(Israel, 117 min.)
Written and directed by Yossi Madmony
Starring: Alon Aboutboul, Tom Graziani, Sophia Ostritsky,
Karen Beger, Rotem Zisman-Cohen
A soldier, hungry in the battlefield, might do something
drastic to save himself. Alternatively, a soldier looking for redemption might
do anything to be saved when his life is on the line. An odd transaction—mutually
beneficial it seems—happens almost anecdotally in Yossi Madmony’s sprawling A Place in Heaven as two soldiers strike
a quick bargain during a repose from battle. Their deal follows an odd precept of
Jewish law that permits a person to sell his or her place in heaven. The
afterlife should cost a great deal, but a soldier named Bambi (Alon Aboutboul),
the hero-of-the-moment after a risky mission, trades his soul for a plate of
eggs. The deal occurs quickly and hurriedly like two friends trading a stick of
gum for a cigarette. The nonchalant air with which Madmony dramatizes this
transaction doesn’t bode well for the egg hungry man.
In fairness to Bambi, though, he is not a spiritual man while the cook is a religious Holocaust survivor. Eggs might therefore be more valuable than a place in heaven if a man doesn’t believe heaven exists. Bambi should believe in heaven, though, for the opening frame of A Place in Heaven sees an older Bambi gazing out at the sky seconds before he is gunned down in the hallway of his apartment and left for dead.
A Place in Heaven
races through time as Madmony lets this one simple deal alter the course of
Bambi’s route to the afterlife. The film spans decades and wars as Bambi starts
a family, provokes a curse from an unhappy father-in-law, and struggles to relate
to the son he long desires. A Place in
Heaven unfurls Bambi’s life fleetingly, as years—in some places decades—move
with a swift cut from one shot to the next. The film discombobulates viewers as
it presents Bambi’s utter mess of a life as he loses more and more control of
his destiny following the fateful meal of eggs and tomatoes.
More inclined for heaven, however, is Bambi’s son, Nimrod
(played in the adult years by Tom Graziani), who develops a born again piety in
defiance of his father’s unholy ways. The sins of the father are atoned for by
the son, and A Place in Heaven sees
Nimrod race to save the soul of his condemned father. Madmony presents the son
as equally fallible as his father is, for his own devotion to scripture leads
him down a path of cruelness, stubbornness, and near-fatal pride. Nimrod lives
his life to the letter of holy law, but he has an utter lack of faith in the
people in his life. Madmony asks at what point does salvation comes through belief
or experience, as A Place in Heaven
presents two disparate, but equally flawed men.
A Place in Heaven, much like its
father-son duo, struggles to find coherence as it grabbles with questions of
fate, faith, and family. The film is often difficult to follow from a perspective
of narrative lucidity, for it leaps across time so quickly almost to the point
of intelligibility, especially as characters (re: Nimrod) age and change actors
from one cut to the next. Similarly, the abruptness with which Madmony cruises through
the lives of characters dispenses with some of the films stronger actors, like Rotem
Zisman-Cohen who plays Ayala, Bambi’s wife and Nimrod’s mother, and leaves the
heavier work of the final act of the film to the comparatively weaker Graziani.
Alon Aboutboul, on the other hand, is consistently strong in his austere and
detached performance as Bambi. He plays Bambi as a man made of galvanized
steel, as if rendered cold through life by his faithlessness and inevitable
damnation.
A Place in Heaven
is always thematically sound, though, even if Madmony’s epic story loses its
intelligibility through its sprawling scope. The dingy earth-toned
cinematography by Boaz Yehonatan Yacov almost rejects heavenly light from
seeping its way into Bambi’s story while the elliptical editing and pacing of
the film intertwines the fates of the father and the son with the fate of the
nation as each stage of their strained relationship is inherently linked to the
fate of the nation.
Madmony avoids preaching and he presents the audience with
an unexpectedly sunny image of the afterlife—or perhaps of purgatory—as the
final scene brings Bambi’s soul to the moment of judgement. The revitalizing openness
and warmth of the scene grants a pleasant open-endedness to the story. This thoughtful film
leaves it up to viewers to decide what merits a person’s place in heaven:
whether faith is the ticket is up to you.
Rating: ★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
A Place in Heaven screens at the Canadian Film Institute’s Israeli
Film Festival on Thursday, June 19 at 7:00 PM at Library and Archives Canada
(395 Wellington St.)
Please visit www.cfi-icf.ca for more information.
