Baba Joon

The title bears the film’s central paradox. “Baba Joon” in Farsi means either/both “Dear father” and “Dear son.” Despite the apparent conflict between this father and this son, the two are the same. But whereas the father Itzhak gave in to his father and went into the turkey farm business he hated, his son Moti won't. The boy relives his father’s rebellion. But where Itzhak buckled in to his father’s tyranny, here he accepts his son and climactically asks his son's forgiveness. 

Itzhak accepts Moti’s resistance after the grandfather hands him the belt with which to wallop Moti. Itzhak remembers suffering that ignominy himself. The memory jars him into finally understanding and accepting his son. Similarly, when Itszhak kneels to ask his son’s forgiveness he echoes the earlier scene, where he insisted the teacher apologize to Moti for insulting him. 

Perhaps three tensions propel the film. One is between the Farsi and Israeli Jewish communities. The Farsi Jews maintain a secure enclave in their desert village. But there’s a cultural clash behind the Ashkenazi Jewish teacher and the Farsi boy. Indeed, father and son, Itzhak and Moti, share a spirited rebellion when they shuck their kippah and tallis koton  for a spirited drive through the desert. 

That tension between the religious and the secular clearly resonates beyond the plot to Israel in general. The three generations of Morgian go to shule — and a congregant criticises Yitzhak when Moti skips — but they’re a secular family. Brother Darius, returning from America, has no religious connection whatever, as he squirms at the idea of having to participate in the altar service.

So too the central tension between the old way and the new speaks to Israel as much as to this family. As the times have changed the old strategies and customs may no longer apply. In the modern state the old generation cannot impose standards on the younger. When Moti spurns farming — especially of those repulsive turkeys — for his gift at engineering he seems to encapsulate Israel’s development from the agrarian kibbutz to the modern technological state. 

     This film about a tight ethnic community in Israel addresses the challenge to modify old standards and expectations. The brother back from America is especially significant as a figure both liberalizing and disruptive.