by michael fox
correspondent
The impulse of documentary filmmakers, and the nature of documentaries, is to penetrate, illuminate and explicate.
When the subject is music — or music and identity, as in the case of several generally strong movies in the upcoming S.F. Jewish Film Festival — singing and playing usually trump talking. A sufficiently expressive and accomplished performance renders any explanation and analysis superfluous.
Even interviews with great talents can seem like filler. Just as actors are typically more at ease speaking someone else’s lines than their own words, musicians largely express themselves better with an instrument or a song than in conversation with a non-musician.
The marvelous Middle Eastern musicians spotlighted in Florence Strauss’ terrific “Between Two Notes” expound almost as eloquently as they strum and sing. But it is not information that sticks with the viewer — rather, it is a mood, and a sense of shared connection to a centuries-old stream of inspiration.
Hassan Haffar sings a number with the lyric “You are my affliction, you are my physician,” that could be a love song or a prayer. Moshe Khavusha’s mesmerizing Egyptian hazunot transport us across miles and years in two seconds. Nothing more needs to be said.
Strauss is the granddaughter of the Egyptian-born, Paris-based movie producer Robert Hakim (“Belle de Jour”), and she presents her expedition to Jaffa, Beirut, Damascus and Cairo as a kind of return to her roots. She offers some minimal narration and turns up now and again in the frame with a musician, but wisely she stays off to the side or in the background.
The star of the piece, notwithstanding the fine musicianship on display, is Laurent Brunet’s beautifully expressive cinematography. His camera is always in motion, seeking the telling detail but also subconsciously conveying the movement of notes through air, melodies across centuries and people across borders.
“One cannot evolve without openness and understanding,” asserts one of Strauss’ subjects. That’s the mantra of an artist, no question, but it applies equally to any of us.
The presence of “Between Two Notes” in this festival encourages us to consider music as a bridge across the gulf between Arabs and Jews. But the movie doesn’t try too hard to promote tolerance, a word that Daniel Barenboim abhors with its connotation of self-righteousness and condescension.
The remarkable conductor is the unabashed star of “Knowledge is the Beginning: Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra,” but Palestinian American professor Edward Said’s name should also be in the title. The two men originated the gutsy idea of bringing together a group of young classical musicians from across the Arab world and Israel.
Footage from the initial summer 1999 workshop in Weimar, Germany, captures Said riffing to the group on politics and Barenboim spearheading the rehearsals. But as the conductor repeatedly makes clear in interviews in Hebrew, German and English over the next several years, the orchestra will not bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians — explicitly reining in the expectations of the media and the public.
“Knowledge is the Beginning” is a solid and rewarding movie, but it would have been even stronger if director Paul Smaczny had followed Barenboim’s lead and downplayed politics. The filmmaker continuously prods the young musicians into talking about their experience of meeting “the other,” even when their answers are less than insightful.
Although the orchestra’s final concert, at a location I won’t divulge, would seem an obvious emotional high point, it proves anti-climactic. That and the director’s straining in this last section for meaning and poignancy ultimately make the film feel slightly elongated at just under two hours. That said, there’s no such thing as too much time spent in the company of the uncompromisingly warm and gifted Daniel Barenboim.
Any quibbles I have about “Knowledge is the Beginning” and “Between Two Notes” vanish compared to “The Chosen Ones,” a forgettable survey of “new Jewish music” in New York. German director Wendla Nolle’s earnest but callow first film has its world premiere at the festival, an honor that would have been better accorded in Brooklyn or Berlin.
With its naïve narration, hipster handheld shots and music-video sequences shot in empty lots and parks, “The Chosen Ones” feels like a travelogue made for German television. The poorly conceived documentary is further undermined by a third-rate lineup of derivative or shtick-y musicians such as Blue Fringe, Balkan Beat Box, Jeremiah Lockwood and Rav Shmuel. (Matisiyahu is name-checked but otherwise absent.)
The artists — who seem more than thrilled by the attention of a camera crew and a European journalist — do their darnedest to explain their various modes and motivations for expressing their Jewishness through their music. Alas, it’s all forgettable blather, although nowhere as embarrassing as what comes out of Nolle’s mouth.
Even New York audiences would be hard-pressed to keep a straight face when she describes one artist who works in Aramaic, Hebrew and English. “I’ve never met anyone who can rap in so many languages, and such old ones at that,” she says in voice-over. Bay Area moviegoers, especially younger viewers who are the presumed target audience, may be more forgiving.
Also of note is “His People,” a silent film from 1925 that centers on Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side. Paul Shapiro shleps his jazz combo from New York to perform his original score live in what promises to be a crowd-pleasing bash. Based on the snippet provided to the press for advance viewing, Shapiro accompanies the street vignette that opens the film with comedic and sentimental strains. Presumably he draws on other colors as the movie dives headlong into melodrama.
The festival also presents two featurettes, “Yiddish Soul” and “Concert Yiddish Soul,” that collect the stories (in “Soul”) and songs (in “Concert”) of a culture whose survival and vitality is nothing short of remarkable.
That films featuring Jewish (and occasionally) Arab musicians would want to impart important morals and inspire profound reflection is inevitable. But all the well-meaning talk pales next to the music. The tunes drive home every meaning and the rest, as the rabbis say, is commentary.
So message-wise, whatever happens to stick is OK, but I don’t suggest you stick up both hands to catch it. Just get off on the music and let everything else take care of itself.
“Between Two Notes” screens 12 p.m. Saturday, July 21 at the Castro in S.F.; 8:45 p.m. Monday, July 30 at the Aquarius in Palo Alto; and 2:40 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 4 at the Roda in Berkeley.
“Knowledge is the Beginning” screens 4 p.m. Wednesday, July 25 at the Castro; 8:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 31 at the Aquarius; 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 2 at the Roda; and 2 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 4 at the Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.
“The Chosen Ones” screens 9:30 p.m. Monday, July 23 at the Castro; 8:15 p.m. Monday, July 30 at the Roda; and 1:45 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 2 at the Aquarius.
“His People” screens 7:30 p.m. Saturday, July 21 at the Castro.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California