Official Selection: International screening - review - THE WONDERS (Plaot) by Avi Nesher
The first thing that strikes about watching The Wonders is that, despite some heavy themes from which it draws inspiration, it remains quite light hearted throughout. This is something that, in all honesty, is quite different from the vast majority of films produced in Israel that make it onto the international film festival scene – despite the fact that it is a trend that has been on a slight rise as of recent times.
Avi Nesher himself describes this latest work as a mixture between Lewis Carroll and Carol Reed. Indeed, the film has elements of both worlds, as its flirtation with an Alice in Wonderland narrative structure contrast the many noir elements and references that define The Wonders. The story is that of an artist, whose life can be described as a casual mess and whose main hobby is defacing the walls of Jerusalem with his own brand of graffities made up of such colourful characters as anthropomorphic rabbits and mad hatters that draw direct inspiration from his own life experience.
One day, he is confronted by a private investigator who gets him mixed up in a strange story that involves the kidnapping of a religious cult leader, himself hired by a femme fatale figure. Queue in a succession of plot twists and revelations that will continuously alter reality at a dizzying and relentless pace, serving the purpose of uncovering Jerusalem as a state of mind, which as a filmmaker himself has stated was a guiding light for his film.
The Wonders lacks the kind of hard hitting realism we are used to seeing in Israeli films, and yet it deals with religious oppression and some of the jokes directly refer to the violence and madness of the environment. All in all, however, the Israeli Palestine conflict is dealt with rather tamely and in quite a naturalistic way. That is not necessarily a bad thing, as it is quite easy to understand that people living in such an environment would be so used to is as to treat it as a casual everyday reality. Nevertheless, it’s easy to understand how some would find a prominent lack of dealing with this theme unsatisfactory.
Despite all this, Nesher’s counter attack to inevitable criticism comes from an array of creative elements and a sense of humour aided by the fact that he cast two comedians in his two leading roles. He also makes an interesting use of animation, where the artist’s graffiti come to life and allow us to infiltrate the character’s imagination and satirical interpretation of his life and of the socio-political situation of his setting. Furthermore, having been a critic before he became a filmmaker, Nesher utilises post-modernist references from the figure of the rabbit that recalls Zemeckis’ Who Framed Roger Rabbit to Polanski’s Chinatown – not only by featuring a sunny setting and playing with the sun’s influence on the setting of the film, but also by naming the private investigator Gittes.
The disappointing truth, however, is that The Wonders touches upon many compelling themes and subjects but never comes up with a closure on any of them. On top of a serious lack of tension and unbalanced use of satire, Nesher’s film simply fails to make a statement that could possibly make it interesting and rewarding on a significant and thoughtful level. Despite this, it reads quite well as an entertaining escapist tale with a lot of creativity and a re-imagining and exploration of the city of Jerusalem as a noir-ish setting.
