Mountain (2015) User Reviews

Compelling insight into loneliness, Jerusalem and a woman in crisis

[Blue-Grotto · 7/10 · 19 March 2016]

"For out of the scent of nothingness, the tree blossoms, glorious, beautiful, and in its crown, an enchanted bird." – Zelda

Tzvia lives at the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem's Old City and at the center of an Orthodox family of six. Contrary to what one might think, each is a lonely place. Her home is well within a sprawling Jewish cemetery and a maze of ancient graves, and her husband, Reuven, is indifferent as the stone. He treats Tzvia more like a servant than spouse. Reuven leaves her questions and concerns in rigid silence. Walks through the cemetery, encounters with strangers and Zelda's poetry bring comfort to Tzvia in her loneliness. As Reuven's intransigence grows, Tzvia begins to walk among the graves at night. The distant bells, poems, calls to prayer, silence of night, intriguing conversations and voyeur-like existence become as much a part of her as anything else. She struggles to reconcile this with the rest of her life.

Mountain is the first film of Yaelle Kayam. This is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing in that Kayam takes a path beholden to no one, and a curse in that she is seeking her footing and it is a little shaky. One of the things I like most about this film is that its characters are not one-dimensional. Many films, especially those that portray ultra-religious personalities, fall into this trap. Kayam's characters are not so black and white, and that is refreshing and truer to life. While it is a slow-moving film that could use more depth in a variety of places, it provides compelling insight into loneliness, the Mount of Olives cemetery, the Orthodox Jewish culture and – most poignantly – a woman in crisis. Seen at the 2016 Miami International Film Festival.

Descent Into Horror?

[larrys3 · 6/10 · 5 July 2017]

This is a slow paced adult Israeli drama, set on the Mount of Olives in the Old City of Jerusalem, and being the oldest active Jewish cemetery in the world. Separated by just a fence outside the cemetery, lives Tzvia, powerfully portrayed by Shani Klein, who's a Jewish Orthodox woman, wife of Reuven (Avshalom Pollak), and mother of 4 children.

Tzvia's marriage to Reuven, a Yeshiva teacher, is under increasing strain and suffering from a clear lack of communication. As her unhappiness mounts, Tziva seeks diversions such as smoking, sitting among the tombstones reading poetry, conversing with a graveside visitor, or even engaging in "forbidden" conversations with Abed (Hitham Omari) an Arab cemetery worker.

One night, she notices a couple having sex in the cemetery and will soon come to realize that prostitutes, pimps, and addicts are using the area for their illicit activities. Tzvia bizarrely becomes more and more drawn to this group, and after initially being chased away settles into a strange co-existence with them, with their tolerance of her quietly sitting and observing if she brings them her home cooked meals.

However, as Tzvia's depression mounts I was very shocked to see a sudden stunning action on her part that made me sit up and ask myself if she really is doing what I think she's doing? Without writing spoilers, let's just say the possible horrific finale is not directly shown but all signs point to its devastating conclusion.

Overall, Israeli filmmaker Yaelle Kayam, makes her writing and directorial feature debut here and I would say it shows lots of promise. I will be most interested in what Kayam brings to the screen in the future.

Neglected Orthodox Jewish wife driven to murder

[maurice_yacowar · 10/10 · 4 January 2016]

In Yaelle Kayam's first shot an orthodox Jewish woman Zvia wends up through the flat tombstones of the Jewish cemetery on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives. In her last the woman walks down towards her house, on the edge of the cemetery, but disappears among the stones. We've seen her prepare two pots of stew. One she laced with rat poison, the other not.

Which did she kill, her family or the prostitutes, pimps and druggies she has furtively watched, then started to feed? We are not told which. That means we're not supposed to know. Which she killed is irrelevant. We see that she has been pushed to the point where she felt she had no other option but to make a dramatic action.

A case could be made either way. She could have killed her family because of her frustration at her unloving and insensitive husband's neglect and the burden he imposed on her, to raise their four children with him more a hindrance than a help. She could have killed the outsiders to rid herself of their fascination and to protect herself from the one who followed her home. Either way, she has been pushed to desperation.

Her meeting with a happy orthodox mother suggests Zvia's religion is not the problem. The problem is Reuven's rejection. He ignores her request he return the jam because it's fattening. He supports the older daughter's rebellion against her. He stays away late without warning. He assumes extra duties rot stay away more. He rejects her affection and overtures. But an arranged marriage doesn't have to be loveless, she knows, so she lies and tells Reuven that the Arab gravedigger told her he has a happy loving marriage with seven children.

Zvia makes small rebellions. She smokes. She has short friendly chats with the Arab gravedigger. With her back to us she eats, furtively. With no clear motive in mind she spies on the cemetery intruders, then talks to a prostitute, then brings them meals and stays to watch them eat and have sex. Her final rebellion is the mortal one, a more dramatic action than those small ones. She acts in despair.

The setting is crucial. The Mount of Olives is where the Messiah will rise and raise the dead. Here instead of resurrection and a saviour we get the hopeless woman and her group murder. In the distance we can see the holiest mountain of the two faiths, the Jews' Temple Mount and the Arabs' Al Aqsa. One mountain, two natures and value systems and histories. But the title's meaning is a third mountain still: the marital relationship that a couple must climb together for the marriage and family to survive.

Instead the cemetery movement is usually horizontal here. As the first irritated couple finds, the cemetery is like a maze in which a mouse can get lost and fall prey. Zvia can navigate the cemetery maze and advise others, but in her flat, obscure marriage she finds no other way out but this violent one.

Reuven is completely immersed in his religion, his work at the yeshiva, and his family's religious rites. He has one secular moment, when he whistles a favourite tune that he heard earlier in the day. It's the theme of the Sergio Leone Western, The Good The Bad and The Ugly. It's an odd thing for an Orthodox Jew to adopt. It shows he too has a secular interest that he perforce suppresses. More broadly, the theme from an operatic revenge drama sets us up for Zvia's climax.

Zvia's parallel artistic allusion is the poetry she reads at the poet's graveside.The poem she breaks down over expresses a neglected woman's grief and the comfort offered by Death. Like Reuven's tune, this secular poem suggests being steeped in the Talmud is not enough. We need the solace of this life too. Whichever group she has killed, she has effectively ended her own life too.

bitter poem

[Kirpianuscus · 27 January 2018]

The life in its gray essence. a family, the mother, solitude and refuges. and the poetry of small things defining us. it is more than a beautiful film. it reminds states, impressions, memories. in the most delicate and precise way. it is a film about poetry. poem itself. not only for eulogy to Zelda, not only for the sound of a Jewish poem in Koreean, but for an inspired form of minimalism. not new. but real useful. for define realities out of definitions. the sadness could be the fundamental taste. or crumbs from Fellini, Pasolini . or the images of Jerusalem. or the stones, tombs, nights, dialogues. it is the film of the silence after its end. and this does it real seductive.

Well done but...

[kathiklein · 3/10 · 19 October 2019]

Well acted, good production values, and a great portrait of loneliness and rejection in a marriage... until the ending, or lack there of. I rarely like a film without a thoughtful ending, happy or sad.. and this film is no exception. A woman is driven to murder, to cook up some poison stew, and then not know if she feeds it to her hubby and four kids, or the group of guys and gals having sex in the cemetery where she lives, makes the previous two hours of watching a Painful exercise for me... Come on writer, pick an ending and show it. I don't agree with a previous review saying it "doesn't matter" who she poisoned because her life is over either way. True, she did do herself in, but who she chose to take down with her, does matter. And the story separates great writing from a writer who got stuck in their own story and left viewers dangling too. For this I only gave 3 stars for what I think could have been a great movie if it had an ending,

More than anything else, lovely to look at

[Nozz · 8/10 · 5 April 2020]

The story here is kind of slight, and worst of all it's possible-- particularly on the small screen and in the absence of an explanatory subtitle-- to miss an important incident in the final minutes. But it's a wonderful movie to watch for the play of geometry and for the colors (although at least in the print I saw, several times it seemed as if a strong light off screen was turning on or off). One reviewer mentions the movie's "frankness about its protagonist's un-Hollywood body" as if many people would see it as a minus, but the light and shadow on the musculature of her naked back in one scene make for a marvelous dynamic element in the frame's strongly vertical composition.

If the movie had any kind of commercial release in Israel at all, I guess it didn't last more than a week or two. I saw "The Mountain" in a special web-based showing sponsored by a cinematheque that was closed on account of the coronavirus. The lead actress, Shani Klein, is very well liked in Israel and for me she certainly helped to carry the picture, but it's certainly not a natural crowd-pleaser in terms of laughs or thrills or suspense.