Were things really better in the old days? Or do we look back and see our past with rose-colored glasses? Those hazy memories — of the shtetl in Russia, of the farm fields in the Congo — may feel like simpler, happier times, especially compared to a lonely subway ride in Brooklyn or the split-level ranch house in the suburbs. But perhaps things weren’t quite as good as they seem now. That’s the premise of (Rock the) Belz, director Kaveh Nabatian’s look at the rose-colored past, with appearances by Jewish stage and film legend Theodore Bikel and hiphop artists Sans Pression and DJ Socalled (whose discography includes a hiphop Jewish wedding and Passover seder).
“Now the roof is leaky, there are no panes in the window and everything seems wrong,” intones Bikel between Yiddish lyrics. “But what is still there is the memory.”
Past and present intertwine in what could be described as part music video and part puppet show. All three main characters, and the supporting background characters as well, are marionettes.
I won’t get into the quality of the acting, since it’s hard to judge the performance of characters mobilized by strings, but the emotion coming out of these puppets is almost enough to bring tears to John Malkovich’s eyes. Almost. And the choreography, from the synchronized dance to the rippling amber waves of grain, is both amazingly creative and beautiful.
That said, this video is densely packed with symbolism and meaning, and not training all of your attention toward the screen from the get-go may take away from its meaning — all of which is packed into a mere four minutes. A very heavy, very complex four minutes. And yes, it’s hiphop, but it’s also klezmer, Afro-French, and very well produced. Don’t expect to find the Belz on MTV stuffed between the Justin Bieber and the Britney Spears.
Film Fest Preview: From the shtetl to the subway
