Broken Wings
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Movie Reviews of Broken Wings
Movie Review: An amazing film experience
Summary: 5 Stars
The trauma that accompanies the sudden loss of a beloved family member is being repeated all over the Middle East today. Behind the headlines are the stories we never read about. One of these is told metaphorically in Nir Bergman's brilliant first effort Broken Wings. It is not an overtly political film, but the implications are clear. Set in the Israeli port city of Haifa, it depicts the effect of the loss of a patriarch on each member of his family, perhaps suggesting the emotional state of Israel since the murder of Yitzhak Rabin. The 83-minute film won accolades at the Berlin International Film Festival and has been a huge critical and commercial success in Israel, winning nine Israeli Academy Awards in 2003.
The beautifully expressive Maya Maron, in her first major role, plays an Israeli teenage singer-songwriter (also named Maya) who dreams of becoming a rock star, and wears wings when she sings in her local band. As the film opens, Maya is singing a song she wrote in memory of her father who died suddenly nine months earlier, for reasons not disclosed until the end of the film. Her song is interrupted when her mother Dafna (stage actress Orly Zilberschatz Banai), a nurse, phones and tells her that she has been called to work on the night shift at the local hospital and needs Maya home to take care of her brother Ido and sister Bahr. Maya emphatically refuses, then relents, but the tension between mother and daughter is palpable.
The young woman, who was with her father when he died, does not fully grasp the guilt behind her bottled-up rage, and takes out her anger on her mother, who is both sympathetic and irritating as she labors wearily to keep the family from a collision course. We learn that each family member is suffering the father's loss in his or her own way. Dafna stayed in bed for three months, leaving the children to do the parenting, and the results are reflected in their erratic behavior. Six-year old Bahr wets her bed and Ido carries out a strange ritual of filming himself while jumping into an empty pool. The oldest brother Yair (Nitai Gaviratz), also a teenager, has been suspended from school, and hands out leaflets on commuter trains dressed in a mouse costume while expressing a nihilistic philosophy to anyone who will listen. His inability to respond to the words father, fear, and anger during a word association test prompts his school counselor to deny him re-admittance until he receives treatment, but he does not help his cause when he tells the counselor "Your words are meaningless. This conversation does not exist and you don't exist."
Yair tells Maya that "things could be worse," and they do get worse before they get better. Broken Wings may sound depressing, but in Bergman's skillful hands, its sadness is balanced with humor and the strength and dignity of its characters. Stylistically, the film doesn't break any new ground, but displays the kind of insight that allows us to learn something new about ourselves. Though rooted in reality, Broken Wings has a heart that leaps and a soul that soars, and it's a film that I truly loved.
Movie Review: Beautiful Import From Israel
Summary: 5 Stars
"Broken Wings" is a great film from Israel that has won several awards, including the Israeli Oscar equivalent for Best Picture. However, it was wrongfully overlooked by the American Oscars, especially for Best Foreign Film. This highly powerful film was wonderfully directed by Nir Bergman. It desplicts a family torn apart by the father dying and the mother struggling to support her kids. As the kids struggle with their own inner demons, their lives take their own downward spiral. The various emotional aspects keep audiences watching closely, including Ido's head injury that leaves him comotose, Maya's struggle to communicate with her family beyond her big music break, Yair's dissatisfaction in life that leaves him with an unlikable job and a disadmiration to live, and Dafna's confrontation of her past trials. The building climax leads to an unforgettable conclusion that will leave audiences breathless.
This brilliant plot, written in hebrew text, never loses its emotional aspect for a moment. This beautifully written storyline always builds its scenery, remaining interesting. Every word expresses deeply the characters' hardships suffered since the father's death. The multiple storylines blend together wonderfully. The talented actors express their individual characters' hardtimes beautifully, adding to the powerful theme. Orly Silbersatz Banai states this most through Dafna as she never loses the overworked and saddened expressions. Maya Maron makes a triumphant debut as Maya proving that her career will go far.
"Broken Wings" is a great powerful film that will keep audiences feeling the theme afterwards. This is sure to please audiences of all kinds.
Movie Review: Saddened effects of a tragedy
Summary: 5 Stars
This 2004 movie so universally depicts grief within a family, silent grief that manifests itself in different manners for each family member. It could be made anywhere. Throughout the duration of the movie, the director Nir Bergman, (his first film) has given the viewer a clear semblance of a family's depression and their lack of mechanisms for coping. We don't need to hear the words to grief and depression, we simply feel it.
Nine months ago, on a family ride, the father was killed by a bee sting. Dafna, the wife and mother is struggling with a car that needs work, a job as a midwife and the ever-present demands of a family of four that includes two teenagers and two youngsters. And like any single-parent family, the oldest children assume a greater role in childcare of the younger ones.
Tragedy strikes again and we see their lives compounded with more stress and grief.
Teenager Maya wants to be a singer and musician, but she is filled with guilt as we later learn that it was she who needed the potty and caused her father to get out of the car. She breaks from her dreams because she knows her brother and sister need care.
The older brother Yair dropped out of school and takes a job delivering brochures dressed as a mouse. His communication gets more bizarre. And it's clear that this costume becomes his mask for coping.
The DVD format is crisp and clear, subtitles are very easy to read with no distractions. There isn't much else and it would have been great to hear commentary about this wonderful movie that is so universal. The movie has won numerous awards ....Rizzo
Movie Review: The universal appeal of Broken Wings
Summary: 5 Stars
Writer/Director Nir Bergman's "Knafayim Shvurot" (Broken Wings) swept the Israeli film awards in 2002 and made its way to US theaters in 2004. One thinks "award winning Israeli film" and immediately is drawn to the conclusion that the subject must be war, terrorism, political crisis or any of those as heavy backdrop.
Not here. The power of 'Broken Wings' is that it is the story of the universally shattered family, trying to regroup after the sudden, very unexpected death of the family patriarch in the most banal of ways. You soon see that - based on the way the everyone seems to be spinning out - this man was not simply the father, but the touchstone of the family. Now, the events in 'Wings' beg the question: will the center hold? The actors are Israeli, the movie set in Haifa, but this just as easily could be Manchester, Moscow, Chicago, Toronto, etc. These are themes that anyone can identify with.
Let's hope future movie makers have the good sense to seek out Maya Maron (as daughter Maya) like Bergman did. He had to chase her down in The Netherlands to get her to agree to be in his film. She's the standout of a very strong ensemble.
Movie Review: What an awesome, fascinating Jewish troubled family story!
Summary: 5 Stars
While we watched this awesome, flowing story of such a paralyzed Jewish family, we commented, it could easily have been a setting in NYC, or Chicago or even God-Forbid, Atlanta GA! There were so many scenes from broken buildings, torn-out swimming pools and Gymnasium, that a setting may have been almost from any large city of many countries. Also what wonderful metaphors that each of those were pictures of the family members!
There were also beautiful symbols and metaphors within many of the scenes of family members: When little Iho was shown bugging his young sister about her wetting-the-bed; later as she became sort-of a party to his nearly tragic death! Superb acting by those two young children!
The first clues that we caught, were the characteristic Jewish faces: the Mother acted by Orly Silbersatz Banai and Maya Maron who was the lovely, talented but troubled daughter! I can only wonder how long I shall be haunted by those awesome characters and gripping scenes? Retired Chap Fred W Hood