Intimate Grammar

[Chris Knipp]

On your recommendation I'll see this as I did Broken Wings, when I can, sorry I missed it at the recent Jewish Film Festival in the Bay Area. How did you get to see it, by the way? How would you rate this in relation to Broken Wings? It seems some think it less successful, if I'm not mistaken.

Looking online, I find the Variety review offers some further insights into the pluses and minuses of the film. The still also shows that the boy is rather goodlooking, despite his unfortunate smallness. Alissa Simon's review concludes thus:

As a director, Bergman excels at depicting the banal but telling details of the Kleinfelds' family life, as well as the complex internal world of a pensive youth, but it feels as if he had some difficulty in calibrating all the performances to match the story's serious tone. In particular, Zilbershatz's portrayal of the fearsome mother strikes an off-key note as she teeters on the edge of sitcom caricature, as does Gur's granny. However, newcomer Elsberg does a fine job as the bright boy who can master some of Houdini's tricks but is at a loss with the codes of adolescence.

Although necessarily telescoping events and characters, Bergman's layered script courageously remains faithful to its source, even down to the open ending. It also manages to find workable visual equivalents for the novel's metaphorical content.

Solid craft credits evoke the look and sounds of '60s Jerusalem, although the score too often drips with cheap sentiment.