Tehilim review (Tehilim) - movie review of the Raphaël Nadjari film starring Michael Moshonov

Tehilim
:. Director: Raphaël Nadjari
:. Starring: Michael Moshonov, Limor Goldstein
:. Script: Raphaël Nadjari, Vincent Poymiro
:. Running Time: 1:36
:. Year: 2007
:. Original Title: Tehilim
:. Country: France / Israel
:. Official Site: Tehilim [French]

Haunted by loss and the impossibility of mourning, the films of Raphaël Nadjari are about suffering communities. After having paid homage to his filmmaker role model, John Cassavettes, within the framework of a New York trilogy that garnered a lot of attention (The Shade, I am Josh Polonski's Brother, Apartment 5C), the director went on to explore other territories. In 2003, he placed his camera in Tel-Aviv where he directed, with the frugality that characterizes his minimalist cinema, Avanim, a portrait of an Israeli woman who frees herself after the death of her lover. Centering on tense dialectics (modernity against ultra orthodoxy), this film already carried the seed of Tehilim, an intimate drama built around disappearance. The "Tehilim" of the title refers to a major part of Judaïc liturgy. These psalms, attributed to King David, accompany Jews each day of their existence.

It is precisely in this every day life that Nadjari anchors his story. After a car accident a head of household disappears, abandoning his two young sons at the scene of the accident. What has happened to him? Is he still alive? Many questions are left unanswered and they will upset a fragile family. The mother tries to face the material risks, supported by an ambiguous uncle and a religious grandfather who devotes himself to the study of the Torah. On modernity's side, she finally moves away from her omnipresent parents. At the center of the story, the two brothers end up coming closer together, spurred on by the younger one. In spite of his young experience, the child understands that safety is not in division. Nadjari believes in reconciliation: that is the beauty and the power of his work. And perhaps that's also the key to the mystery that he leaves unresolved. Each character tries his best and within his means to get his missing father back, by putting a lot of effort into a positive project.

As with Antonioni (L'Avventura), another major reference that inevitably comes to mind, it's about the characters filling a void. The father marks his invisible presence onscreen. When he's not between the characters, he stubbornly occupies their consciousness off camera. Nadjari's heroes are always agents of a heavy secret which the stories touch on without ever revealing. This mystery enters daily lives that are far less dull than they appear to be.

Attentive to the energies which traverse places like inhabitants, the director collects the underground movements which agitate communities. With his visceral manner, his camera follows an "intermediate" neighborhood of Jerusalem, somewhere between modernity and tradition. Even there, the territory expresses and calls for reconciliation. Nadjari works a kind of intimate geography by which the essence of beings and things are revealed. His actors are brilliant. Special mention goes to the young boys, both appearing in their first role: formidable actors of exactness and emotion and who bring universality to this singular story. Tehilim is a movement of life.

Sandrine Marques

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