(Israel, 105 min.)
Written and directed by Nissim Dayan
Starring: Daniel Gad, Igal Naor, Uri Gabriel, Yasmin Ayoun, Ahuva Keren, Eli Dor Haim
Baghdad, 1950. A young man named Kabi (Daniel Gad) sees his
family as the final turn of a legacy seventy generations in the making. His
family faces the news that the Jewish community is being forced to leave Iraq
and depart the land where their ancestors lived for many years. Kabi’s family
explodes both from within and from without, and The Dove Flyer looks at the world through the eyes of one young man
whose perspective shifts constantly. How can one make any sense of the world
when there’s nowhere to go and nowhere to be free?
Each of Kabi’s kin moves in a different direction and the rift begins when, in a tense and riveting opening scene, his uncle Hazkel (Eli Dor Haim) is arrested for allegedly publishing subversive articles and essays. Kabi finds himself tasked with a mission beyond his years when he steps up to help find justice for Hazkel and he makes himself an ally to Hazkel’s wife, Rachelle (Yasmin Ayoun). Kabi’s parents look to different futures as his mother (Ahuva Keren) wants to return to the Muslim quarter and his father (Igal Kabi) wants to move the family to Israel. His uncle Abu (Uri Gavriel), finally, just wants to tend to his doves in peace and pretend that all is fine.
The Dove Flyer,
based on the novel Farwell, Baghdad
by Eli Amir, offers a resonant study of a little-told chapter of history. The
film strongly conveys the myriad political ideologies, religious affinities,
and cultural identities that clashed at the time—and still do today around the
globe. By intersecting various family members throughout their own
directionless journeys, The Dove Flyer
creates a portrait of collective loss and rootlessness.
The film succeeds as a valuable history lesson and character
study through Kabi’s tale. The competing storylines, however, aren’t filled out
quite as fully realized as Kabi’s is. At one hour and forty-five minutes, The Dove Flyer moves quickly between threads
and some of the movements between subplots are disjointed and disorienting. The Dove Flyer might be one of the few
examples in which another hour of running time might be welcome to match the
expanse scope and significance of the story.
The film is Kabi’s story, though, as it forges a coming of
age tale in which he learns to navigate the competing and conflicting
allegiances he has to his father, uncle, and friends. Kabi, a budding
journalist himself, is chiefly on a quest for truth as he investigates Hazkel’s
arrest and looks for the parties who wronged him. He flirts with romance with
Rachelle and her entrancing eyes, while his friend Adnan (Tawfeek Barhoum) teaches
Kabi that revolution and sex go hand-in-hand. Kabi has the wisdom to see that
Adnan’s libido isn’t the smartest teacher a young man could have, so his
respect for the women in the tale gives him a strong foothold in the
underground and more allies than the other men in the tale could find. Kabi, an
innocent, undergoes his own awakening as he loses sees the fraught conviction
behind the play on home, family, and connection that his family emphasizes as
they try to hold onto their homeland.
Gad leads the film in a strong performance as Kabi searches
for answers and guidance along the way. He contains little boyish idealism
despite his clean adolescent charm. Rather, Gad makes Kabi a silent
revolutionary and a shrewd observer.
Strong performances from several supporting players,
including Igal Naor and Ahuva Keren as Kabi’s parents, create compelling
subplots and conflicting allegiances as Kabi’s search for truth—and himself—asks
him to confront the different loyalties in his life. Gavriel offers a different
kind of quiet power in the small and prickly role of Abu, whose attitude to the
situation is simply to be unmoved.
Abu’s love for his doves blinds him to the fissures around
him, but The Dove Flyer finds in Abu’s
doves a rich and evocative metaphor for the Jewish diaspora as writer/director
Nissim Dayan sees Kabi and his friend Adnan vent their anger by destroying Abu’s
bird sanctuary and setting the doves flee. Some fly east and some fly west,
while other doves simply flutter and return home. The rich imagery finds an
ironic counterpart at the end with the white and winged airplane carrying some
of the Jews out of Iraq.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
The Dove Flyer screens in Ottawa at the Israeli Film Festival on
Sunday, June 14 at 7:00 pm at the River Building Theatre, Carleton University.
(Friendly reminder
that there's free parking across the street at Brewer Park!)
Please visit the CFI’s website for the full IFF line-up, plus information on showtimes, tickets,
and memberships.
