Parents are naturally
inclined to protect their children from harm, whether in the form of germs,
electric shock, choking, bullies, or even something as esoteric as corrupting
ideas. This impulse reaches its extreme in orthodox religious communities,
where kids are shielded as much as possible from anything that might test their
faith. In one key scene in David Volach's debut film, My Father My Lord, a Jerusalem-dwelling
Haredic rabbi orders his young son to tear up a picture of an African tribal
ceremony because it represents "idolatry." He isn't worried that his son is
worshipping the picture; he just doesn't want the boy to romanticize what other
people believe.
Volach grew up Haredic
before breaking away in his 20s, so My Father My Lord is filled with details
about what it's like to be a doubter among the devout. Some of those details
are mundane, like the way the boy (played with a rounded sweetness by Ilan
Griff) gets distracted by light fixtures and chirping birds during lessons.
Some are more profound, like the way a discussion with his father (played by
Assi Dayan) about whether animals have souls gets converted into a lecture the
rabbi gives his students. My Father My Lord is short, quiet, and shot
in a style that favors closeness and intimacy, yet Volach is able to convey in
small strokes how a few rooms and buildings can become a child's whole
universe.
My Father My Lord stumbles a bit when
Volach attempts to go broad, encompassing matters of life and death—along
with a heavy-handed Abraham-and-Isaac metaphor—though even when Volach is
twisting the plot, he keeps shifting between God's-eye views of his characters
and close-up studies of their worried faces, holding the focus on people more
than what their plight might represent. The question Volach seems to be asking
is whether blind faith is enough to make up a life, and it's a question that
resonates most when it plays out in the contrast between a society where God is
at the center of everything, and the face of one little boy who can't stop
thinking about his family's next trip to the beach.