I have generally loved the selections offered here at ChaiFlicks, but I am truly dismayed that Crescendo has made it into the ChaiFlicks repertoire. Rarely do I fail to watch a film all the way through, but only about a half hour into Crescendo, I became so hurt by its garishly ugly stereotyping of Israelis that I simply had to abort. While I am a proud Zionist, and therefore naturally protective of Israel's public image, I am also, by profession, an Arabic linguist and Middle Eastern affairs analyst whose overview of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not unsophisticated, and who harbors consternation over the real misery that too many Palestinians experience in their daily lives. In other words, I embrace many fine films offered here and elsewhere that expose objectionable Israeli attitudes and practices, and that justifiably draw sympathy for the plight of many Palestinians, and so if a film that purports to be of that genre deeply offends ME, it REALLY must be offensive. In my own very extended experience interacting with both Israelis and Arabs, over a lifetime, I have never observed the blatantly racist and supremely arrogant behaviors assigned to the Israeli characters in this film, even among the arch-conservative Israelis with whom I have had working relationships. Yet this film relentlessly depicts young Israelis (musicians and IDF soldiers) as flamboyantly contemptuous of Palestinians, and is replete with gratuitous (i.e., utterly unrelated to the theme and plot) sequences involving tear-gassings of Palestinian townspeople and the bull-dozing of a Palestinian family's home. Again, I endorse and celebrate the films here that take a serious look into the complex and often deeply troubled co-existence of Israelis and Palestinians, but I cannot, for the life of me, understand how ChaiFlicks fails to see how harmful the anti-Jewish stereotyping in this film is to the causes of both art and peace. Please wake up, ChaiFlicks, lest you will make many of your customers worry that you have gone the way of the Peter Beinarts of the world. I want to remain a subscriber here, but there's a good chance I'll now try to cancel my subscription, leaving me more time to fight anti-Semitic propaganda in cinema, alongside friends of mine in the progressive Zionist movement who would surely be horrified if forced to watch Crescendo.
Lucy, thanks for your thought provoking comments about this film. Your engagement with the film is the essence of what Chaiflicks is about and what makes us who we are. Many of our films are challenging for many different reasons and that is our intent. For your information, the director is one of the preeminent Israeli filmmakers, Doro Zahavi and this film has been accepted and played at numerous Jewish Film Festivals worldwide and won many prizes. We hope you will continue to watch all of our films and provide your thoughtful comments.
Thank you, Mr. Weiner. . I wish I could say that I'm surprised to learn that Crescendo was directed by a preeminent Israeli filmmaker and that it curried acclaim at Jewish Film Festivals worldwide, but alas, the perpetuation of antiSemitic tropes is by no means off limits, today, to many Israelis and Jews who very misguidedly find these to be funny or otherwise harmless. Combatting murderous antiSemitism around the world, today, requires that we take the trouble actually to learn to recognize and call out the tropes that promote hate and trigger violence, and when artists and other professionals fail to accept education along these lines, the result is inevitably the lending of aid and comfort to those would prefer that Israel and Jews worldwide simply cease to exist. With due respect, you are grievously mischaracterizing my criticism as some kind of intolerance for anything in cinema that dares to be critical of Israelis' relationships with Palestinians. Your mischaracterization sets up a straw target that obscures the real issue, here, and precludes meaningful debate. I took pains to explain that while I find nothing wrong with (and usually greatly admire) films that honestly examine the nature of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, I cannot react with equanimity to a film, like Crescendo, that offers up hate-filled caricatures of Israeli Jews as people preoccupied with exerting sadistically cruel and imperious dominion over Palestinians. Do you not see the difference, for example, between the Israeli characters developed in Fauda, all of whom are deeply (and wonderfully) flawed, and the Israeli characters offered up in Crescendo? Fauda is a masterpiece for its balanced, but also harshly honest, depictions of Jews and Palestinians. It makes no effort to lionize Jews, and also no effort to demonize Palestinians. It achieves all that it needs to without resorting to a single campy trope or stereotype on either side. Crescendo is the opposite: It is fodder for Jew-hatred that Jewish Film Festivals should be ashamed to award with prizes, and I was hoping that unlike the juries at such Festivals, ChaiFlicks's curators might be able to see this. Instead, I'm now sensing that ChaiFlicks thinks that classical antiSemitism is just one of many valid lenses through which to present a story about Israelis and Palestinians, and that Jews have no right to call out antiSemitism when we see it on the screen. That is a political-correctness bridge too far for this progressive Zionist, and, I would venture, for many others in the subscribing audience, here.
Wow be patient my cccommmputer is not typing cccorreccctly...we too are fairly versed in this situation... we saw this fil as one of many attemmmmpts that to bbring together two hostile people and nations Unfortunately it failed but sooner of later one will succceed.. It is the efort that will bring people together because in their hearts that is what both sides want...let us not get into their leaders
I too am proud to be Jewish and graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in Jewish Studies. I enjoyed the film. It held my interest from start to finish. I cared about the characters and loved the music. I was also curious if the young musicians could overcome their political feelings and make music together. The cinematography also held my attention. I didn't feel that there were anti-Semitic tropes. There was a collection of young people each having their own points of view. The scene at the airport with the two groups of people separated but playing the beautiful Bolero music adds a nice humanistic and hopeful touch. Maybe the film has a naive assumption that music could be the lingua franca to resolve the dismal state of Isareli-Palistinian relations, on the other hand who knows?