MKJF Summer Film Series

Beaufort

It is the year 2000, Israeli forces are preparing to withdraw from Lebanon after 18 years of occupation, and in the final days, a handful of Israeli soldiers await evacuation from the southern Lebanese crusader fort, called Beaufort, where they've been stationed. And wait. And wait, like characters out of a Samuel Beckett play. Adapting his spare, intense, award-winning film from the novel by Israeli TV programmer Ron Leshem, Joseph Cedar has created a movie of tremendous power — nerve-racking, astute, and neutral enough to apply to all soldiers, in all wars, everywhere.

Sunday June 28th, 3:00 PM
Louise Murdock Theater

Set in a Jewish section of Mexico City, the movie participates in the disastrous mourning of a pleasure-loving paterfamilias (Sergio Kleiner) who has keeled over at a party after one too many horahs. While multiple plotlines and myriad dysfunctions jostle for our attention — the obligatory shiksa mistress being only the least of them — a pair of wizened Jewish angels tally the deceased’s moral ledger with the creativity of an Enron accountant.

The director, Alejandro Springall, has a flair for the surreal and a cast that knows its way around a stereotype. To the incorrigible Mr. Springall — who likes his jokes broad and his broads impudent — religion is best viewed as an all-purpose super glue for families severed by human weakness. Repurposing clichés as springboards to deeper issues (what price orthodoxy when it’s been embraced as an escape from justice?), he reminds us that ritual can ease reconciliation, and that sometimes even meat and dairy can get along.

Sunday July 19th, 3:00 pm
Louise Murdock Theater