Born in Jerusalem and Still Alive

I saw this film a week after I read a column that claimed “Israel’s biggest secret” is its memories of the traumatic terrorist years around 2000. In this election year Israelis don’t want to remember the days when they lived under constant terrorist threat. The wall, the checkpoints, a heightened security system — these responses to that threat bring Israel criticism from the outside world but they have checked that nightmare.

Here Ronen is an idealistic shlub whose determination NOT to forget those slaughters leads him to give tourists free tours of those terror sites. In his purity he won’t charge for those tours. “This is not a business.” Indeed he won’t even let his (nonpaying) tenant use those tours to sell his related souvenirs, including a t-shirt with the film’s title on the front and unexploded dynamite on the back.   

Ronen’s memories vividly connect the public slaughter with his personal experiences. The loss of his mother to cancer introduced his grasp of mortality, which was heightened by the years of terrorism. At the same time as he’s haunted by the ghosts of Jaffa Street, he’s struggling to evade his doddering old dad’s desire to be dependent upon him. Both in his father’s home and in the streets Ronen is burdened by the past. It threatens paralysis, especially when he meets the beautiful Asia (an Israeli living in Barcelona) with the prospect of a romantic future.

Ronen’s ultimate success is to leave both pasts behind him. He bequeaths his tour to that more practical-minded roomie and leaves his father to stop expecting his son to live at his beck and call.  Ronen leaves the death-echoes of the street for a bright-blue escape to the Dead Sea. Getting into that swim implicitly promises his renewed connection with the  Asia. 

Asia is immediately attracted to Ronen’s seriousness and gravity, which seem a challenge to her characteristic exuberance and joy. Yet her enigmatic sombre close-up in their first bed scene suggests she too carries a cognate gravitas. She has brought hers under control. Still, the insecurity is there, as we see in her brittleness when Ronen responds sleepily to the first breakfast she makes him.
     Asia is a student in architecture. Her term paper is a study comparing the modern and the old Jaffa Street. That’s Ronen’s territory too. But where he obsesses on the past she strides into the constructive future. At the end we hope she is still there for him. Yes or no, he's finally taking his plunge away from the haunting past.  
      Ronen is abetted by a young Japanese man who initially takes his terrorist tour, then brings others and ends up a volunteer aide on all the tours. As the Japanese are attracted to the tour of terrorist attacks they carry associations of their own atomic past. Moreover, this group is there because they love Israel. They even perform a Hebrew song. This is Israel freed from its religious past and from its neighbouring  threats. The Japanese love Israel for what it is, an impressive modern achievement risen from the ashes of tragedy. This broader context may explain the echo of the Japanese warrior in Ronen's name.