Review - Aufbau, Berlin/New York

Finding Yourself in Paradise

"Communicating through abuse is a way of showing affection," comments the British filmmaker Charles Harris on the dialogue in his new ensemble film "Paradise Grove," a witty exploration of the complex personal identity issues confronting a residential home employee in northwest London who is Jewish and black.

Unlike the United States, Great Britain’s film industry has not produced a running list of films with Jewish themes. In fact, the number of English films, including "Paradise Grove," centered on British-Jewry currently adds up to a stunning four. John Schlessinger of "Midnight Cowboy" fame directed "Sunday Bloody Sunday," which detailed the life of a gay, Jewish physician in London. The remaining two films are the "kitchen sink-drama" called "A Kid for Two Farthings" and the 1992 romance "Leon the Pig Farmer." There are, of course, the two prominent contemporary Oscar-nominated Anglo-Jewish directors, Mike Leigh and Nicholas Hytner, but their films do not focus on English Jews.

Harris, who wrote, directed and co-produced "Paradise Grove," says he is puzzled by the paucity of films that deal with the Jews of Great Britain, given that there are 250,000 British Jews.

As the first film in a decade to take British Jewry as its theme, Harris’s film attempts to make up for this gap. Set in a Jewish old age home, Harris’s story is about characters that come-of-age as they try to understand what it means to be Jewish in today’s multi-cultural English society.

And not everyone coming of age in the film is chronologically young. There is Izzie Goldberg (played by Ron Moody), an 80-year-old resident of the home who has a grandson, named Keith, who is half-black. Keith (played by Leyland O’Brien), who is 19, also happens to be Izzie’s nurse. Izzie’s daughter, Dee (played by Rula Lenska), is the third main character. She directs the home–called "Paradise Grove"–in which Izzie lives and she has, for some time now, been divorced from Keith’s father. Izzie cannot come to terms with the fact that his grandson is of mixed race and mixed religion–half-black, half-white, half-Jew, half-non-Jew–so he terrorizes Keith, by harassing him verbally, as he does fellow residents of the home.

Izzie is brilliantly played by Ron Moody, who was nominated for an Oscar for his role as Fagin in the 1968 film classic "Oliver Twist." Moody steals the show as a latter-day Ernest Hemingway who refuses to accept the deterioration of his body.

Both, Keith and Izzie, are grappling with their identities in different ways. Keith turns to his Jewish roots, by learning Hebrew from language tapes and by getting circumcised by his mother’s lover, the local Dr. Norman (played by John Cunnigham). Whereas, on one hand, Izzie is unable to accept that his grandson is both black and Jewish, on the other hand, because he has always tried to camouflage his own Jewishness, Izzie cannot fathom Keith’s desire to openly identify as a Jew.

Keith, for his part, is not making his choices based on a desire to get his grandfather’s recognition. But when Izzie’s health worsens, Keith’s care for him allows a much more mature and accepting relationship to develop between the two.

The film is not plot-driven. Instead, it takes its impetus from the dialogue and the lively use of language. A wonderful exchange takes place between Dee and Dr. Norman. Norman tells Dee that he is prepared to leave his wife, because he is so incurably in love with Dee. "I don’t need another failed marriage with a solid professional with prospects," says Dee. Norman’s wry reply: "I can change."

The strength of "Paradise Grove" is not limited to great humor and explorations of identity. It is also a hard-hitting film that examines missed opportunities, Jewish racism, mixed marriages and the fight against death. Harris has packed a lot into this 93-minute film, which he wrote during a three-month period in 1998. "Films are not about giving answers but raising questions," comments Harris and adds, " I want to leave spaces for the audience to occupy and discover." He does.

By Benjamin Weinthal and Sophie Therese-Krempl

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