Antenna (I) (2016) User Reviews

Excellent work, but whom are we supposed to like?

[Nozz · 8/10 · 26 August 2017]

Israel isn't the socialist country that it once was, but it still has something of a collectivist spirit and there are still Israeli movie makers who-- as one critic complained maybe a decade ago-- eschew the traditional central character in favor of a movie about "the guys." In "Antenna," there's no central character we can identify with. But in this case we can't even identify with "the guys" very enthusiastically. The movie revolves around three brothers who are all leading messed-up lives. We see them all falling short of their personal goals, and not because they stand up for principle or are just too eccentric in some lovable way. Maybe (the dialogue hints) they're all indirectly scarred because their father is a Holocaust survivor.

Some of Israel's best actors are in the movie-- a couple even in surprisingly small roles-- and they hold attention every moment, while the story plays out believably. Maybe too believably for a movie that's marketed as partly comical. Or maybe I'm just too old to look at matters like backaches and diabetes and forgetfulness at a sufficient remove. But I didn't see much to charm, entice, or amuse the audience, and I kind of fear for the movie's fate because while it holds up a mirror to society in a constructive and artistically skillful way, I don't envision crowds taking it to their hearts. I hope I'm wrong. It deserves to be seen, and it has enough plot for a whole TV season packed into it.

Another way in which the movie could have increased audience identification, at least in Israel, would have been to provide a sense of geography. I'm pretty sure I glimpsed Rothschild Boulevard, in Tel Aviv, at one point, but the characters live in various places and we don't ever get a clear sense of where. Maybe I've been spoiled because so many Israeli films these days are partly sponsored by municipal budgets and make sure to identify their settings, but I've come to like the grounding that a known setting affords to a movie.

Holocaust survivor's family bear the continuing pain

[maurice_yacowar · 8/10 · 2 May 2018]

An 80-year-old holocaust survivor Joshua's traumatic memory affects his three grown sons. As the English prof argues, literature has the responsibility to reach that terrible history, for its effects damage successive generations whether they know it or not. The narrative demonstrates his principle beyond even his awareness. The antenna is a metaphor for the old man's preternatural sensitivity to the toxicity of his time. His neighbor has rented his roof for a cellular company's antenna. Joshua blames the antenna's radiation for all his pains and sleeplessness. As it happens, the old man is proven right - but his sons don't tell him, for fear of more violent response. However irrational Joshua's fear, it costs him his leg anyway. Sometimes a paranoia proves right. The military son shows his holocaust shadow in his absence from home, his heavy handed discipline of his sons and a general insensitivity that drives his wife into tryst with his brother, then home to her mother. He's punished for losing a gun. His oldest son rebels with tantrums at home and a violent attack in a classmate that gets him expelled. Kicking the principal didn't help his cause. The prof is divorced and unproductive in his discipline, which costs him a promotion and leaves him vulnerable to a student's seduction. When his young son insists on being carried out of school, his self-infantilizing shows a third generation of paralysis. The deejay son deals in drugs and refuses to bring his pregnant German gentile girlfriend to meet his family. Fearing his father's anger and pain, he claims his four years in Germany were in Amsterdam. The old man's death - which results from the removal of his radiated leg - liberates his family. The soldier gets an easier posting, to his family's benefit - and his wastrel brother finds the list gun. The deejay finally takes responsibility for his pregnant girlfriend and brings her into his family. She is converting to Judaism to marry him. The prof breaks free from his father's hunger for vengeance when he stops his own covert attack on the neighbor. He also abandons his delusory affair with his student. He realizes that her promising draft novel seduced him into using her to fill his void - an unreciprocated commitment. Even the mother is at least freed from the rigorous demands her family placed on her and the harsh demands of her cantankerous, even violent and impatient patient. The film reminds us of the lasting damage, anger, fear, instability, that remain in the shadow of the Holocaust. Even the survivors still bear the consequences.