An 80-year-old holocaust survivor Joshua’s traumatic memory affects his three grown sons. As the English prof argues, literature has the responsibility to reach that terrible history, for its effects damage successive generations whether they know it or not. The narrative demonstrates his principle beyond even his awareness.
The antenna is a metaphor for the old man’s preternatural sensitivity to the remaining toxicity of his time. His neighbor has rented his roof for a cellular company’s antenna. Joshua blames the antenna’s radiation for all his pains and sleeplessness.
As it happens, the old man is proven right — but his sons don’t tell him, for fear of more violent response. However irrational Joshua’s fear, it costs him his leg anyway. Sometimes a paranoia proves right.
The military son shows his holocaust shadow in his absence from home, his heavy handed discipline of his sons and a general insensitivity that drives his wife into an idle tryst with his brother, then home to her mother. He’s punished for losing a gun. His oldest son rebels with tantrums at home and a violent attack in a classmate that gets him expelled. Kicking the principal didn’t help his cause.
The prof is divorced and unproductive in his discipline, which costs him a promotion and leaves him vulnerable to a student’s seduction. When his young son insists on being carried out of school, his self-infantilizing shows a third generation of paralysis.
The deejay son deals in drugs and refuses to bring his pregnant German gentile girlfriend to meet his family. Fearing his father’s anger and pain, he claims his four years in Germany were in Amsterdam.
The old man’s death — which results from the removal of his radiated leg — liberates his family. The soldier gets an easier posting, to his family’s benefit — and his wastrel brother finds the lost gun. The deejay finally takes responsibility for his pregnant girlfriend and brings her into his family. She is converting to Judaism to marry him.
The prof breaks free from his father’s hunger for vengeance when he stops his own covert attack on the neighbor. He also abandons his delusory affair with his student. He realizes that her promising draft novel seduced him into using her to fill his void — an unreciprocated commitment.
The old man’s death — which results from the removal of his radiated leg — liberates his family. The soldier gets an easier posting, to his family’s benefit — and his wastrel brother finds the lost gun. The deejay finally takes responsibility for his pregnant girlfriend and brings her into his family. She is converting to Judaism to marry him.
The prof breaks free from his father’s hunger for vengeance when he stops his own covert attack on the neighbor. He also abandons his delusory affair with his student. He realizes that her promising draft novel seduced him into using her to fill his void — an unreciprocated commitment.
Even the mother is at least freed from the rigorous demands her family placed on her and the harsh demands of her cantankerous, even violent and impatient patient.
The film reminds us of the lasting damage, anger, fear, instability, that remain in the shadow of the Holocaust. It falls across the land still.
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