kolnoaMograbi
Campfire takes place in Jerusalem in the 1980s, and tells of the Gerliks, an Orthodox family headed by young widow Rachèl (Michaela Eshet), mother of two daughters, young teenager Tami (Hani Furstenberg), a member of the Orthodox Bnèi Akìva youth movement, and Esti (Maya Marón), a few years older. Rachel insists on rebuilding her disintegrating family following the death of her husband and the girls' father. She applies for acceptance to a group founding a settlement in Samaria, but the acceptance committee does not want a single parent. The absence of a man in their lives exposes the Gerliks to ongoing threats and harassment from their own (Orthodox) community, whether in the form of pressure on Rahel from her settler friends to remarry, or in the form of vulgar taunts aimed at Tami by the neighborhood boys, culminating in a rape scene.But first, we see Rachel coming home from a meeting of her settlement group when she hears sounds in the stairwell. She nears the source of the sounds and through a broken window, sees Esti making out with her boyfriend. Rachel smiles at the sight of her daughter evoking such desire, enters the house, and telephones Yossi (Moshe Ivgy), a suitor, and asks him to accompany her to a settler rally the following day.In the rape scene, which takes place on Lag BeOmer, Tami – who is in the initial stages of discovering her womanhood and budding sexuality – reluctantly joins her friend Inbál (Dina Senderson) at the "rebels'" or bad boys' bonfire – which they build at a distance from the "goody-goody" bonfire – one of whom, Rafi (Oshri Cohen) Tami has a crush on. At first, they all gather around the fire and tell dirty jokes. After a few of these, Inbal wants to leave as she disapproves of the boys' behavior. She agrees to wait for Tami, who's actually enjoying herself, in a car parked nearby. As soon as Inbal is gone, Ilán (Danny Zahavi), who's on leave from the army, puts his hand on Tami's thigh. She recoils and wants to leave, but he pins her to the ground and tries to kiss her. After a few seconds, he releases her and asks her if she's alright. Frightened and crying, she gets up to leave, when Ilan seizes her from behind, twisting her arm and covering her mouth, and says to his friends, "What?! This is how you treat them (meaning women)!" Their weak protests have no effect, and they move to cheering, "Ta-mi! Ta-mi!" as Ilan forces her to touch his penis.On a visit of the settler group to the site of their future home on a wind-whipped hilltop, one of the teenage boys corners Tami and tries to get her to confirm the rumors he's heard about what happened to her at the campfire. He tells her, "It's OK. It's natural," hinting to her what awaits her when they're both residing in the same tiny, isolated community. She replies, "What? What's natural?"Campfire exposes the hypocrisy of the Orthodox community in the film, which denies and silences the rape. Tami tells no one what happened on Lag BeOmer, shutting herself in her room. Rachel, unsettled in the face of her daughter's silence, demands of her fellow community members to investigate what took place that night. Not only do they refuse, but hint that her daughter's behavior invited the boys' actions. Consequently, Rachel decides to leave the settlers' group.At the end of the movie, we see Rachel, her daughters, and Yossi – now her fiancé – happily riding in the car that belonged to Rachel's deceased husband – which had stood idle since his death – symbolizing the rebirth of the familial patriarchy. Tami's rape, which remains suppressed and unspoken of, is located in the narrative of family melodrama, and its role is dual: It serves to expose and criticize the loss of values and "departure from the path" of the Orthodox community, and at the same time reaffirms the nuclear family and mends the ideological tears in the community's fabric.
noralee
"Campfire (Medurat Hashevet)" will probably draw the most attention for its insights into West Bank settlers of the 1980's, but I found it more intriguing as a moving and humor-filled portrait of a family caught at the conflict between feelings and society, particularly in a boys will be boys culture. Like "Broken Wings (Knafayim Shvurot)," this is an Israeli family with teenagers struggling with apolitical grief, but that was a secular family. Like "Upside of Anger," there's a grieving mom struggling with teenage daughters as all are dealing with their loneliness and sexuality. Like "Welcome to the Dollhouse" and "Smooth Talk," it deals with teen girls susceptibility to guys. "Saved!" showed teens dealing with some these issues in a comparable conservative community, but satirically unsympathetic. Here instead we have a mother in a situation that would be difficult in any time, any place. The mother has just finished her year of mourning for her husband and is at loose ends, financially, emotionally and as a now single parent of daughters anxious to get on with their lives. All three are vulnerable to persuasion. But they happen to be a modern Orthodox family in Israel so their normal developmental stages are buffeted by religious and social strictures on their behavior. The mother is attracted to the possibility of joining her husband's friends in a group to found a West Bank settlement, more for the companionship and structure it would give to her and her family's life than for zealotry. I'm sure American audiences miss a lot of the political references during scenes of organizing committee meetings, applicant interviews and singing, sloganeering and film viewing (let alone subtleties involved with types and angles of head coverings and length of skirts worn, eating habits and the summer fast day of Tisha b'Av), but the diversity of motivations and social hypocrisy of many of those involved does come through. Going through the process of dealing with these friends and their expectations makes her stronger as an individual, particularly as she reflects on her marriage and what she wants from future relationships.The triangle of the younger and older women's relationships is among the most emotionally frank I've seen on film in its honesty about insecurities, confusions and peer pressure in male-female relationships, symbolized throughout by the father's car and how they and the guys around them deal with it. While the mother is pushed to re-enter the dating pool and explores a relationship with some similarity to how Catherine Keener sweetly handles "The 40 Year Old Virgin," the older daughter focuses on her one-track minded hunky soldier boyfriend, seems to be rebelliously secular and is opposed to moving. The younger daughter absorbs all these contradictory signals. There's a marvelous scene of her exuberantly dancing to romantic pop music at home by herself that is straight out of "My So-Called Life" (or the totemic equivalent for guys "Risky Business") to show that in the U.S. she'd be considered a typical teen ager. Her curiosity about boys is therefore not surprising, so that the adults around her seem rigidly clueless in not expecting that restlessness from her when the appeal of the bad boy is clearly universal. There are occasional references to the complexities of a diversifying Israel that Americans can understand, as when the mother comments the B'nei Akiva youth group isn't the same as when she was young. The actresses are refreshingly not Hollywood beautiful, though it is clearly a running visual joke when the safe guy choices are not just nerdy but are bursting their untucked shirt buttons, even as it is sympathetic to their pressures as well, making the alternatives that much more attractive.While this is no "Norma Rae" or "My Brilliant Career" as a feminist tract, nor is it the anti-Orthodox agit-prop of "Kadosh," the film has a strong, fair and balanced humanistic and sweetly forgiving point to make about women in a male-dominated society who are expected to act a certain way and the consequences they face when they step out of line -- and how the men who love them can be supportive as they learn to live together. While "Campfire" is distributed unrated by the MPAA in the U.S., as a parent I would give it a PG-13. It deals with some of the same issues as PG-rated "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" but in a more serious and mature way as applied to a younger teen.
Marian Paroo
I think people either love or hate this movie, and their politics will have an influence, of course.The movie shows the less than pretty side of the settler movement and the national religious wing -- the sexism, the hostility toward anyone that doesn't fit the exact mold (even if they support the movement politically), the racism.The heroine who thinks that going off to a settlement in the occupied territories is - surprise, surprise! - shocked to discover that as a woman without a man, getting accepted will be an uphill struggle (they tell her straight out they need men for not only defense, but prayer quorums, as women don't count there). The near rape of the younger daughter is by nationalistic religious boys who are on the outskirts of their own movement because of their dark skin (the very fundamentalist Shas movement is the result of this discrimination within the religious community, but that's another story).Of course the religious/settlement people will hate this movie. The people responsible for sending it out of the country will probably be called traitors (and I wouldn't be surprised if there are death threats) for showing the warty side of the settlers among themselves, never mind towards the Palestinians.Gaon is sure a hoot in his role -- by the way, in real life he is rather center left.
