It's About Time (No Rating)
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Filled to bursting with lay reflections on the nature of time and existence, this tight little Israeli doc from 2001 builds into something poetic after a shaky start. At first, codirectors Ayelet Menahemi and Elona Ariel seem to be proposing a somewhat tired anti-technology screed--we live in an age of instant gratification, etc.--as truncated interviews flick past like snippets of TV channels surfed by remote control. (The filmmakers have even hired a snarky performance artist to lounge on a couch and wave a remote in our faces.) But the line of inquiry quickly takes on greater weight as impatience is expressly linked to the Israeli character, poised between thousands of years of persecution and only 50 of turbulent nationhood. As one subject wryly comments: "When you're chased for so long, you learn to run fast." Out of the sharp cutting and pragmatic reflections, a national anxiety begins to emerge, a pervasive trauma induced by constant news alerts on the quarter-hour and adolescences interrupted by mandatory service in the army. Time is marked by the dates of wars, but also stretched and bent by a native talent for improvisation; fittingly, the documentary's musical score is free-floating jazz. Only during the sounding of the Memorial Siren, a biannual occasion to remember those who died founding the country and in the Holocaust, is stillness captured--and stunningly. Witnessing the rare urban quiet, in which cars on the highway are momentarily brought to a standstill, one feels tempted to view all Israeli activity as an act of defiance. (Joshua Rothkopf)
Review by Joshua Rothkopf
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