|
Hiding and Seeking
review by
Elias Savada, 27 March 2004
The central character in this new
film from the makers of the Emmy-nominated A Life Apart: Hasidism
in America is Menachem Daum, who with
co-producer-director-writer Oren Rudavsky, has sculpted a touching
self-portrait of his family, one he believes is in need of some
spiritual healing. Following its world premiere at the New York
Jewish Film Festival in January, the film has a small pre-Passover
window opening at Washington's Avalon Theatre, where the local
community can learn about faith and tolerance after the holocaust, a
suitable subtitle descriptor. It is the middle film of a planned
trilogy dealing with the theme of "Barriers and Boundaries" in the
Jewish world.
The
filmmakers have actually crafted two films over the course of a
single 85-minute sitting. The first and shorter, which bookends the
other, concerns a father's strained relationship with his sons and
his attempt to reconcile what he believes to be their unworldly
views with his own brand of "secular humanism." Daum, whose bearded,
teddy bear appearance reminds one of a subtler variation of Francis
Ford Coppola, has the camera follow him on a journey of discovery
that evolves into an inner film seeking resolution to a
half-century-old secret. One hidden in a barn under a pile of hay.
This portion of Hiding and Seeking dives straight into a
hidden ancestral history that Daum hopes will solve his family's
present day problems.
Daum's
sons, Tzvi Dovid and Akiva, are fulltime Talmudic scholars who have
made aliya to Israel from their native Brooklyn. They live to
study the Torah and Talmud, and remove all secular interests from
their lives. Their father's concern is based on an audiotape of one
of their sect's scholars, proclaiming vehement hostility toward all
non-Jews. He fears that his own father's belief "not to trust the
gentiles" has skipped a generation -- as if a recessive
"isolationist" gene might now be bearing fruit. Confronted with the
audio clip, the boys downplay their mentor's ideology as somewhat
removed from their own, but the troubled parent believes an
excursion into the family's historical roots will help softened
their views.
Daum, the
son of Holocaust survivors who landed in Schenectady, New York, in
1951 before moving with his parents to Borough Park, is married to
Rifka, who, from appearances, barely puts up with her husband's
filmmaking study and keeps her screen time to an unfortunate
minimum. Her aging, infirm father, Chaim Federman, was one of three
brothers secreted away by a gentile Polish family during World War
II and his story, ultimately, plays out as the most memorable. It is
the Daum (mother, father, and two sons, but not the many
grandchildren) family's trip to the back streets of Zdunska Wola and
the dirt roads of Dzialosyce, a small town near Krakow, that
dovetails the father's views so succinctly -- that a gentile world,
even one of promised (but ultimately not delivered) financial
riches, can save a Jewish soul or two or three during one of our
planet's darkest hours. Ultimately, a soul-filled restitution is
made, even of the treasure delivered is figuratively a non-tangible
asset.
The
film's drawbacks are few, but obvious. The female side of the
family, save Rifka, whose original appearance finds her in the
kitchen, seems relegated to second class status, glimpsed in still
photographs or 8mm home movies. Perhaps the ladies were busy with
other tasks, but their absence is regrettable. We never see the
sons' wives; their sister makes a brief appearance, I think. A
single granddaughter (one of 14 grandchildren) becomes the sole
connection of the future generation to its past as the film draws to
its emotional climax.
The film,
shot on digital video, is also narrated by Daum, while Rudavsky
worked exclusively behind the camera as director of photography.
John Zorn's modest score perfectly supplements the music of the late
Shlomo Carlebach, a humanist who greatly influenced Daum.
Carlebach's treatise of hope and tolerance for all mankind is noted
briefly in a 1989 concert of him performing before a receptive,
vastly non-Jewish audience in Warsaw. I saw him once, back in the
1960s, at a summer camp, and the experience was magical.
If the
film is a humanist's vision ("No one faith has all the answers,"
Daum reminds us.), it is also is a genealogist's dream come true --
of spiritual and historical discovery despite insurmountable odds.
There is a higher power at work here that allows snippets of memory
to blossom into a tearful reunion. Having traced my family roots for
nearly a decade (and I have more "cousins" on my wife's side than my
own), the ancient discoveries found in a forgotten cemetery (located
with the assistance of Kamila Klauzinka, a non-Jew who has been
helping people like the Daums find their ancestors) overgrown with
decades of decay and neglect, are worth the viewing alone. That
there are living remnants that are just around a dusty bend in the
road make Hiding and Seeking an even better study of both
personal discovery and religious intolerance. Perhaps after
watching, you'll agree that "whoever saves one life, saves the
world." |
|
