Ha-Mashgihim
Director: Meny Yaesh
Writer: Meny Yaesh
Cast: Roy Assaf, Rotem Zussman, Gal Friedman, Itzik Golan, Gili Shushan
Part of: Vienna Jewish Film Festival

Plot:
Avi (Roy Assaf) lives in the Israeli city of Bat Yam. He spends his time working at his father’s shop, making music and hanging out with his friends (Gal Friedman, Itzik Golan). But every once in a while something happens in his neighborhood that Avi, as an Orthodox Jew, can not allow. And then he and his friends don’t have a problem with taking a baseball bat to achieve their ends. One day, the meet Miri (Rotem Zussman) and promptly reprimand her for not being clothed decently enough. But Avi can’t forget Miri and keeps on searching her out.

God’s Neighbors starts of strong and atmospheric, but the ending did sour it for me a bit. The cast was really great, though and it was an interesting look into a world I know practically nothing about.

[SPOILERS]

Here’s my problem with the ending: After falling in love with Miri, who just isn’t as devout as Avi, Avi asks god for a sign what he should do. Then Miri opens up a psalm book at random and lands on Psalm 45:13, “The king’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of worked gold.” He takes that as a sign that Miri is approved by god and that they should continue dating. [So far, no problem for me.] A little while later though, Avi is again on his way to beat some Arabs up and he opens the psalms to 144:1, “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle.”

There are two ways to interpret this. The more atheistic approach would be that it’s insane to base your decisions on randomly opened books, which finally leads you to excusing violence. But this is not an atheistic movie. And if you take the religious view it just means that sometimes god wants you to beat up people. And that is not okay in my opinion. Not at all. In fact, I was pretty disgusted by that.

And that is even disappointing because the rest of the movie is actually pretty good. It shows Avi’s being torn between religion and violence, struggling with liking Miri despite his better judgment. And his crisis of faith on the beach was actually heartbreaking (all the props to Roy Assaf). But just as he mellows out due to Miri’s influence and seems to find his place in a little less extremist corner, there’s that psalm (144:1) of doom.

I also didn’t like how quickly Miri folded and gave in to Avi and his way of life. It would have been nice if he adapted a little more to her, too.

What I did like was the dynamic between Avi and his friends. You really got why the three of them were friends. And Meny Yaesh creates a strong and very realistic atmosphere.

Summarising: could have profited from a little more moderation.