Amos Guttman | חסד מופלא (Amazing Grace) / 1992

the blood of an artist

by Douglas Messerli

 

Amos Guttman (screenwriter and director) חסד מופלא (Amazing Grace) / 1992  

 

I believe Israeli director Amos Guttman to be one of the best of international directors, although not nearly as prolific as the master Rainer Werner Fassbinder, with he’s often compared. Fassbinder had the support of the 1970s and 80s new interest in German cinema and state grants behind him, while Israel, who had only decriminalized gay behavior in the 1980s was still, as a larger culture, embarrassed by his presentation of what was still perceived as flawed and abnormal behavior. And even if his raw early features such as Drifting and Bar 51 attracted the attention of some critics and the growing Israeli LGBTQ+ community, when he dared to move beyond his focus on the primarily hidden world of gay life to a film like Himmo, King of Jerusalem (1987), a piece about the 1947-1949 Palestine war that included gay sexuality, he was bitterly attacked by the press and others, as well as it resulting in commercial failure; he withdrew from filmmaking until an April 1991 public appeal by Amir Kaminer urging him to return: “Israeli film needs you.”

     By that time Guttman had contracted AIDS, and his last film, Amazing Grace, accordingly is not only about AIDS, in part, but concerns death in general. The film was released in 1992, and director died in February 1993.

     Kaminer, writing in his essay “The Sublime and the Absurd—A Journey through Amos Guttman's Oeuvre,” observes: “Death hangs over the film (‘I try and show different approaches to death in the film,’ Guttman explained. ‘I am trying to say that dying is awful. When it comes to death, we are all a bunch of scared little kids.’) Its presence is felt both in witty and amusing dialogue exchanges, and in the insights its characters have (‘flower or no flower, she’s also gonna die’; ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner, I’m not really very good with funerals, you see’; ‘What have we got left, huh? Just errands and death’; ‘My head’s a bit all over the place today. Every week, it’s someone else’s funeral.’)”

     A man at the gay bar reports that he has lost what might be an entire platoon of friends to AIDS; and a central character, Thomas’ grandmother (Hinna Rozovska), speaks constantly of how her daughter is attempting to kill her. She, in fact, does die before the end of the film.

    For all the horror and stalking of death, however, Amazing Grace displays just that, a kind a quietude, almost a peacefulness, despite the endless internal bickering of the two families it portrays. The storytelling has often been described as “languid.” And it stands, in part, as his most normative film, without any queer sex scenes which permeate his other works.

   Downstairs, the handsome young 18-year-old Jonathan (Gall Hoyberger) is breaking up with his long-time roommate, sometimes lover Miki (Avi Abni), who seems bi-sexual, and if nothing else, simply cannot provide Jonathan with the steady kind of relationship he desires. Jonathan is into weed, but his little sister (Karin Ophir), apparently a rather sexually experienced young girl, is into heavier drugs and the nightclub scene. Jonathan’s mother is worried for him and her daughter, and not terribly understanding about his homosexuality, but since she is almost constantly at work, is no threat to his or his sister’s activities, and offers not a great deal of support in their lives.

    The sexiest scene in the movie is when Jonathan leafs through a gay porn magazine and the handsomely photographed models come briefly to life.

      Upstairs is a bitter older woman (Rozovska) who, as I mention above seems to make it her end-life role to demean her hard-working seamstress daughter. Her son Thomas (Sharon Alexander) has just returned to Tel-Aviv from New York City where he has tried and failed to make it as a musician. Thomas is beautiful, but, we quickly realize, is dying of AIDS.

    Now with Miki gone, the cute boy downstairs gets a glimpse of the elder Thomas and falls desperately in love, the older man, at first, attempting to just use him—unsuccessfully it turns out—as a conduit to harder drugs, something to block out the pain and realization of what he’s going through. He has told no one, his mother, his beloved grandmother, or young Thomas about his illness and despite his immediate attraction to the boy, attempts to steer him away as a potential lover.

    Together, they do visit a 1990s-style Tel-Aviv gay bar. As Rquick notes in a review in UK Jewish Film: “Guttman explores the underrepresented queer world of Israel in Amazing Grace, most notably through a trip to an underground gay bar. There is a strange mix of sexual liberation and political tension as the men eye each other up and end up getting into fights. It is a far cry from the queer-filled Tel Aviv today where there is almost an overabundance of LGBTQIA+ clubs.”

      This bar seems to be filled with a washed-up musician with dreams of performing on Eurovision (a role played by journalist Kaminer), a flirtatious young boy who gets into a ruckus with his lover when he attempts to make a sexual appointment with Thomas, and a likeable bartender/owner (Dov Navon). Jonathan sits out these strange experiences with Thomas, in some wonderment and distress by the events he witnesses. But in the end Thomas nuzzles up to Jonathan in his own humorous astonishment, and they do end up sharing a bed, even if it suggested that they don’t have sex.

     Not a great deal more happens. Thomas’ mother makes a red dress for an older woman attempting to make herself beautiful for a man who later can’t even recognize her. Mother and daughter come together in their worries about Thomas, and the older woman soon after dies.

      Jonathan hangs about Thomas like a puppy dog, confused by the older man’s attentions without the true confirmation of sex.

      As Rquick explains in his review: “Thomas’ mother and grandmother do not know that he is dying from his disease, and he must hide his suffering to stop them worrying. At a time where being HIV-positive was essentially a death sentence with no known successful treatment, the shame and fear around the disease is palpable.”

      Finally, as he begins to feel weaker, coughs more, and is forced to take his pills more often, Thomas packs up his bag to return to New York, not wanting to have to share the care and horror of his impending death with his mother, or, for that matter, with the cute young boy next door.

    There is a powerful and lovely scene where, after returning from the grandmother’s grave, his mother makes a huge dinner for her son. Thomas slurps up some of the soup, as she asks him if something were to happen seriously bad to him, would he tell her? He stands and moves to the back of her chair, putting his arms about her. He assures her he would, but she and we both know that this will be the last time they will see one another.

      Jonathan shows up at the door, hoping once again to lure Thomas into his world, the elder man gently suggesting that he’ll be down soon. But that too is a gentle fib, since he soon leaves by taxi.

The beautiful Jonathan is left alone now to ponder all that has happened, how at his young age love has slipped through his fingers twice. Yet as the camera catches his worried look, we suddenly see an open smile creep over his face. Whatever he has suddenly perceived, we know he will be all right, and certainly will find the right person someday soon.

       "I’m in all the characters in the film. My blood runs through it," Guttman testified. No Israeli film before it, and some argue no Israeli film since has as fully confronted the issue of AIDS—although the subject of AIDS is brought up again in Eytan Fox’s 2020 film Sublet, featuring a US visitor who lost his companion to the disease and a younger Israeli unable to understand why it is even still an issue. But Guttman was that kind of director, a man who challenged the paternalistic, family-based patterns of Jewish-Israeli culture.

       Today, Israel actually has some of the most interesting of queer-focused directors.

 

Los Angeles, July 10, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).