Word: mendeler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Mendel, the sellout second film of the festival, takes place nearly 50 years and a continent away from Arik Sharon. The German Jews Aron and Bela Trotzig move with their children David and Mendel to Norway from Germany in 1954 in an effort to escape the lingering horror of the Holocaust. Mendel, born after the war ended and temporarily shielded from knowledge of the Holocaust by his parents, confronts a world where much remains incomprehensible and the past is a blank. His main concern becomes his struggle to decipher the story he has only half-heard in whispers his whole...
Thomas Jungling Sorenson is superb as Mendel, playing him as an impish yet innocent scamp. Mendel knows perfectly well what lines he is not supposed to cross, yet time after time he turns big puppy eyes on his mother or father and asks some outrageous question that causes an eruption. Yet despite his mischievous intentions, Mendel asks his questions out of a sincere desire to ferret out the mystery surrounding...
Director and writer Alexander Rosler, who based the film on his own childhood experiences, shares Mendel's point of view with the audience by revealing only what Mendel knows. Conversations stop abruptly for the camera as well as for Mendel. Mendel has a habit of shouting "Click!" as he gazes on a place for the last time; Rosler prolongs his shot of the scene as Mendel makes his mental picture...
...madcap emotional fumbling of the first act gives way to a more serious, slightly more disillusioned second act. Two years have passed; Trina and Mendel are married; Whizzer and Martin have broken up; and the "lesbians from next door" are always running in and out. It is the year of Jason's Bar Mitzvah, and the characters all seem to hope that this one pivotal event will smooth over their unstable lives. Whizzer, however, shows up again, complicating everything by getting back together with Martin, aggravating Trina, and, finally, falling mysteriously...
...second act, dealing with more serious topics, is not so joke-filled as the first, but its satire of the Eighties is bitingly funny. Mendel most openly condemns the new decade: "half my patients/yuppie pagans/modeled on this/Ronald Reagan" Yet he and Trina seem to be living quite the yuppified Laura-Ashley-decorated lifestyle. In this act, real love develops between Whizzer and Martin, as does some of the loveliest music of the show. In these quiet, poignant moments, the cast's talent for handling emotion with delicacy and without melodrama and their collective vocal strength, is most clearly showcased...