Va, vis et deviens

The movie Va, vis et deviens follows the story of an Ethiopian boy airlifted to Israel as part of Operation Moses, an operation in which the Israeli secret service Mossad transported thousands of Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) to the Jewish homeland.  The film attempts a truly epic scope, depicting the life of the boy as he grows into manhood, at the same time capturing the struggle of  a people to survive and integrate into a foreign, untrusting, and ultimately xenophobic society.

It is this sweeping arc of the epic that presents problems to the viewer.  Its sweeping time scale require three different actors to represent the main character, Schlomo, as a child, teenager and adult, with varying degrees of success.  At times, the dialogue and contrived scenes make the viewer all too acutely aware that this is a movie.  While it is not overly preachy, the movie co-habitates uneasily with the confining nature of historical reality.

The plot revolves melodramatically around Schlomo and his mothers.  

It begins in a Sudanese refugee camp, where the boy and his biological mother, an Ethiopian Christian, have been displaced.  In the same camp, another mother weeps as her son dies.  This mother is Jewish.  An arrangement is made, though the boy is unaware until the moment of no-return.  A bus arrives, the Jews are being removed to a new life, a new hope.  The first mother orders her son to leave her, to go with this strange woman.  He must obey, keep his mouth shut, forget about her, forget about ever returning to his native land, a land without a future for him.

Unfortunately, the second mother, the proxy, dies soon after reaching Israel, though not before schooling the newly-named Schlomo on the names of his ancestors, his Jewish lineage. 

Next, he is adopted into a left-leaning, non-observant Israeli family.

The melodrama continues.  The elements are all present.  The new Jewish mother.  The racism of Israeli society.  The white girlfriend.  The racism.  The pining for a homeland, a history he must deny.  The wise Ethiopian elder.  Secret letters to a mother he can't acknowledge.  The ultimate trip back to past.

I suppose this film strives to make one think about what it means to be Jewish.  Or to be human, for that matter.  The film succeeds, more or less.