Food and Death

Rating: 4/10 (8 January 2006)

Very very mild spoilers; but then again, I don't even like to watch the previews, so these minor, vague revelations may not be counted as giving anything away.
I went to this movie with high expectations; I thought that having made the excellent _Schindler's List_, Spielberg would have purged this serious, political film of the frivolous, shallow, sentimental, and sententious nature of many of his others. There may be nothing shallow in this film, in that it deals respectfully with both the promise of Israel, its importance to its people, and its terrible political dilemma; and it does address the flawed ideology of vengeance. But it is dull, dull, bloody, full of sumptuous meals, and dull. After the first tense revenge killing where the untrained assassins nearly botch it, I looked at my watch and thought... are they going to go through all eleven? It seemed that that was the scenario for the first hour. The second hour was hard to get through--the incredible violence and gore putting one into a state of numbness--and the final forty minutes was a torture of boredom. We hadn't eaten, and I kept focusing on all that food. What was that food supposed to signify? It may have been a powerful iconic message-- of devouring, of family, of life, of SOMETHING-- but it was lost in a plot that got increasingly confused. Food and death. The cook who kills. The toymaker who makes faulty bombs. Toys and bombs. Now this target. Now that. The main character, whom one should care about, was so insipid as to incite no sympathy. I found Louis and his Papa far more interesting, actually, than Avnan. The final spoken morals seemed tendentious and obvious. Spielberg at his worst: meaning well, earnest in his religious and political faith, but narratively naive.