Haganenet (2014) Reviews

• A strangely affecting and disturbing film

  howard.schumann2014-10-06

  Nira (Sarit Larry), a kindergarten teacher for fifteen years, is stunned when Yoav (Avi Shnaidman), her five-year-old student, announces in school, "I have a poem." The poem consists of only five lines, but the teacher finds magic in the words that the boy has seemingly just created while walking back and forth in the play area as if in a trance. "Hagar is beautiful enough Enough for me Enough for me Gold rain falls over her house. It is truly the sun of god." Brilliantly shot in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem by Shai Goldman, The Kindergarten Teacher, Israeli director Nadav Lapid's (Policeman, 2011) second feature, can be seen as a representation of an Israeli society where poetic sensibility has become lost in a culture that glorifies materialism, and where even the idealistic have lost their moral compass. A strangely affecting and disturbing film, The Kindergarten Teacher is at times perverse but also has moments of haunting beauty. When Nira becomes convinced that Yoav is a poetic genius, comparable in her mind to the four-year-old Mozart, she become obsessed with a desire to protect him from an uncaring father (Yehezkel Lazarof), a wealthy restaurateur, and a mother who has taken off with a lover, but soon begins to cross the line between teaching the boy about life and protecting him from it. On the surface, Nira is a caring person, but the first hint that not all is right is when she passes off Yoav's poems as her own in her weekly poetry class, but fires Yoav's nanny Miri, (Ester Rada) when she learns that Miri also uses the boy's poems in her acting auditions. Gradually, we begin to suspect that Nira sees the world only in terms of black and white, where there are no shades of gray or room for complexity. Lapid puts Nira's worldview in a larger context, "Israel society," he says "has developed a hermetic way of looking at the world, and it justifies everything, like we are the victims, and we are in permanent danger, and it creates a perfect order." When Nira leads the class in the Hanukah song, Mi Yimalel, which says that "In every age, a hero or sage came to our aid," the feeling is that Nira, the wife of a husband (Lior Raz) who watches game shows on TV, and the mother of a son serving in the military, sees herself as a present day Judas Maccabeus, an unlikely hero who will rescue Yoav from a world that is out to rob him of his individuality and sensitivity. Lapid compares Nira's story to going to war "against a society that sanctifies profit, gain, richness, materialism," a society in which "the radical's rebellion suffers from the same diseases they try to heal, which is always the tragedy, and the inevitable destiny of the one who goes to war with his time." Nina's Christ-like decision to save Yoav from what she sees is his inevitable fate mirrors her own feelings of being the victim of a world where poets are anachronistic and sensitive souls are rejected. Like Christ, she is willing to suffer for other's sins, but does not seem capable of reflecting on the true meaning of grace.

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• Pretentious, Boring & Inept

  aphrodisiaciix2017-03-25

  The plot is plain, the acting is shallow, the editing is choppy and abrupt, the camera angles are just either too low or too high, too close or too far (very annoying and ineffective). Two very unnecessary full frontal male nude scenes which the story still can be told without them. In the second nude scene, she just took off her clothes like that? Was that got something to do with the recurring words "whores" and "prostitute"? And, what's the deal with that guy who threw candies at the kid? Then, the teacher went to the dance floor with him, even without his apology and with his conceited attitude? What about that really weird dance number the three of them put on? And, the ending? Why kidnapped the kid? What the #$&%? A pretentious movie which unsuccessful at trying to make something out of nothing. A weird kid and a weird teacher who are both acting weird under weird direction along with weird editing don't make an interesting movie, rather on the contrary... Just a weird movie! It's not art and definitely not entertainment.

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• Notable and different, if not enjoyable

  cliftonofun2017-12-27

  An odd exploration of art and artist, The Kindergarten Teacher's most notable contribution may be its camerawork...which is almost a character in and of itself. The plot lags, the characters perplex, but the questions persist. It is not a flawless film, but it sure is interesting. And hard not to watch.

• "Do not disturb, poet at work"

  paul-allaer2016-03-27

  "The Kindergarten Teacher (2014 release from Israel; 120 min.) brings the story of Nira, a kindergarten teacher, and Yoav, a 5 yr. old boy in her class. As the movie opens, we see Nira talking to her husband about the remarkable gift the boy has, spewing poetry at any given time. The boy's nanny confides that she is using the boy's poets at her auditions. Meanwhile, Nira and the boy grow ever closer. To tell you more would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out. Couple of comments: this is the second movie from up-and-coming writer-director Nadav Lepid, who previously brought us "Policeman". In the DVD extras, he discloses in an interview that the story is mostly auto-biographical, to my surprise. Turns out that Lepid as a young boy went around proclaiming poetry out of nowhere. As to the relationship between Nira and the boy, once it becomes clear how protective she feels about the boy, the only question that remains is how far she will take it... The two main characters are portrayed beautifully by Sarit Larry as Nira, and even more impressive is Avi Schnaidman as the young boy. In the director's interview in the DVD bonus materials, he explains how they went about casting for the role of the young boy. I don't think this movie ever saw a US theatrical release 9and if it did, it never came to Cincinnati), which is a darn shame. I picked this up while browsing the foreign movie section at my local library. I continue to be impressed with the quality of movies coming out of Israel. For such a small country, they sure do have some great movies. If you are in the mood for a high-quality "all talk, no action" movie, you cannot go wrong with "The Kindergarten Teacher".

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• One cheek...

  gabriel-costea2015-12-11

  The other is the spectator. You may be tempted to say that the film is incomplete for its pessimistic ending, as truth spans the time, when clearly you have to complete it yourself. Just as the teacher has to complete her purpose. Apparently the film tries to tell us that the immaterial has no match in value for the social mentality against the material pursuit. But the author uses the duality of the teacher and the child, of its creation and the audience to create connotation. Duality means one. The teacher and the kid are one. She behaves that way. In such a subtle manner when she takes the kid's poems as her own. "What is love?" trying to prepare the kid. The teacher knows, but she is not. She is the reasoning, the will, the courage. "I don't know" candidly replies to the teacher. The kid does not know, but he is. He is the poet, the poetry, the face of love. "Si senor, co-ro-na de cris-ta-les (yeah, yeah, yeah)" is just how the film spectacularly sustains the failure to save such an invisible treasure.

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