Amos Gitai's Alila

Alila, screened at the Toronto International Film Festival 2003, is Amos Gitai's latest film set in contemporary Tel Aviv. It follows Eden and Kedma, two films which rethink the period surrounding the founding of the state of lsrael and are Gitai's attempts to demystify an idealized historical vision of those years. Gitai's films are personal expressions of an artist who has produced a body of work that dramatizes the sensibility of feeling exiled or alienated, even, at times, within one's homeland. A revisionist perspective of the heightened idealism that followed the momentous founding of the state and the concept of Jewish national unity is the baseline for Gitai's meditations on contemporary Israeli life- on religious fanaticism, the emptiness of a secular society characterized by hedonism and materialism, racial tensions, displacement. Disillusionment with the officially sanctioned national vision permeates these films; they acknowledge the many differences-cultural, religious, racial, genderic- that defies a homogenous idea of Israeli identity and accomplishment. Gitai has taken the role of the gadfly artist who is critical of the socio/political realities of the country about which he cares deeply. Although Israel has not always welcomed this point of view (Gitai left Israel for Paris following the controversy surrounding his documentary Field Diary 1982), it is nonetheless a healthy sign that Israel's most acclaimed filmmaker can use the cinema as a forum for critical discussion and dissent. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Alila in Hebrew means the plot (as in narrative construction; the chain of parts that make up the whole). The film is presented as a black comedy (adapted from a novel, Returning Lost Loves, by Yehoshua Kenaz) that is centered on an apartment building in Nehushtan, a working class neighborhood in Tel Aviv that borders Jaffa. There are a number of interwoven narrative threads of which the plot is composed. Although it follows the stories of a number of characters, its plot is less defined by character or interiority as it is by situation and thematic ideas. The film is about the transgression of boundaries, the difficulties of sharing social or communal space, a changing national landscape where foreign workers make up a tangible and ignored stratum of Israeli society, generational conflict, the disillusionment with the expectation to commit wholeheartedly and willingly to national security and defense, changing gender relations, the loss of privacy. Though not as accomplished, in some ways Gitai's film is like Godard's Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle 1966, where the subject is Parisian society and culture at a particular social moment and the characters articulate the artist's questions and ruminations on contemporary life. Also with Godard, the result can sometimes be uneven but parts can be exhilarating, particularly in the way style is used (for which the director of photography, Renato Berta deserves acknowledgement). The film is architectural, composed of a series of long takes/sequence shots (in the press kit Gitai states that each scene is composed of one shot and the film has forty in total), often with a fluid-moving camera that traverses walls and boundaries and can allow for a contemplative spectatorial position. These shots are often characterized by saturated colour (accompanied by a sophisticated aural soundtrack), which is remarkably beautiful. Many of the film's images remain imprinted in one's memory, like the shots of Tel Aviv traffic, the interior of a shoe store or cafe, an exterior shot of a tree-lined street corner. Gitai's commitment to the country is evident in the beauty of these shots. The opening sequence shot from the interior of Ezra/Uri Klauzner's car is particularly exemplary. The camera shifts between the father and son's discussion in the front seat about the son Eyal's fears and hesitations of being unable to complete the mandatory army service and the father's reassurances that it is a normal trajectory and rite of passage that everyone manages to get through, but then is sidetracked by the tumult of city life and the signs and sounds that seem to distract the camera's attention. …

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