From The Archives: Walk On Water Review (2004)

Walk On Water

by Kevin Wong

Robotic Precision

Etyan Fox's Walk on Water is a juggling act of emotional ambiguities and moral lessons. Following enough plot threads to fill three more films, Gal Uchovsky's screenplay considers alienation in several forms: Jews displaced by Nazism, Israelis and Palestinians displaced by one another, and gays contending with homophobia. While the film follows one man's individual growth quietly and compellingly, it is less convincing when it reaches for broad social prescriptions.

Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi) is an Israeli intelligence agent who, when asked about the recent Palestinian suicide bombers in his homeland, coldly dismisses them as "animals." As he suffers from a medical inability to cry tears, Eyal seems primed for blatant symbolism. Instead, he repeatedly moistens his eyes with drops, a more subtle, figurative reminder of his robotic precision.

The first scene alternates between shaky handheld indications of Eyal's unsteady view and a more stylized, omniscient angle as he assassinates a known terrorist organizer in front of the man's wife and son. Shortly afterwards, he finds his own wife dead in their bed, a suicide. As he reads a letter she left on her nightstand, the scene fades to black without any further explanation.

One month later, Eyal is back at the shooting range, refusing the help of psychiatrists. He takes on a new assignment, and Menachem (Gideon Shemer), a head of the Mossad intelligence agency, instructs him to track down an escaped Nazi war criminal and "get him before God does." Reluctantly, Eyal poses as a tour guide for the Nazi's two grandchildren, Axel (Knut Berger), a gay "peacenik" unaware of his family's history, and Pia (Caroline Peters), who lives in an Israeli kibbutz, estranged from her family.

In Israel, Walk on Water's political intrigues transform into Eyal's personal redemptive journey. Initially put off by Axel's naïveté and German heritage, Eyal soon becomes protective, even tender. They bathe each other at the beach, their frank discussion of circumcision invoking a sensuous, mutual curiosity. While Eyal's initial demeanor is both menacing and darkly humorous, Ashkenazi also reveals glimmers of vulnerability during the course of his character's development; he smiles faintly and without derision at Axel's early attempts to "walk on water" when they visit the Sea of Gailee, and becomes possessive when a Palestinian man monopolizes Axel's affections. As these seemingly isolated events build to an emotional breaking point for Eyal, his response is heartbreaking and redemptive.

Eyal's encounters with Axel function on personal and historical levels. Sitting by a campfire, they appear in close-ups, warm underlighting suggesting their growing intimacy. As they talk about German national guilt for the Holocaust and the continued Jewish anger, Axel accuses his own generation, who refuse to take responsibility. At the same time, the righteously ferocious Eyal is also uncomfortable at Axel's bearing blame. Their tentative understanding suggests that old wounds might be repaired through open dialogue.

Eyal's sympathy for Axel is tested again when he learns he is gay; unable to discuss his repulsion with Axel, he slowly comes round, defending a group of drag queens from a street gang and sharing a frank, funny conversation with Axel about gay sex. The film is less explicit in its exploration of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, to the point that it's relegated to background for other tensions. All remain mostly unresolved, an ambiguity only underlined by an unmotivated scene of domestic tranquility.

Walk on Water is a worthy, though frustrating, film. Ashkenazi's dynamic performance takes Eyal from calculated cynicism to some sort of self-understanding. But in attending to so many topical tensions, the movie ends up not detailing any of them.

http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/w/walk-on-water.shtml

From The Archives: Scoop Review (2006)

Scoop

By Kevin Wong

Self-Indulgent

Woody Allen is usually an intensely intimate filmmaker. So much so that his stars tend to adopt his mannerisms, from his halting speech patterns to his fluttery hand gestures. Scarlett Johansson follows suit in Scoop, a repetitive movie that never deviates from what viewers have come to expect from Allen’s latter work.

It begins inventively. Acclaimed British newspaper reporter Joe Strombel (Ian McShane) dies, and on the boat to hell, he gets a crucial lead on the Tarot Card Serial Killer terrorizing London. So determined is he to get the scoop that Joe comes back as a ghost to deliver the clue to Sondra Pransky (Scarlett Johansson), an American college student vacationing in London. A comedy focused on the journalist’s sometimes vulture-like tendencies could have been funny, and for the first 10 minutes here, it seems like a refreshing possibility.

But Scoop quickly devolves into familiarity. By his own admission, Allen has only played two primary roles over the course of 30-plus years—the intellectual professor type and low-aiming hustler. Allen shoehorns himself into this plot as the latter, a cheap magician named Splendini, who finds himself drawn into Sondra’s hijinks. The pairing of Allen and Johansson recalls Bringing Up Baby, and like Cary Grant, Allen’s character here resists the adventure while he secretly loves every liberating second of it. Despite his insistence that he “made other plans,” Splendini accompanies Sondra on her investigations.

They pursue Peter Lyman (Hugh Jackman), an aristocrat whom Strombel believes to be the killer. Sondra falls in love with Peter, and Splendini, posing as her father, begins to care for her like a daughter. Johansson, whose glasses and flustered look recall Mia Farrow in Zelig, gives a warm, gabby performance that recalls the zaniest of Allen’s women. Precocious and rough-edged, Sondra brings to the film a brash enthusiasm. Whether arguing with Joe or pretending to drown in front of Peter, Johansson’s Sondra is her own character.

But while no one would confuse Sondra Pransky with Annie Hall, Splendini is much like previous Allen characters. At the start of the film, he is cowardly, physically weak, and can’t drive to save his life. During an early “heart-to-heart” with Sondra, Splendini reveals that his wife left him, and he has no one to care for him in his old age. He blames himself, saying he was “immature,” but this minute-long confession is the last the viewer hears about his personal life. By the end of Scoop, he is more mature, courageous, and protective, but his route to this change in character, as well as his devotion to Sondra, seem unmotivated.

This sort of arrested development appears in many of Allen’s films. In his world, men are misogynistic and, regardless of age, ethnicity, or social position, listen to jazz and classical music. Allen’s many alter egos, from Alvy Singer to Larry Lipton, are immature, nervous Brooklynites with a fondness for younger women. On top of his sameness, Splendini is also superfluous and strikingly out of place.

Just so, his one-liners and extended gags mostly fall flat. One in particular—“I was born into the Hebrew persuasion, but when I grew up I converted to Narcissism”—only restates what we already know about Splendini. A running gag has Splendini viewing the entire world as his stage. Whether in front of a paying crowd or British bluebloods, he’s cracking bawdy jokes or performing card tricks. Splendini adlibs constantly but also repeats himself, and while his tics may illustrate his “immaturity,” they’re also increasingly irritating and unfunny. Allen once channeled Bergman in Interiors and Fellini inStardust Memories, and he was criticized by some for crossing the line between tribute and plagiarism. But in Scoop, he commits a more self-indulgent crime, paying tribute to his own works.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/scoop-20061/