Campfire (2004)

It's too easy to dismiss this film as just another dump on an Orthodox Community and/or the West Bank settlements. There really is a Bnei Akiva and settlements so I can see this kind of thing happening. Probably because I'm not Jewish I can see that the film depicts universal situations that could likely happen in any country or culture other than Bnei Akiva or Orthodox Judaism. I've been at church camps where the "bad boys" have sung dirty songs in a corner by themselves. I haven't seen sexual molestation as happens in this film but I wouldn't say that it's never happened at a church camp. Leaders all over the world try to cover up a scandal the way Motke tries, doing the wrong thing just to preserve the image of their business (organization, political movement, whatever). The search for love is the most universal desire of all. Rachel and Yossi are in a situation where it's extremely difficult to find love, when we're over 40. It happens but not often enough. This film, like many films from countries with unpopular reputations, should have gained more recognition than it did.Yehoram Gaon deserves special recognition for coming out of retirement to take on a small part in the film. He could have easily rested on his reputation but he assumes the role of a not particularly likable pompous ass and does it well. Yehoram Gaon was the teenage idol of Israel in the 1960's. He deserves special credit for allowing himself to be photographed old, balding and with his gut hanging over his cummerbund. That's real bravery. But he proves in this film he still has it as a singer in a memorable scene of a cantorial concert. Yehoram Gaon could sing chazanut to this Gentile for hours and I wouldn't mind.Michaela Eshet also deserves special recognition for her portrayal of a single mother dealing with raising teenage daughters as she simultaneously goes on the dating market after her year of mourning. IMDb doesn't list many film performances of Michaela Eshet so I must assume that her expertise comes from the stage.This is not a perfect film. The Hebrew title "Medurat Hashevet"should have been more literally translated into English as "Tribal Campfire" to provide a better description of the story line. It would have been better to see Tami's molesters punished, Motke demoted and all the other loose ends of the various situations tied up but there's only so much that can be accomplished in the standard two hours. I'll give this movie nine stars out of ten.

I saw this film with a group of 60 people, most of whom stayed for a discussion afterward. The story seemed relatively straight-forward to me. SPOILERS: It takes place in the 1980's. A group of people associated with the B'nai Akiva (modern Orthodox/Zionists)want to establish a settlement on the West Bank close to the Palestinian city of Ramallah. The focus is on a young widow and her two teenage daughters. The woman desperately wants to be accepted into the community. The difficulty from the group's standpoint is that she has no husband, and this is a highly patriarchal society in which a woman's place is definitely NOT as head of a family. Rachel, the mother goes on a couple of blind dates, one with a man (Yossi) who operates his own bus (Mini-Yossi), the other with a pompous man-of-the-world who is a cantor in his spare time and who considers himself and artist and is considered an artist by others. Yossi, never married, is a middle aged virgin, very plain. In the beginning, Rachel is not attracted to him, nor to the cantor. It is not until much later in the picture, as Rachel begins to reveal herself to Yossi, that we learn she never loved her husband and, though it is unrealistic, she wants to fall in love with someone who makes the sparks fly. The older of the teen-age daughters, Esty, is busy trying to make out with her boyfriend behind closed doors. Tammy, 15, is also very interested in her own sexuality. In the scene that is the movie's centerpiece, Tammy and a girl friend follow the "bad boys" of the group to a huge bonfire where Tammy is assaulted by the oldest member of the group (her friend has immured herself in a nearby automobile) and raped or, at the very least, seriously abused by the gang leader and several of its members. Graffiti describing her as a whore are soon all over the stone walls of the neighborhood in which she lives. Rachel is accused of being completely self-centered. Facing the crisis in her family, she takes a vote on whether to join the settlement community, and when they vote to accept her despite her status as a single mother, she tells them she is no longer interested. When the credits roll, the audience is left to anticipate that she will have sex with Yossi and perhaps marry him. Tammy never reveals exactly what happened to her but in the final scene announces that she plans to have a happy year. When the film was over and the discussion began, the Israeli-born woman leading the discussion began to talk about B'nai Akiva and the settler movement of the 1980's. Several other Israelis present insisted that the movie had little to do with B'nai Akiva but was representative of sexism which pervaded ALL of Israel in the 1980's. Although the discussion leader and others tried to talk about the director's intent (which was certainly a comment on the specific characteristics of the B'nai Akiva movement), the other Israelis would have none of it. They insisted it could have happened anywhere with any group of Israelis. A point that interested me, but did not get much attention during the discussion, was that, apart from the knit skull caps worn by the men and boys in the film, there were no sign that religion played any part at all in the life of the aspiring community.Was Tammy raped? Perhaps there was no sexual intercourse but she was certainly assaulted and shamed? Was Rachel all that selfish? Not in my eyes. She was trying to make a place for herself in a patriarchal society. Were the rebellions of her two daughters justified? They were teenagers, experimenting with their own sexuality, and they had lost their father, whom they apparently adored. Did Tammy "invite" the abuse? By the standards of the 1980's, she certainly did. She went searching for the boys and told a dirty joke to fit into the crowd. But it was also clear that she did not expect to be sexually abused and did not "want it," as the boy she was most attracted to inferred. I felt it was an interesting movie and that it was about what it was about -- and not about all Israelis during that period.

This movie made me furious. Tammy is verbally abused in front of her mother (I don't think the boys would have behaved this way if she had been with her father)at the beginning of the movie--even though she dresses modestly-- and then later raped off-camera. Rafi, the boy who likes her does nothing to stop it--the rapist tells him not to be a snitch (the implication being that it is more important for Rafi to look good to his friends than to protect someone he cares for). Tammy's mother tells her that she can talk to a professional, but she chooses to remain silent and not report the rape to the police. The rapist is not punished.I didn't want to go to Israel by myself before I saw this movie, but I'm even less inclined now. The middle eastern attitude towards women is for $#!t regardless of faith (Armenians are mostly Christian).

I've just seen the second screening of this film at the berlinale.joseph cedar is hardly known at all in germany and so i thought i'd seen one of these first'n'nice-but-well... movies - and was caught off guard. the movie tell the story of three women (mother and two daughters) living in the israel of 1981.the mother is a widow since one year and the film shows how she and her daughters cope with the situation. so the story sounds simple but the mr. cedar has found a really good way of waving backgrounds around it. as there are the settlements-movement and the male dominated society. he really manages to give an impression of a society by showing people act and live in this society.one of the best movies i saw in months!!