Israeli movie age, after understanding Israel cannot produce big budget American style movies, and started producing small touching movies.

The story in a nutshell is about a single mom with four kids, trying to overcome the loss of their father. The movie time quota is within one week, so everything happens very fast, and sometimes it feels like someone is hitting you with a hammer in the stomach. other times it feels like someone is squeezing you for tears. Generally speaking the movie sure is an emotional roller coaster.

The movie follows the story of the rebellious daughter who is torn between her will to be a singer and her family duties because her mom is working night shifts as a nurse. It also follows the enigmatic closed son who had to be the strong man of the family because of the death of the father, and the effect the death had on his personality, emotions, and his functioning in school. Last but not least is the small child who has some kind of an accident during the film, which makes everything move even faster and more emotional.

The actors (especially Maya Meron, but that's because I'm a fool for her) are doing a great acting job and are very moving and realistic.

All in all, this is a great movie, highly recommended.