In the Holy Land, regarded by some as the birthplace of homophobia, two filmmakers are trying to use movies to create social acceptance of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community. In Walk on Water (2005) and The Bubble (2007), Israeli director Eytan Fox and his spouse and screenwriting collaborator Gad Uchovsky simultaneously address the issues of gay acceptance in Israeli society and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Both films demonstrate a clear desire to send a message about acceptance of the gay community and also to urge viewers to re–evaluate the Palestinian problem. While the duo’s efforts are innovative and their desire to tie the Israeli–Palestinian conflict to the acceptance of gays has potential to create an impact in Israeli society, their inability to conceive of realistic, or even plausible, narratives and narrative transitions greatly inhibits their effectiveness. To solve this problem, the filmmakers need to rely less on the narrative to express their message and instead create meaning by utilizing the special features with which the medium of film is endowed.
Walk on Water, which has performed better at the American box office than any other Israeli film, centers on Eyal, a Mossad (Israel’s intelligence agency) officer assigned to ascertain the whereabouts of Alfred Himmelman, a former Nazi who went into hiding abroad after the war and has recently returned to Germany. To achieve his mission, Eyal impersonates a tour guide and takes Himmelman’s grandson, Axel, around Israel as the latter visits his sister who has recently moved to a kibbutz. Through their time together, Axel steadily brings Eyal out of his comfort zone, forcing him to confront both homosexuality and the Palestinian conflict in a meaningful way. After sleeping closely beside Axel during a night camping in order to stay warm and showering with him at the Dead Sea—two actions that Eyal apparently does not find problematic for straight men to do—Eyal learns that Axel is gay. Though he is at first surprised and actually angered, Eyal eventually comes to accept Axel and, even later in the film, takes the initiative to defend a group of LGBT partiers who come under attack by lowlifes in Berlin. Axel also forces Eyal to confront the issue of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict when he becomes romantically involved with a Palestinian man, Rafik. Eyal is extremely upset by this development, and in contrast to his acceptance of Axel’s sexual orientation, Eyal never seems to accept his guest’s decision to have a relationship with a Palestinian. At one instance, he even embarrasses Rafik when he accuses the Palestinian’s uncle of ripping off Axel.
The Bubble confronts these same issues from a very different angle. Set mostly in Tel Aviv, the story focuses on two young men whose lives collide with the politics and prejudices of their societies. Noam, an Israeli soldier who has just finished his duty at a checkpoint in the territories, has fallen in love with Ashraf, a Palestinian who has snuck into Tel Aviv. While Noam’s two roommates, one of whom is gay, accept his sexual orientation, Noam faces a fair amount of antagonism about Ashraf’s ethno–political identity. Moreover, Ashraf has to hide his identity in Tel Aviv in order to remain there, changing his name to “Shimi” and speaking Hebrew without a Palestinian accent. More significantly, he must continually hide his sexual orientation from his family that does not even recognize the possibility or existence of homosexuality.
Both films are shot with an unobtrusive, documentary–style camera, mostly with basic medium shots and traditional establishing shots (shots at the beginning of a scene that tell the viewer where the action is taking place). There are no memorable montage sequences and very few provocative or engaging shots of note. Fox and Uchovsky seem to rely entirely on the events and dialogue of the plot to provide meaning, without any noticeable attempt to use other specific features of the medium, such as non–diegetic sound (i.e., sound that the viewer hears but is not present in the story, like a score), cinematography, or even iconography, when specific elements in the film, such as a prop, are used to signify a much greater idea or concept. Nevertheless, both films have received a good deal of attention both within Israel and internationally. But will they make a difference?
To answer this question, we must first examine the level of social and legal acceptance for the LGBT community within Israel. Israel’s law code is generally very welcoming of the LGBT community. In contrast to the United States, Israel has often received praise for allowing gays into full military service. Indeed, the Jewish state has a number of anti–discrimination laws in effect to protect the LGBT community. Also, the Israeli Supreme Court recently declared that a lesbian couple may both remain parents of a child born to one of the mothers. According to The Advocate, an American gay and lesbian newsmagazine, the Israeli government granted homosexual couples the full adoption rights as heterosexual couples. Most significantly, while there are no civil marriages in Israel and the Orthodox religious leadership does not condone same–sex marriage, the state recognizes same–sex marriages from other countries, like Spain or the Netherlands. In legal terms, Israel is not only more accepting of the gay community than is the United States, but is even more accepting than a number of Western European nations as well. Nevertheless, Israeli society is not as accepting of homosexuality as its laws suggest. According to Ira Stup, Columbia College ’09 and member of Gayava, a group dedicated to promoting LGBT Jewish life both on campus and in the city as a whole, the social situation for the community within Israel varies upon location. In some places such as Tel Aviv, Stup explains, being “out” can be relatively easy. The city government provides services for the LGBT community. Moreover, there are a number of businesses that cater to the LGBT lifestyle. As British journalist Chas Newkey Burden puts it, “Tel Aviv has a fine gay scene with a number of bars, clubs, saunas, and gay sex shops on its streets.” Also, Tel Aviv has had an annual gay pride parade since 1998, which runs relatively smoothly each year.
Yet in Jerusalem, however, being “out” can prove very difficult. Jerusalem’s sizable Orthodox Jewish population voices intense hostility to homosexuality, and Jerusalem’s annual gay pride parade is a constant point of contention between the Jerusalem Open House, Jerusalem’s lead LGBT advocacy group, and religious authorities. In a tragic example of how much animosity the LGBT community faces in Jerusalem, Time magazine noted that in a “near–miraculous occurrence,” Jerusalem’s Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders—so often at odds—actually agreed to collaborate on one issue: intense opposition to the gay pride parade. Thus, while Israel certainly does have laws that provide for the acceptance of LGBT community, certain sectors of Israeli society still demonstrate a great deal antagonism to the community.
Into the fray stepped Fox and Uchovsky with Walk on Water and The Bubble. Yet their impact on both dialogue and reality within Israel remains hard to measure. Columbia University film professor Richard Peña, who teaches “International Film History after 1960,” explains that it is hard to determine how much power films have to foster social change. He notes that there are some specific cases of films profoundly influencing society. D.W. Griffith’s racist homage, The Birth of a Nation (1915), is one of the principle films that define how feature–length films are made today. Following its release, according to Peña, “membership in the Klan rose to unprecedented levels, setting reform back in the American South for decades.” In another instance, Peña explains that Jorge Salinas’ Blood of the Condor (1968), which depicted American aid workers sterilizing Bolivian women, sparked enough of an outcry that it led to the expulsion of the Peace Corps from Bolivia. Nevertheless, Peña notes that there are also a number of great films that have failed to make a strong impact. Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937), for example, is, according to Peña, “what many consider one of the greatest anti–war films of all time.” Nonetheless, the world erupted in the most destructive war in history two years later.
 The two main characters from The Bubble, the Israeli Noam and the Palestinian Ashraf. |
As far as whether Fox and Uchovsky’s strategy of linking the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and issues of gay acceptance can have an impact, Peña says, “I frankly don’t think it’s effective on either issue.” He finds fault with the films because they are not only “too cartoonish,” but describes their messages as “woefully obvious.&rldquo; Instead, he says that he believes Fox’s most effective film is After (1990), a short about homosexuality in the military, which succeeded because, in Pena’s view, “just showing that homosexuality existed in the military seemed bold and direct.” The more recent films, in contrast, have been too obvious, and yet not very direct. Ira Stup of Gayava has a different view. He believes that modern film can serve as an extremely powerful means of creating social change due to recent technological developments. In his view, “YouTube can be more effective than a rally.” Moreover, in contrast to Peña, he believes that Fox and Uchovsky’s approach is very effective because “the connection of all of these things are important and integral” to what the filmmakers are trying to say. Without Fox and Uchovksy’s inclusion of the Palestinian element, Stup believes that the story of gay life in Israel would really be incomplete. More importantly, he contends that the simultaneous presentation of the two issues makes the films “more realistic.” Stup argues that this strategy allows Fox and Uchovsky to present “abstract issues in a more authentic way.”
Both Peña and Stup are right in a certain sense. Perhaps more like soap operas than cartoons, both Walk on Water and The Bubble are fraught with horribly unrealistic scenarios. In The Bubble, virtually every event that initiates plot development is unrealistic and incredible. For example, Fox fails to explain how Ashraf manages to elude Israeli security forces and to sneak into Israel from the West Bank twice, while the ease with which Noam visits Ashfraf in the West Bank city of Nablus seems implausible at best. Indeed, Uchovsky and Fox seem as though they do not care enough to construct the necessary explanations for these situations. Moreover, the film’s most pivotal moment is unrealistic to the point of absurdity. Inexplicably, an Israeli security guard manages to shoot bullets into the air and somehow accidentally hit Ashraf’s sister who was standing some distance away. Such a scene is not only contrived but appears to mock the reality of warfare in the region.
A number of unrealistic elements also appear in Walk on Water, though its focus on the legendary and mysterious Mossad gives Fox leeway to stretch plausibility. Nevertheless, Fox indulges in poorly justified flights from reality. For example, when Eyal compromises his “tour guide” guise as he saves the LGBT partiers from their attackers in Berlin, Axel barely reacts to the fact that he has been completely duped by Eyal. Moreover, Fox offers no explanation for how the German government would permit a former SS official back into its country.
Furthermore, it seems that Peña is correct in contending that the films are almost repulsively self–evident. In The Bubble, two characters even go so far as to explain what the concept of “The Bubble” means, basically force–feeding the audience one of the points the filmmakers are trying to make and leaving no room for interpretation. Moreover, in Walk on Water, the intention to create a parallel between Eyal’s discomfort with gays and his animosity toward the Palestinians feels incredibly forced. The final scene of The Bubble, where the two principal characters hug as Ashraf blows them up in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, is most prominent and destructive. Perhaps if the filmmakers would have further developed their principle characters, the plot of these movies might not have seemed so preposterous. Without this development, however, the movies have no impact and amount to little more than unsophisticated forums for Fox and Uchovsky’s political statements.
Despite these issues, Stup rightly notes that the connection between the Palestinian situation and the acceptance of gays brings the films closer to reality of Israeli life. Indeed, by choosing not to make homosexuality the central theme of the films, and instead simply one element among many, Fox and Uchovsky help weave it into the milieu of sociopolitical fissures in Israeli society. With many gay Palestinians, like Ashraf, secretly living in Israel to escape persecution back home, and with gay rights in Israel intricately tied to the tensions between left and right wing, secular and Orthodox, there is little question that gay rights are at least peripherally connected to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Fox and Uchovsky argue implicitly through their films that Israelis cannot choose to dissociate the two issues. In doing so, they attempt to reach Israelis on a plane of depth that encompasses all aspects of the Israeli existence. Like the monumental The Birth of a Nation and other films that left indelible marks on their respective societies, Walk on Water and The Bubble are ambitious attempts to shake Israelis to the core—by reaching them there.
While the connection between gay rights and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict may not be as linear as Fox and Uchovsky imagine, there is still the potential to make an impact. The key to that, however, requires a shift in approach: they must adjust their far–fetched narratives to reality, while still retaining a strong statement. Beyond the need to remove the unrealistic elements from their narrative, Fox and Uchovsky need to make greater use of cinematic tools, which they have utilized only minimally. For instance, they could employ close–ups and other carefully chosen cuts, purposefully placed music, or even iconography to make their statements. For by lifting the burden off of the narrative to present every theme and allowing the tools of cinema to shoulder the responsibility, the filmmakers will free the storyline so that the films can be plausible and realistic, while at the same time send an important message to viewers.
Unlike for Renoir in 1937, when perhaps no film could stop the march to war, both time and circumstance seem ripe for art to create change in Israeli society. As gay rights activists continue to campaign for social and political acceptance across the country, the government continues to pass new legislation that increasingly enfranchises the LGBT community. Moreover, as the effects of films like The Birth of a Nation have clearly shown, film can have a profound impact on people’s sentiments, both negatively and positively. Fox and Uchovsky have attempted with Walk on Water and The Bubble to achieve that same lofty status. Nevertheless, while their strategy of combining the Palestinian conflict and the acceptance of gays in Israeli society has the potential to reach Israelis on a level of complexity that they have perhaps never experienced before, Fox and Uchovsky’s failure to write a realistic narrative leaves the viewer detached and unconcerned. If Fox and Uchovsky fail to rely less exclusively on narrative, and more on cinematic creativity, their films may miss an incredible opportunity. By placing greater trust in film technique and imagery to carry their message, however, Fox and Uchovsky may yet make the impact they seek to achieve.
ABOVE: A poster advertising The Bubble, Israeli director Eytan Fox’s 2007 movie about LGBT life in Israeli and Palestinian Society.
BRANDON HAMMER is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in Film Studies. He can be reached at bmh2121@columbia.edu.