Not only some deservedly big international actors but also some local favorites from Israel do their best with a script that can scarcely scrape together a brief, weak thread of interest. The movie is based on a book by Yoram Kaniuk, who was also the author of HIMMO, KING OF JERUSALEM. Both stories are about hospitalized men. Evidently Kaniuk identifies with a fantasy protagonist who, by way of great suffering, achieves a martyrdom that returns him to a state of babyhood where he has no responsibilities but is the center of attention and is doted on by a beautiful lady in white. Not a healthy fantasy, but it's not the basic problem of the movie. The basic problem is that the incidents are insistently arbitrary. The hero is at first dependent on a Nazi whose whims are arbitrary. Then he becomes insane, so that his own behavior is arbitrary. Then he's put in a hospital where the rules, as far as the audience can tell, are arbitrary-- restrictive one moment, permissive the next. Unlike the patients in HIMMO, the surrounding patients here are ciphers; they are astoundingly well disciplined, always keeping quiet so that Adam can express himself at will. They restrict their personalities to a single quirk apiece and none of them presents any conflict that could drive a story-- except the boy who behaves like a dog. He presents an opportunity for Adam to redeem himself by helping someone who is in a way his mirror image, and thank goodness for this one escape from the arbitrary succession of dramatic but directionless incidents. Unfortunately it occupies only a little of the movie and is far too sketchy. A dream cast, a fine composer, good visuals-- all wasted.
Review of Adam Resurrected
