Builds on real macabre coincidences to pile on symbolism higher and higher in time-tripping phantasmagoria of flashbacks, nightmares,fantasy and occasional credibility.
Forgiveness (2008)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted: 9
Fresh: 3
Rotten:6
Average Rating: 4.7/10
Rated: Not Rated
Genre: Foreign Films
Theatrical Release:Sep 12, 2008 Limited
Synopsis:
On April 9, 1948, a Jewish militia entered the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and killed over 100 villagers.
Soon after, a mental hospital was built on the ruins. The first patients to be...
On April 9, 1948, a Jewish militia entered the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and killed over 100 villagers.
Soon after, a mental hospital was built on the ruins. The first patients to be committed were Holocaust survivors.
A legend says that to this day, the survivors have been communicating with the ghosts of the village.
Forgiveness (Mechilot) tells the story of David Adler, a 20-year old American-Israeli who decides to move back to Israel, only to find himself committed to a mental institution that sits on the ruins of a Palestinian village called Deir Yassin.
Flashbacks and flashforwards reveal the events that led up to his hospitalization. A 10-year old female ghost holds the secret to the riddle. But only when the secret is revealed can she find rest and give David the option to end a perpetually-repeated destiny...
Doctor Itzhik Shemesh, a psychiatrist at the mental institute, injects David with a chemo-technological drug in an attempt to build a bridge over the trauma zone and allow David to live a normal life. Even though he doubts its ethical consequences, his use of the drug is an act that mirrors his own deep denial...
Doctor Shemesh is given permission to use the drug by David's father, Henry Adler, a Holocaust survivor who spent a short time in Israel before becoming one of the most pre-eminent musicians in America.
Henry, who has the arrogance of Oedipus and faith in the rational overcoming of trauma via action, doesn't understand why his son has been hospitalized. But Henry's lust for life and his desire for normality make him live in denial of the past, which is unbearable for David, whose restless soul seeks the truth. Henry will confront a horror beyond all horrors when the truth reveals itself.
A blind patient in the hospital named Muselmann, also a Holocaust survivor, tells David to listen to the ghosts that are haunting him, that they have something important to tell him.
Like the blind prophet Tiresias, Muselmann knows that the truth does not hold redemption, and this is why he never tried to reconstruct his life after the camps. Because he lives between the world of the dead and the living, Muselmann can act as a conduit between the murdered ghosts and David.
The flashbacks and flashforwards from the mental institute reveal, with the story of David’s life, the story of the eternal return of the trauma and a destiny that seems unalterable... --© Official Site
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Starring: Makram Khoury, Moni Moshonov, Michael Sarne, Clara Khoury
Starring: Makram Khoury, Moni Moshonov, Michael Sarne, Clara Khoury
Director: Udi Aloni
Director: Udi Aloni
Reviews for Forgiveness
The result is a hodgepodge of plots and styles, a fault compounded by stiff acting and, except for a few scenes, wooden direction.
The film's laudable attempts to encompass the far-reaching quagmire of Jewish tribal identity, politics and psychology could have a profound effect on the audiences who do find it.
The message may be clear -- suppress the past at your peril -- but the execution is a mess.
Forgiveness feels like a high-concept stage play, the kind of well-meant but pretentious project where grand themes are worked out in a claustrophobic setting among a small cast.
David's trauma, madness, and recovery is arranged as a puzzle of dreams, flashbacks, hallucinations, and strikingly choreographed numbers that, while occasionally dazzling, remains in pieces at film's end.
A metaphorical Israeli trauma sanctuary built over a massacred Palestinian village, and a raw yet mystical inquiry into the thin line between war and murder, and how combat multiples rather than eradicates enemies. Jewish guilt, Israeli style.
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