I thought it was a replay of the old tune of nationalistic nostalgia, such as the cliché that language is the country, especially the fact that official institutions such as the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sports appeared on the list of sponsors in the title, which made me mistakenly think that this film is for the contemporary era. Zionism opens its eyes. However, it never occurred to me that the film finally got involved in a complicated historical whirlpool. In other words, it is a microcosm of modern Jewish history.
From the French Revolution granting Jewish citizenship, to the Dreyfus incident, the national policy of separation of church and state in 1905, to the exodus or slaughter of Eastern European Jews during World War II, to the establishment of Israel by the Zionists and several incidents with surrounding countries During the war, Yiddish was relegated to an inferior language, the Yiddish culture died out, then the internal criticism and disobedience caused by contemporary Israeli policies, the rise of neo-Nazism in Europe, and the disputes over the separation of church and state in France... A series of events are condensed into this film with extremely restrained artistic language in different ways, which makes one cannot help but admire the profound skill of the director.
More importantly, in the contemporary socio-political and cultural context, the author not only proposes a new interpretation of the Jewish exile history from the perspective of returning to Europe and reverse exile (in contemporary times, why are Israelis in exile? The meaning of exile). Where?), and even questioned the current political and cultural status quo: in the post-secular era, is the system of separation of church and state that France is proud of really fair? In postmodernity, are French values really universal values? In an era when the world is turning right, is the Holocaust really not going to happen again? After decades of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is Israel's military action really justified? In the post-Zionist era, have Jews really found their homeland and stopped exile? More specifically, how should the Jews face up to the mountains of religion, history, and the state that lie in front of them?
Abandoning Israel and going into exile in Europe, like the grandfathers who abandoned Europe and went to the Middle East to build Israel? Give up modern Hebrew and embrace French, like the grandfathers gave up Yiddish to create modern Hebrew? Giving up force, like grandfathers pick up weapons? Even give up the strict Jewish law and intermarry with other races, just like the grandfathers used strict Jewish law to prohibit intermarriage with foreign women? This kind of rebellious action did not yield a happy ending. In the midst of a paradox, dualism doesn't help.
Therefore, synonyms, like Derrida's différance, accurately represent the living conditions of the Jews, infinite sliding on the chain of signifiers, it is difficult to find a stable signifying structure, "like" but not "yes", why is home The sense of exile lingers like a spell to this day. And this feeling of exile is added by the humiliating sense of exploitation (exploitation of wealth [theft], sexual exploitation [forced to make pornographic videos], emotional exploitation [association with two French friends], memory exploitation [French naturalization] discipline]) and become more depressed and pathetic.
I think the author believes in the repetition of history, otherwise he would not have adopted the above narrative perspective, and would not have projected Hector's fate on the angry Zionist (especially Is towed by a car after death, a complete copy of Homer's epic). Therefore, at the end of the film, the male protagonist suffered humiliation and was forced to embark on the return journey of Ulysses, but it only started a new period of exile.
In fact, isn't everyone an exile of the times?
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