Eytan Fox | ללכת על המים (Lalekhet Al HaMayim) (Walk on Water) / 2004

the miracle

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gal Uchovsky (screenplay), Eytan Fox (director) ללכת על המים (Lalekhet Al HaMayim) (Walk on Water) / 2004

 

This movie begins innocently enough, with a man, Eyal (Lior Asshkenazi) on a tourist ferry in Turkey, camera in hand. He photographs seemingly a random, but catches a couple with their child, facing away from him, the young boy turning to witness the photo. Eyal waves briefly at the boy, but his father immediately forces him to turn away from the man, even for a second time after Eyal has put the camera away, insisting the boy not make contact with the stranger.

     Eyal gets up and moves off, entering a small water closet. There he takes out a needle and two small bottles, nestled neatly in a plastic case. He fills the needle with the liquid in one of the vials. They arrive at the port, the young child hurrying ahead with a large red balloon. He runs back to his parents and they turn in to talk with him, the father bending over a bit to better communicate with his son. At that moment Eyal walks by the couple, injecting the man with whatever the needle contained, the man quickly falling dead to the concrete, his wife screaming for help, the boy looking on as a single tear makes its way down his cheek, clearly realizing that his father has been killed or at least hurt.

      This does not seem the typical beginning for an Eytan Fox film, his movies having always dealt with oppositions and “the other,” but never quite seeming so centered upon what we quickly realize is a Mossad agent, a hitman targeting Israel’s presumed enemies. Eyal, returning quickly home, hurries off into a special airport lounge where he is toasted and celebrated by other Mossad leaders, finally arriving back to his own apartment, only to discover his wife dead, having drugged herself in their bed.

      The head leader of his group, Menachem (Gideon Shemer) almost immediately determines that he cannot put Eyal on further difficult assignments after having just experience such a traumatic events, demanding instead that Eyal help track down an aging Nazi war criminal who may have been responsible for the deaths of both his and Eyal’s relatives.

       This time, however, the case does not begin in Germany, where Menachem believes the war criminal may still be alive despite no one having seen Nazi in decades, but strangely in Israel itself, where Axel Himmelman (Knut Berger) has just arrived to visit his sister Pia (Caroline Peters) who lives on an Israeli kibbutz, the two adult grandchildren of the Nazi criminal. Eyal is asked to pose as a tour guide, befriending the two in order to gain access to their own knowledge and possible entry into Axel’s German home, where he lives with his parents, whom Mossad believes may be still harboring the old man.

      Actually, Axel has come to visit his sister to convince her to return for father’s 70th birthday celebration. But she quickly squelches any plans he may have had to convince her to return, explaining that even her Israeli boyfriend, discovering the truth of her background, could no longer remain with her. “It ruined everything. First he said it wasn’t a problem, not my fault, but he came back and he told me that he didn’t hate Germans, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t handle it.”

     Through a recording device, Eyal and his superiors quickly learn the truth of the situation, yet Eyal is requested to continue playing their tour guide, to gain the friendship, if nothing else, of Axel.

       So begins an endless tale of age-long hatreds that reverberated quite astoundingly with the Hamas-Israeli war expanding in the very days in which I saw and wrote about this prescient movie.

       Eyal quickly develops a liking for the handsome young German and his sister, despite Axel’s immediate request to visit a Palestinian village. The request flummoxes Eyal asking why he wants to go there. On their driving trip Eyal discovers his younger friend likes only female singers. Asking how many children he has, Eyal is told that Axel has no children but that when he spoke of “my children,” he meant the immigrant children he teaches. And Axel’s question, after a report of another bombing raid, whether he has imagined how desperate the Palestinians must be to go out and kill themselves, along with the German’s basically liberal values, and his general kindness to “others” clearly disturbs Eyal. “They’re enemies,” he explains to Axel. “There’s nothing to think about.” Soon after he calls into headquarters complaining about being stuck with a pseudo liberal who talks about suicide bombers’ motives. “I almost punched him.” In short, he argues, he doesn’t need to be hosting a German peacenik for the Ministry Department.

     Still on the job, however, he gradually grows to like both Axel and his sister, he and Axel experiencing a kind of macho brotherly bonding on an outing to the Sea of Galilee, where Christ walked on the water—hence the film’s title. There the two take a facial mud bath, Eyal rubs the

naked Axel with sun-lotion, the two discuss male circumcision practices throughout the world of which Axel seems particularly knowledgeable, and they even huddle together to keep warm by the fire, a trick Eyal claims he learned through his service in the military. They develop a sort of bromance, in short, that is almost surprising given, as Eyal admits, that he suffers from a problem of the tear ducts and that he cannot even cry.

 

     All of this, of course, radically changes when he discovers himself on another evening with Pia and Axel in a gay bar and realizes that Axel is dancing with a Palestinian waiter, (Yousef Sweid), with whom he soon leaves to have sex. And Eyal’s homophobia quickly kicks in even if, with Pia in hand, he can’t quite permit himself to express his full outrage.

      The next morning, Eyal discovers his charge has just bought a jacket from his friends at what he apparently believes is an outrageous price. Eyal grows violent, demanding Axel’s money back, and paying only a small fragment of the original price. Obviously, the scene does not go over well for Axel, but endangers Rafik’s own life for having been involved with Axel and being embarrassedly forced to refund most of the money. As they leave, Rafik asks to speak only one sentence to Eyal: “You Jews are so obsessed with what was done to you in the past. Maybe, if you just let go….” Eyal refuses to hear any more drives off.

      Before he leaves for Germany, Pia explains to her brother why she cannot return home, telling him for the first time the truth: that their parents were hiding their Nazi grandfather, the reason she left and moved to Israel. Pia does not know if he is still alive, but she cannot forgive her parents, and they were afraid that she might turn them in.

      With the significant break between Axel and Eyal it is all the more surprising when Eyal turns up in Berlin, reminding Eyal that he had after all invited him. And before long Eyal is eating a “curry wurst” and sharing a CD he has brought Axel of Israeli folk dances, the Mossad hitman even attempting to ask his forgiveness for…he can’t finish the sentence but it clearly includes his homophobic reactions and his violent encounter with Arab coat seller.

       If the first part of this film was fairly believable, if a little too predictable with regard to nearly all of the characters’ types, this portion of film turns almost into a fantasia, as Axel quickly invites Eyal to a gay bar where they have a discussion to being gay tops or bottoms (Axel admits he likes both), and even move toward a conversation about anal intercourse which Axel cuts off, realizing that perhaps it’s too much for Eyal for the first receiving such information. Rafik, Axel reports, is much better after sending him another 100 euro for his Uncle for the stupid jacket.

     Axel even introduces his Israeli friend to four transvestites to whom he runs into by accident in the underground.

       The girls flirt with the newcomer as the Eyal and Axel walk off in the other direction, only to hear a few moments the transvestites’ cries for help as they are being beaten by German punks hanging out nearby. Eyal runs to protect them, for a few moments turning the film almost into a action hero film, as he demonstrates his judo talents. But one hood grabs Eyal around the next, Axel coming to pull him off, eventually the Israeli freeing himself, only to be attacked beyond by

another in a broken liquor bottle, Axel warning him of the imminent hit, at which point Eyal pulls out a gun and threatens them in German: “Fuck off, asshole or I’ll blow your brains out.” The go on the run.

      Now it is Axel’s moment for justifiable hate, expressing his emotions to Eyal soon after “Too bad you didn’t kill him. Those people pollute the world. They turn everything into shit.” Eyal explains that his parents were born in Berlin, although they refused to speak it in his presence, only when they thought he wasn’t listening.

      Obviously, the two have now bonded in an entirely different way. How could Axel not invite his Israeli friend home and to attend his father’s birthday celebration?

      They drive to family villa, where in his own territory Axel now takes advantage of his own family, much the way the secret Mossad hitman did of the brother and sister in Israel. And now the tables are turned even further against Eyal as in a local café on their way to the villa, he sees Menachem nearby, who greets him with a smile. Obviously Eyal himself is now being followed to see that he keeps his promise to track down Axel’s grandfather.

       With all the guests present for the party, Axel, as a birthday gift, determines to teach them all a special dance, putting on one of the Israel folk dances and shows them how to dance, unknowingly, to a Jewish song. The performance is a brilliant put-down of their own ancient prejudices.

       But soon after the cake is rolled in followed by the grandfather pushing a wheel chair, both Axel and Eyal standing in horror as the rest of the family benignly smiles in joy of his final presence of family life.

       Playing partially dumb, Axel confronts his mother demanding to know if that’s why she has sent him to Pia in Israel, to bring her back to once more confront her family. His mother makes the excuse that she feared her father might never even reach this day, that they lived their lives too long as if they have been criminals with their phones being bugged—unable apparently to recognize that she and her husband are criminals, conspiring to hide a man who has killed so very many individuals simply because of their religion.

       Axel declares that had he known, he would not have come. “Too bad the old man didn’t make a political speech,” he sarcastically responds. Even she bitterly wonders if his friend isn’t from Mossad, Axel countering that if he wasn’t he might certainly want to join now.

       But actually, the opposite is suddenly occurring in this inverted fantasy world. Eyal no longer desires to kill. Like the hitman in Richard Shepard’s US film The Matador of the very next year, he can no longer face the idea of ending another life and is seeking for a way out, and he has immediately taken off in Axel’s car to return to Berlin to explain the situation to Menachem.

       Seeking out Eyal, Axel, after several unsuccessful knocks, enters his friend’s room where he finds hidden under the bed his overnight case in which he discovers a portfolio about his grandfather with pictures of him in his Nazi uniform and even pictures of his sister and himself.

      Eyal, meanwhile, has arrived back at the hotel where he checked in and where he now knows Menachem himself awaits in room 223. Eyal argues, “He’s very old, but we can get him out.” Menachem hands him instead a case of poisons much like the ones Eyal used on the Arab in the first scene. He is shocked, insisting “Let’s get him out and bring him to trial in Israel.”

       What Eyal does not know is that there is no car, no pick-up, just the two of them there to mete out revenge. “You have to finish this out yourself. Only you. Terminate him! …Do the right thing …for me, for your mother.”

       Eyal, as we the audience now suddenly realize that hate is so perverse that even killing a man, whether or not he himself as been a killer, is described as being “right,” as something appropriate and justified. A fair trial for a man of this age is out of the question.

      Axel hears Eyal’s return, watching him as he renters the villa, and following behind him—this time he playing the role of spy—watching him as he enters into his grandfather’s bedroom and takes out the needle, filling it with the poison. The old man coughs. Eyal turns and walks out the room, finally noticing Axel’s presence.

        Axel moves further into the room, sits down on his grandfather’s bed, briefly strokes his forehead, and reaches over and turns off the air to the old’s breathing apparatus.

        He leaves the room and enters Eyal’s bedroom, sitting down beside him. Eyal explains what he has refused to several times in the movie, what became of his wife. “There’s my wife. She didn’t just leave, you see. She killed herself. She left me a note. She wrote that I kill everything that comes near me. I can’t kill anymore. I don’t want to kill anymore. His head falls to Axel’s chest as he breaks into tears.

 

    This now having become a full fantasy, the very last scene is almost completely unbelievable, a miracle story itself, as we hear the cry of a baby, Eyal sleepily walking into the child’s room and picking him up to quiet him. We see Pia asleep in bed, as Eyal writes an email to Axel, asking him and his boyfriend to come and care for the baby for a few days so that he and Pia can get away. He tells of a dream where they were back at the Sea of Galilee, and Axel really was walking on water where he soon joined him. “And everything is so peaceful. And we feel good.”

     In Fox’s work, the gay man, for a change, actually serves as the redeemer.

 

Los Angeles, December 18, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2023).