Harmonia

  American-born Ori Sivan makes an honourable attempt to bridge the Arab-Jewish division by having Abraham, Sarah and Hagar relive their Biblical tension in modern Israel. Because Sivan’s objective is a new harmony he replays the triangle in the Jerusalem Philharmonic.  

Abraham is the brilliant, uncompromising patriarchal conductor. Sarah is the angelic harpist, who befriends the new horn player Hagar in the face of Abraham’s impatience with the latter’s independence. Sarah leads Abraham to accept Hagar first in the orchestra, then to bear his first son. She later takes the lead in banishing them. 

Abraham is the harsh father. He tries to impose the violin on both sons and stays coolly, callously, uninvolved in Sarah’s attempts to discipline the innately angry Ishmael, whom Hagar bore for Abraham and Sarah. They call him Ben (Hebrew for ‘son of’) but he reverts to Ismail when he and Hagar are banished to the Arab community. 

Abraham shows a promising flexibility when he assures Hagar that sometimes the orchestra should adjust to a single performer, instead of his usual insistence on the reverse. But in general he is too authoritarian to stoop to Sarah’s concerns or to let his sons define themselves.  

Despite his upbringing as Sarah’s and Abraham’s son, Ishmael shows Hagar’s independence. He compulsively chafes at restrictions and control. He destroys his first violin, uses the piano for fast, harsh rejections of the prescribed pianissimo, and is drawn to the trumpet Hagar plays. He senses a connection to her and a detachment from his adoptive parents. When he riotously pounds on the church organ and bells Hagar beams in pride. She has recovered her son. Mother and son reassert their value of unruliness over Abraham's order. 

In contrast, Sarah’s younger son Isaac conforms to his father’s expectations. Infant Isaac has long flowing blonde hair. As he grows under Abraham’s influence he turns into a subdued, tight-clipped, bespectacled nerd, his father’s instrument. But he too senses a lost connection to Ishmael. He discovers his half-brother’s photo hidden behind the symphony’s promotional shot of baby Isaac with Sarah. He refuses to perform his father’s composition for him and walks off to seek Ishmael.

The film’s purpose is to recover the intimate connection between the Jews and the Arabs, the brotherhood that dates back to Isaac and Ishmael. When Isaac sticks Ishmael’s photo on his jacket it echoes the Jews’ yellow star. Where the star identified the Jew as a target, this photo instead identifies the Jew’s connection to the Arab. Isaac in effect identifies himself as — and with — Ishmael, and thus finds him again for the film’s beautiful but sentimental conclusion. 

When the nerd is confronted by a rowdy group of bigger Arab boys we expect an assault. Instead they lead him to his brother. (For that matter, when Isaac fails to perform in the concert I expected Abraham to take him up some mountain to sacrifice him. I’m sometimes wrong).

In the climactic concert scene Ishmael has become an Arab rock guitarist. He recognizes his little half-brother and invites him onstage to perform. First Ishmael, then his band, pick up Isaac’s classical number. In response Isaac extemporizes with a jazzier version that pulls the Arab music into his father’s composition. In the audience Sarah and Hagar recover their lost harmony. Significantly, Abraham is absent, disqualified by his patriarchal rigidity. 

The narrative unfolds episodically, with gaps between the events. We’re not told whether Ishmael is conceived by artificial insemination or a sanctioned schtup, for example. We skip over long sections of the two sons’ lives. These ellipses, with the interweaving of Genesis texts, makes the story feel detached from real life, touching upon the mythic.
      The resolution is emotionally powerful but not entirely pertinent to the current situation. It’s a hopeful Leftie dream. The parallel doesn’t quite hold up, because this Ishmael is not determined to kill Isaac. The worst he does him is to drown out a lullaby with his horn. Recognizing and reestablishing the brotherhood of Arab and Jew is certainly necessary for peace in the region. But it’s a lesson that needs to come from the Arab community, more than from the Jewish. For the obstacle to those people’s peace is not Jewish intransigence but the Arab refusal to accept the existence of a Jewish state. If a Palestinian made this film it would represent a constructive advance. Will Palestinians even watch this? Or will its idealism and political sugarcoat nourish their intransigence?