Walk on Water
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Movie Reviews of Walk on Water
Movie Review: "I don't think I'll ever go to Germany to visit"
Summary: 5 Stars
Director, Eytan Fox should be commended for making such brave, enlightening, and totally compelling film. Walk on Walker covers much intellectual and artistic ground and is easily the best film of the season so far. The film also features such a staggeringly real performance by sexy Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi that viewers will, without difficulty, remember it as the best for a lead actor in quite some time. Walk on Water, although brimming with cerebral ambition is mostly a meditation on vengeance and forgiveness taking on the hardened and tough heart of Israel, where the past and the present inevitably collide in a country that still wrestles with it's demons.
Eyal (Ashkenazi) is a Mossad special agent and assassin with a rough, sarcastic manner. The movie opens with him targeting a suspected Arab terrorist on a ferry in Istanbul. He manages to pull off the hit successfully, but then his supervisor (Gidon Shemer) sends him on an unusual assignment: He is to track down a Nazi war criminal in hiding, while posing as a tour guide to spy on the old man's adult grandchildren. The younger grandchild, Axel (Knut Berger) is in Israel to visit his big sister Pia (Caroline Peters). Pia is an idealistic German émigré who lives on a kibbutz and is in flight from the darker corners of her family history. Innocent, bourgeois, and liberal, Axel and Pia are appalled by the mistakes of their German past.
When Eyal first meets them, he's initially put on edge by their naïve, noninterventionist, and tolerant ways, but as he drives Axel around the historical sites of Israel, he begins to feel a strange affinity for the kindhearted, soft-spoken boy. Driven to find out the whereabouts of their grandfather, he plants a microphone in Pia's bedroom and eavesdrops on their conversations at night. But it's all to no avail; he learns nothing and dismisses them as "Hansel and Gretel arguing." By day, he drives Axel from the Sea of Galilee to the Wailing Wall, torn between strangling this Palestinian-loving peacenik and wanting to get to know him better.
Deep down Eyal is getting sick of the life of a revenge assassin, and when he returns to Tel Aviv to find his wife dead, from suicide, he becomes even more disillusioned with killing. He's also shocked to find himself inexplicably drawn to Axel and Pia in ways that he just can't quite fathom. When Eyal finds out the Axel is gay, and witnesses him flirting, and then later sleeping with Rafik (Yusef Sweid), a Palestinian Arab in a local gay bar, he initially withdraws. But a sudden and reluctant trip to Germany forces both men to reconsider their political and erotic allegiances. The ultimate climax is both riveting and horrifying as Eyal, finally confronts Axel's Nazi grandfather, and is forced to reconsider his life as an assassin.
Walk on Water does a fine job of presenting the lives of young, modern Jews and Germans, who are constantly forced to live under the shadows of the parents' wars. But the film also effectively breaks down the gay/straight stereotypes. In one scene, Eyal asks Axel what sex with another man is really like - it makes for one of the funniest and snappiest gay/straight dialogues ever seen on film. Eyal is a butch, truculent, masculine he-man, but he possesses a formidable intelligence that occasionally allows him to show his feminine and sensitive side. It's absolutely fascinating to watch him grow as he lets down some of his many defenses and is forced to reassess his entire worldview.
Possessed with a taught, intelligent script, and some fine performances by his leads, Fox has made a formidable movie - a substantial meditation on contemporary sexual, social, and emotional politics. Two disparate cultures initially collide, but ultimately find common ground, and while in doing so, also learn to forgive. Fox raises some difficult and poignant questions about this absolution, and whether the Holocaust can continue to be leveraged for moral certainty as it inevitably recedes and fades into history. Walk on Water is thrilling film that is full of astute cross-cultural observations, while also managing to possess an enormous and significant universal appeal. Mike Leonard April 05.
Movie Review: Certainly One of the Finest Films of the Year!
Summary: 5 Stars
Eytan Fox ('Yossi & Jagger', and others) is an important director to watch. Born in the USA and emigrated to Israel at the age of two, Fox understands the art of cinematic storytelling and in WALK ON WATER he brings this impressive tale of universal and personal forgiveness written by Gal Uchovsky with collaboration by actors Knut Berger and Caroline Peters, and Andreas Struck to the screen with finesse, subtlety, and grace. His in a name to watch.
Films dealing with the aftermath of Hitler's annihilation of the Jews and their subsequent formation of the haven Israel have been many and variably successful, primarily because the Jew vs Nazi histories have been so polarized to appeal to all audiences who need to have good guys vs bad guys easily identified for them. This beautiful film refuses to go there, but instead mixes the young people of Germany and Israel in a manner that finally enlightens us as to the process of letting go, of forgiveness in order to move ahead with living.
Eyal (the dashingly handsome and sensitive actor Lior Ashkenazi) works for the Israeli group headed by Menachem (Gideon Shemer) whose life's work it is to track down and kill all remaining Nazi perpetrators of the concentration camps. Eyal is a damaged man, his wife has committed suicide partially because of his job as hired assassin of anti-Israeli people, and he has finally grown weary of Menachem's obsession to exterminate all living Nazis. Yet he is assigned one more 'victim', an old man who is the grandfather of two German young people - Pia (Caroline Peters) who happily lives in an Israeli kibbutz and her brother Axel (Knut Berger) who has come to Israel to plead with his sister to return to Berlin to her estranged parents for her father's birthday. Pia knows of her grandfather's Nazi war crimes and resents that her parents had helped him escape from being tried as a war criminal.
Menachem assigns Eyal to be Axel's 'tour guide' in Israel, hoping to find a path to their grandfather, the war criminal. Axel is gay and during his time with Eyal touring the sites of Israel the two grow warmly as friends, Eyal asking many penetrating questions about Axel's gay lifestyle. Pia, Axel and Eyal become friends and when Pia refuses to join Axel in returning to Berlin for the father's birthday, Eyal 'consents' to accompany him. Several incidents occur both in Israel and Berlin that bond Eyal and Axel and that unveil some of Eyal's shaky demons of Arab hate, homophobia, and guilt over his wife's suicide. Yet for the first time Eyal has a man with whom he can relate and he grows fond of Axel.
In Berlin Eyal is warmly accepted into Axel's vast home. At the birthday party Axel displays his love for Israeli folk dancing as a gift to his father, engendering kind feelings from Eyal. But suddenly the grandfather is wheeled into the room by his attending nurse, repulsing Axel, and Eyal leaves: Meachem has followed him to Berlin and tells Eyal to terminate the old man. Eyal returns to the house and is unable to carryout his task, and the resulting resolution of the 'deed' and the manner in which Eyal and Axel come together is one of those magic moments of storytelling, one that equates with the miraculous ability to walk on water.
The cast is superb, always allowing us to see the hidden corners of intent, motivation, and lasting resentment as well as the opening of the doors of ultimate forgiveness and life. WALK ON WATER is a thriller, an espionage film, an historic moment, and a love story told with richly detailed sensitivity and bravura. Highly Recomended. Grady Harp, September 05
Movie Review: Unique story with thought-provoking moral questions raised. Wonderful!
Summary: 5 Stars
This 2004 Israeli film captured my interest from the very first frame and held it throughout this tightly woven story.
Even before the credits roll we meet Eyal, played by Lior Askenazi, assassinating someone. It's a scene that plays fast and cruel, especially since the small child of the victim watches it all with big-eyed wonder. We quickly learn that Eyal is a Mossad agent who, after being warmly acknowledged by his Israeli superiors, goes home to find that his wife has committed suicide. All of this happens in the first ten minutes, setting a background for an intriguing story.
The Mossad still want to bring every single Nazi war criminal to justice, even though the few of them still alive are quite elderly. The granddaughter of one of them has emigrated to Israel and now lives in a Kibbutz. Her brother is coming to visit her. Eyal is ordered to act as a tour guide for the brother and try to get information about the grandfather. Eyal wants to decline. He thinks the Israelis should "get over" the atrocities of WWII which happened long before he was born, but he accepts the assignment. The German brother, Knut, played by Axel Himmelman, at first seems like a nerd. Eyal is bored with him and with his sister and doesn't want to do this assignment. But, after bugging their apartment, he hears Knut, who happens to be gay, try to convince his sister to come home to Germany because the grandfather might just come back from Argentina, where he has lived for the past 50 years, for a birthday celebration. She refuses. She has chosen to live in a Kibbutz to atone for her family's part in the War and doesn't want to have anything to do with her Nazi grandfather.
Eyal, acting as a tour guide, now takes Knut on a sightseeing trip. Knut is a pacifist and Eyal scoffs at that. Eyal sees himself as tough and tries not to think deeply about the violence around him. He despises Palestinians and is very reluctant to take Knut to a Palestinian city where Knut makes a connection with a gay Palestinian and soon Eyal, the sister and the brother are going to a large and loud party where everyone is having a good time. There's definitely tension between the brother and Eyal and the director made sure to do a scene where they visit the Dead Sea and then take outdoor showers together.
Soon though, Knut returns to Germany and Eyal is commanded to go there to murder the elderly grandfather. Here, there's a scene where Eyal pulls a gun on some street toughs who attack some of the brother's transvestite friends. All of a sudden, it is clear that he is a trained assassin and Knut's suspicions are aroused.
How this all plays out is fascinating. Here is the Israeli agent now being invited to the palatial home of Knut's parents to honor the elderly Nazi war criminal. What happens then is the crux of the story.
I loved this film even though there were a few details of script that used some silly plot devices. But the acting was wonderful and I appreciated the kind of moral questions the story raised. I also liked the settings and the use of languages. The Israeli characters spoke Hebrew to each other. The German and Israeli characters spoke English to each other. And the German characters spoke German to each other. Even a small detail like this added to the authenticity of the film.
Walk on Water takes a unique spin on events as real as today's headlines. I don't remember it ever being released in theaters. But it is on DVD. So please do see it if you can.
Movie Review: a genuinely poignant film with actors who capture the screen
Summary: 5 Stars
Walk on Water is an outstanding film; indeed, it's one of the best movies I've ever seen. The acting is first rate; the script is full of great dialogue; and the choreography along with the cinematography couldn't have been better. The plot flows along at a very good pace; never once was I bored! The story becomes quite emotional at the very end of the film and I actually cried a few tears which is something I almost never do. In addition, the casting was perfectly done.
When the film starts, we meet Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi), a hit man/agent for Mossad, the Israeli Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations. He's an accomplished hit man who can easily take out a dangerous terrorist as we see in the first few minutes of the picture; and Eyal is quite hardened by the wrongs that have happened to the Jews in the past, especially during World War Two in Nazi Germany. Eyal's boss at Mossad now has a new assignment for him--to track down a notorious Nazi who has been in hiding in Argentina since the end of World War Two. Eyal's boss tells Eyal to pose as an Israeli tour guide for Axel (Knut Berger) the grandson of the Nazi; Axel is coming to Israel to visit his sister Pia (Caroline Peters) who now lives on an Israeli kibbutz and learns Hebrew. Eyal must find out the whereabouts of the Nazi by spying on Axel and Pia; he bugs Pia's room on the kibbutz and he takes Axel around posing as a tour guide even though Eyal has little true interest in this matter.
But things don't go as Eyal planned. Eyal's wife, Iris (Natali Shilman), kills herself and Eyal soon discovers that Axel is a friendly, sweet, peace loving liberal who is genuinely horrified about what the Nazis did during World War Two. Moreover, Axel turns out to be gay; and when Axel and his sister Pia are enjoying themselves in a gay bar the very macho, heterosexual Eyal withdraws because it's getting too much for him--these Germans are not exactly the bad guys he expected them to be; and when Axel expresses his sympathy for Palestinians and even sleeps with an Arab (Rafik, played so well by Yousef 'Joe' Sweid), Eyal is truly thrown for a loop.
It may seem as if I've given too much away; but in many respects I have merely scraped the surface of the plot. Suffice it to say that Eyal's boss eventually insists that Eyal "finish the job" by going to Germany (a place Eyal never wanted to be), try to find Axel and Pia's notoriously evil Nazi grandfather who might or might not be there--and then "eliminate" him.
Can Eyal do this? Will the grandfather be there in Germany even though intelligence indicates that he has been hiding in Argentina for decades? What happens between Eyal and Axel in Berlin when tensions mount at the birthday party for Axel and Pia's father? No plot spoilers here--watch and find out! Be prepared for a few quick plot twists and an ending that you won't forget anytime soon.
Walk on Water is a superlative film about working things out between Germans and Jews, straights and gays; all the while contrasting right versus wrong and good versus evil. I highly recommend this film for people interested in these issues. Of course, people who are fans of the actors in this movie will want this DVD.
Movie Review: A fascinating film that works on many levels, but get the PAL version
Summary: 5 Stars
On August 30, the North American (NTSC) version was released, and the one I had pre-ordered was recently delivered. For the last two months, I'd had the PAL edition I had ordered directly from Israel. When I watched the NTSC version, I was able to compare the two editions.
First, the PAL edition really does have a better picture, because it has 20% more lines of resolution on the screen, but the NTSC picture looked pretty good. The NTSC edition has larger yellow subtitles (the PAL ones are a bit smaller and white), but the yellow subtitles looked a bit fuzzy around the edges on my large-screen TV, even though the rest of the picture was quite clear. The white subtitles looked a bit sharper.
On the Israeli edition, you have options of no subtitles, English subtitles, or Hebrew subtitles (which I found useful when some of the accented English was hard to understand). On the NA version, it's either English for everything (captioning), or just English when Hebrew or German were being spoken.
Now the bad part. The Israeli version just starts with a 30-second commercial, all in Hebrew, advertising a brand of TV and then goes right into the movie, with a much classier opening montage behind the menu. The NA version starts with a whopping EIGHT previews, unless you intercept them first, in which case it just goes through all its groan-inducing FBI warnings, and then several studio headers, and releasing info and such, before the movie finally starts.
But the WORST difference? The Israeli version is loaded with fascinating cast interviews, background information about the making of the movie, theatre trailers for the movie, a feature about all the excitement when it opened at the Berlin Film Festival, and a segment where a well-known Israeli TV interviewer does a promo for the film. Much of it is in Hebrew, but with English subtitles.
It turns out, for example, that Knut Berger really is gay. Caroline Peters' grandfather really was a Nazi (he was in the S.S., yet). Ernest Lenart, who plays the Nazi grandfather, is actually a German Jew who is himself a survivor of the Holocaust. Lior Ashkenazi, who plays toughguy Eyal has talked on live Israeli TV about having had an adult love affair with another man, like he does (implied) in this movie.
But you wouldn't know any of that if you'd only bought the NA edition -- because contrarily, the NA edition has NOTHING in the way of extras, probably to make room for all eight of those previews! The case mentions a "making of" feature, but it isn't listed anywhere on the menu. And believe me, I looked for it. Whose idea was THAT?
By the way, I notice that, in interviews, the director has been confirming what I said about the real relationship between the two men. It's almost comical to see people being miffed at the suggestion they were intimate, as if they can't grasp that a macho guy could also be attracted to a man.
Personally, I think the director and his gay spouse of 17 years (who wrote the screenplay), planned it as a clever "in-joke" just to see who of the non-gay audience would "get it". From the looks of it, it looks like not many did....