User Reviews

I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. Brutal and stirring at the same time. The plot could've taken so many turns at various points: the poster of Stephan on Dvir's wall begging to ripped down by the fief / *metapelet*; Dvir being disqualified from the kite competition on the grounds that he got assistance from "outside quarters"; Dvir's blackmailing the mean-spirited member who harasses him. All would've been heartbreaking, but Shaul proves to show us that no matter what the specifics, the system was rotten and constituted Miri's downfall.

I am a kibbutz member and have lived on two other kibbutzim, so the reviewer was right who wrote that each plot item could have and probably did happen on one or more kibbutzim, yet probably not all happened on any single kibbutz. No matter: It was a twisted system, no doubt about it, and Shaul is certainly qualified to show it to us if anyone is. Good work, Dror and cast.

Tainted look at kibbutz life

This film is less a cultural story about a boy's life in a kibbutz, but the deliberate demonization of kibbutz life in general. In the first two minutes of the movie, the milk man in charge of the cows rapes one of his calves. And it's all downhill from there in terms of the characters representing typical "kibbutznikim." Besides the two main characters, a clinically depressed woman and her young son, every one else in the kibbutz is a gross caricature of well…evil.

The story centers on how the kibbutz, like some sort of cult, slowly drags the mother and son deeper into despair and what inevitably follows. There is no happiness, no joy, no laughter in this kibbutz. Every character/situation represents a different horrific human vice like misogyny, hypocrisy, violence, cultism, repression etc. For example, while the protagonist is a strikingly handsome European looking 12 year old boy – his older brother is a typical kibbutz youth complete with his "jewish" physical appearance and brutish personality. He cares more about screwing foreign volunteers than the health of his dying mother. He treats these volunteers like trash. After his little brother pleads of him to visit his dying mother whom he hasn't seen in a long time due to his military service, he orders, Quote – "Linda, go take shower and I cum in two minutes."

There is one other "good" character in this movie – a European foreigner who plays the mother's boyfriend. When the animal rapist tries to hit the mother's son, the boyfriend defends him by breaking the rapist's arm. He is summarily kicked out of the kibbutz then for "violent" behavior against one of the kibbutz members. More hypocrisy: The indescribably annoying French woman who plays the school teacher preaches that sex cannot happen before age 18, or without love and gives an account of the actual act that's supposed to be humorous for the audience, but is really just stupid. She of course is screwing the head of the kibbutz in the fields who then in turn screws the little boy's mom when her mental health takes a turn for the worse.

The film portrays the kibbutz like some sort of cult. Children get yanked out of their beds in the middle of the night and taken to some ritual where they swear allegiance in the fields overseen by the kibbutz elders. The mother apparently can't "escape" the kibbutz, although in reality, anyone was/is always free to come and go as they choose. It's a mystery how the boy's father died, but you can rest assured, the kibbutz "drove him to it" and his surviving parents are another pair of heartless, wretched characters that weigh down on the mother and her son.

That's the gist of this movie. One dimensional characters, over dramatization, dry performances, and an insidious message that keeps trying to hammer itself into the audience's head – that kibbutz life was degrading, miserable and even deadly for those who didn't "fit in." I feel sorry for the guy who made this film – obviously he had a bad experience growing up in a kibbutz. But I feel as though he took a few kernels of truth regarding kibbutz life and turned them into huge atomic stereotyped bombs.

There aren't many pieces of art regarding life and suffering in kibbutzim. So any one that comes to describe one specific case of a kibbutz character, for good or for bad, can be charged as having the responsibility to support the kibbutz model as a whole – which is absurd. Any story that would describe in detail the perverse functioning of one specific family shouldn't be said to be undermining the fundamentals of traditional family model. Adama Meshuga'at makes a very sensitive clinic of the very possible perverse human attitudes which happen to occur within any common society but which may get a very own representation in a utopic socialist kibbutz, as a very much closed human group within itself, regarding it's very own history, geography, economy and culture – including the country of origin of its members, as we see in this particular movie with many Kibbutz members with French accent, possibly just by chance here. As there is a bunch of very much perverse families, anywhere in the world, there would have been most certainly a bunch of very specific kibbutzim where this perversity could have been very systematized, undermining very much its quality of life, determining illness and suffering. Some kibbutzim ended because almost none of their "children" would want to stay in there and only very old members who collectively owned everything and decided over everything, but couldn't work properly any more, were about to stay alone in there, unable to generate enough income to support themselves. If this movie had come about at the '70s, perhaps kibbutz life alternative would still endure, and we wouldn't have as now the baby thrown out with the bath's water - everything wonderful about life in a kibbutz ended because of unsolved systematic problems in its very own human system.

Have just seen the European Premier of this film at the Berlin Film Festival where it deservedly won 1st prize in the 'Generation14k Plus' Section.

The story is set in a Kibbutz in Israel where 12 year old Dvir (Tomer Steinhof in his debut movie) faces many trials as he is entering his bar mitzvah year. The most difficult one is coping with his mother Miri whom he loves above all else. She lives in a very fragile mental state and Dvir knows he must protect her from herself. A romance with a newly arrived Swiss visitor briefly raises her spirits, but the romance is doomed to failure and Dvir must make the most difficult decision of his young life.

The photography is stunning and the young actor who plays the lead gives an astonishing performance as the boy who loves his disturbed mother so deeply. The ending is truly heartbreaking yet strangely uplifting. I urge you to see this wonderful film if it comes to your part of the world, and hope that a DVD release is not too far distant.