Reviews

The UN voting record is the most disturbing proof that antisemitism is alive and faring well. Therefore the bottom line of this movie is pretty simple: The director went to the wrong places to find any antisemitism. He just meets simple ignorance. And antisemitism goes much beyond common people naiveness.

Anyway, the movie is quite fun to watch (the Israeli accent is fun) and, even if it just scratches the surface of the issue, it raises some good questions about how to educate new generations about the Shoah (the holocaust) and more generally how should Jews view and identify themselves.

It was the french philosopher Jean Paul Sartre who said that Jewish identity was somehow defined by antisemitism. It is true that the creation of Israel has a lot to do with antisemitism, and obviously it plays a big role in Jewish identity. But if being a Jew is reduced to this, then, as an interviewee said in the movie, "we're never going to be a normal people".

But this is the most complex quest. The everlasting feeling of persecution must, at some point, end. Or else it will turn into and unjustified need of vengeance (as seen in the talks of one of the girls in the movie). But, as Elie Wiesel said, "Only the guilty are guilty. Their children are not.". Nevertheless "Never forget" is the most important teaching, not only for Jews, but for everyone. And this plays a critical role in, for instance, the Iranian atomic bomb issue.

Tomboy is one of those rare movies that can really present a moral tale in such a simple way and yet in such a complex, unbiased, multi-folded perspective. All the previous "girl pretending to be a boy", like Boys Don't Cry and others simply becomes minor achievements after you see Tomboy.

Many reviewers criticizes when the mother beats the child and tries to "fix things up" because they believe the director tries to soften the mother's guilt. And they're right. But they fail to see how this is what makes this movie stand out. All moral issues have centuries of history, identities, traditions... The beauty is not in making a movie to say "this is right" but to show how this complex problems are in fact dealt in the society and how they affect individuals.

I just don't get why this kind of series is not very much seen. Bergman is terrific as Golda. And despite the fact it is a very very sad movie it has some jokes that are terrific. Like when Golda, Ben-Gurion and others are talking to the leaders of the army in the 48 war and they ask for their "professional" opinion on the situation (Israel had 100k soldier but just 10k were trained and the Arabs had 400k plus the (trans)Jordanian forces) and one of the leaders say: "My professional opinion? I'm an archaeologist.".

And when a kid ask Golda when there would be peace in the Middle East she replies with a quote that must not be forgotten: "When Arabs love more their children than they hate us".