New movie ‘Judas’ brings Amos Oz’s ideas to life

Although most of Amos Oz’s novels have stories that you would think would transfer well to cinema, many of the movie adaptations of his works have not played very well. So it’s refreshing that one of his more cerebral works has just been adapted into an impressive movie, Judas, by the acclaimed veteran director Dan Wolman, which is playing in theaters throughout Israel. 

Wolman adapted one of Oz’s first novels, My Michael, into a movie in 1974, and with Judas, Oz’s last, the director revisits Jerusalem of more than 50 years ago. Shmuel Ash (Yuval Livni), the young hero of Judas, might have crossed paths with Hannah, the narrator of My Michael, as they walked through Jerusalem’s shadowy streets, but neither would have picked up their heads and noticed the other. 

Shmuel, a heavyset young man with a full beard, comes to a gloomy old house to become a caretaker for an elderly man, Gershom Wald (Doron Tavory), in the winter of 1959. A graduate student from Haifa, Shmuel has left the university. The reason he gives Gershom is that his father’s business collapsed and his father can no longer pay his tuition. But Gershom, an intellectual whose mind keeps working as his body collapses, immediately sees through this excuse. 

Why doesn’t Shmuel keep working on his thesis, even if he has to take a job? It turns out that Shmuel has become disenchanted with his own research. He is studying Christianity and feels that Judas has been misrepresented. A serious, bookish young man, Shmuel began learning about Christianity in high school so he could better understand Dostoevsky. 

Judas truly loved Jesus, truly believed in his preaching, Shmuel believes. Judas was a rich man, so the idea that he betrayed Jesus for the legendary 30 pieces of silver, doesn’t ring true to him. But his professors at the university were not receptive to his theory and most people are skeptical about why he is so interested in Christianity, although reminders of the Christian faith are everywhere in Jerusalem. 

Arguing about theories for fun

Gershom is also a non-believer when it comes to Shmuel’s theory, but he enjoys arguing with him about it. In fact, Shmuel has been chosen as Gershom’s caretaker because of his ability to hold his own in intellectual discussions. In the mornings, Gershom sits and reads books and newspapers, then engages in lively phone conversations with his former colleagues, in a house that looks so much like real apartments of Jerusalem intellectuals it could be a documentary. 

The household is run by Atalia (Einav Markel), the widow of Gershom’s son. She is haunted by the memory of her husband, who died in battle years ago. At first, she has so little interest in Shmuel that she asks him casually why he wasn’t killed in a war, since he doesn’t seem to her to be strong enough to have survived combat. 

Although she doesn’t have much patience for Shmuel, she does care for her father-in-law and she wants an intellectual to be his caretaker – someone who is smart enough to argue with the old man and keep him entertained, so she can do her work as an investigator for a detective and live her life. 

Shmuel falls hard for the beautiful and mysterious Atalia, and Wolman makes Shmuel’s attraction to her very credible. The house is haunted by another presence, the ghost of Atalia’s father, a member of the Zionist executive committee who opposed the founding of a state in 1948, and who believed that Jews and Arabs should live side by side. 

Wonderful actor performances

THE THREE lead actors – and there is almost no one else – all give wonderful performances. It was good to see Tavory get the kind of substantial role he deserves. Newcomer Livni, who has also appeared in the television series Manayek and Line in the Sand, is convincing as a young man stimulated more by thought than by action. 

These are quite a few ideas for one movie, but miraculously, Judas does not sink under their weight. Although, of course, this movie is very different from an episode of The West Wing, it did bring to mind an oft-expressed dictum in Aaron Sorkin’s work – that it’s good to engage with “smart people who disagree with you.” 

There is such life in the discussions between Shmuel and Gershom that it is exciting just to watch the two sitting there. The ideas are more fully fleshed out in the novel, especially Atalia’s father’s philosophy, but what has made it into the screenplay, written by Wolman and his wife, Shosh Wolman, holds your interest.  

There’s a real sense of place here, so much so that when Shmuel and his bags get soaked, you can almost smell his damp clothes and books as he settles into his bare room. Judas also creates a special sense of a time, of Israel before the Six Day War, when the future looked very different and so many people believed in the power of ideas to change the world.