‘Amos Oz’s image is struggling to recover. It’s been defiled’

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A pleasant sense of relief and satisfaction swept over director Yair Qedar on that Saturday in February. It was late in the evening and after two and a half years of intense work, his documentary, “The Fourth Window,” was complete. Amos Oz, who died at the end of 2018, served as a particularly complex protagonist for the latest installment of Qedar’s series, “The Hebrews.”

Unlike the other novelists and poets who had been featured in the series, Oz’s death was still fresh. Alongside his intense archival work, Qedar was maneuvering through a maze of heirs, anxious to preserve the legacy of their loved one, scores of fans and detractors, and a figure whose place in the national canon was still being formed.

But on that Saturday, it seemed that it was all behind him. As the work in the editing room came to a close and a new week began, all that was left to do was celebrate, drink champagne and bask in the glow of a job done. But all that turned out to be premature.

The next day, the publishers at Kinneret Zmora announced a new book by Galia Oz, “Something Disguised as Love,” which chronicles her complicated relationship with her father and family. Qedar awoke to a flood of phone calls.

“I bought the book immediately, read it and understood that the movie had to be scrapped, and to some degree, refilmed with this story included. I realized that I had entered an ethical minefield,” says Qedar.

How did you feel reading it?

“I have an image from ‘A Clockwork Orange.’ Like Malcolm McDowell with his eyelids held open by force, I was looking at something I didn’t want to see. I think a lot of other people didn’t want to see it, it had a destructive power and was unpleasant, but I couldn’t turn away.”

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Because it destroyed your image of Amos Oz or because it felt too intimate to be exposed to the inner workings of another family?

“Both. I didn’t want it to ruin things for me, didn’t want to know, to be exposed to it. There was also a cloud of ambiguity, how awful was it? What really happened? Can we judge? Where is the evil and the good? Was it just how that generation parented or something exceptional?

“I’ve known Galia Oz since she was 12. She was good friends with my sisters for many years and our families were close. It was common knowledge that her anger had been growing in recent years and that she was interested in making it public. I thought, like everyone else did, that it would amount to an article in [the Israeli newspaper] Yedioth Ahronoth.

“Before Galia’s memoir came out, the movie dealt with Amos’ life from his perspective – he’s the hero. Galia’s story was in the background. The family was actually worried that I would speak with her and include her story in the movie.”

We won’t let you access the archives if…?

“It wasn’t that concrete. It was more like, ‘we won’t cooperate if you go the sensationalist route and make it about Galia’s story.’ Do this, don’t do that, all sorts of conditions. I’m not used to that. Who takes issue with Lea Goldbreg or Jacqueline Kahanoff [the subjects of two other documentaries in the series]? Until now it was: Take it, go! This time there was a lot of suspicion and concern. There’s something charged about Amos Oz, it’s not new. When he died, people talked about him as the guru of the left, a secular saint. There was something powerful about him. His family – [his wife] Nili, [eldest daughter] Fania and [youngest son] Daniel, and Galia on the other side – asked literature and film professor Nurit Gertz not to include sections that dealt with Galia in the book she was writing on Oz. Those parts only came to light after the whole story exploded.”

Did you feel you had to change the film for the sake of credibility, or out of shock?

“In ‘The Hebrews’ I’m committed to telling the story of what is. And ‘what is’ changed before my eyes between Saturday night and Sunday morning. I needed to tell a new story, a different one. How I feel about him, who’s right, weren’t questions I had asked myself before.”

Galia Oz.
Shifra Cohen Hamsi

Starting with Lea Goldberg

In retrospect, the Galia and Amos Oz affair was a turning point in Qedar’s documentary practice. In the words of the documentary filmmaker, it was a change that constituted “a new engine in the train called ‘The Hebrews.'” Who knows if he could have imagined the horizons of his documentary project, which he undertook without any experience. Qedar, who is 52, never studied filmmaking. He was born and raised in Afula. He holds a master’s degree in literature, and later worked as a journalist and newspaper editor. In the 1990s, he set up two newspapers for Israel’s LGBTQ community. He later edited an online travel magazine called “Masa Acher” and wrote for the Schoken network.

In the 2000s, he began toying with the idea of making a film about the poet Yona Wallach, whom he felt a special affinity for. A producer he had met suggested that he create a series of 15 documentaries, for financial reasons. Qedar started sending out proposals, which were all rejected. So he broke down the project into individual films, and started gathering experience. His first movie, “Gay Days,” documents the history of Israel’s queer community in the 1980s.

“I found that I needed to make movies on my own, at my own pace, building off my own experience, and what I love. ‘The 5 Houses of Lea Goldberg’ came about almost incidentally. There was a centenary celebration for Nathan Alterman. The whole thing was rather muted, and with Lea Goldberg’s centenary approaching, I thought of making something bigger. [The film about] Lea Goldberg ignited the turbo fire,” Qedar says

Turbo is the right word. In the decade since the release of “The 5 Houses of Lea Goldberg,” Qedar has released 16 other films. “The Hebrews” grew into a teeming and diverse magnum opus. Most of the films were produced by Qedar himself, some in collaboration with other directors.

The film about Amos Oz, the 15th in the series, signals new territory. Oz’s personal drama produces a different type of film, a sad and reflective psychological drama, far more cinematic. Oz appears as a complex, whole character, helping to reveal the man for those who grew accustomed to the air of perfection that Oz took great pains to project. The movie presents the author with all the conflicting truths that have been spoken about him, cracking the facade.

Goldberg in ‘The 5 Houses of Lea Goldberg.’
Courtesy of Yair Qedar

The Oz portrayed in “The Fourth Window” is a man full of pain and contradictions, one carrying past traumas beneath a sophisticated layer of concealment, remorse and endless iterations, still questioning and confused, asking for forgiveness. Qedar created the film alongside Nurit Gertz, who wrote of her friendship with Oz in her book “What Was Lost in Time: Biography of a Friendship.” Like the book, the movie is based largely on taped conversations between Gertz and Oz, which reveal the tempestuous, though always articulate, way he chronicled his pain.

“I was lost until Nurit came along and saved the project,” says Qedar. “Her suggestion, and what the film ultimately does, was to build a narrative of double tragedy, which allows all the demons to live side by side.”

There’s a nearly Shakespearean struggle over this cultural legacy, the narrative through which Oz will be remembered.

“I see it at the screenings. Amos Oz’s image is struggling to recover. It’s been defiled, weakened. I think it makes the drama even more tragic and poignant. On the other hand, this whole matter makes it hard to really pay attention. The controversy helped the movie and buried it, meaning that people’s judgements make it harder to watch.”

Were there people who had been interviewed for the film and later asked not to appear after Galia’s book came out?

“Some did, but I refused and clarified that the movie wouldn’t take a side. There’s clearly something here that spiraled out of control, all while I was trying to contain it, tell it as one story, mitigate and calm it. I think the film manages to tell this story within the larger story. It took a few months of work, defusing mines, like a sapper approaching a bomb with great caution, each step risking an explosion. I wasn’t only trying to avoid controversy, but trying to prevent the loss of the story, so that Amos Oz wouldn’t be lost, so that ‘The Hebrews’ wouldn’t be lost. I wanted to tell a story that included this new moral complexity, to present it as an open question without letting it get overwhelmed by shock and fury.”

Yair Qedar.
Hadas Parush

I attended two screenings. It seemed like the audience was embarrassed on Oz’s behalf. At the premiere, people walked up to his family to ask how they were.

“I think the movie allows people to reconnect with Amos Oz even though the stain remains in place. I regret it, I’m sad for him, and I’m sorry I missed it. My sisters, and even my parents knew him, but I was never at any of the family meetings.”

I think even before the controversy, there are parts of the film that reflect what Oz called his “masquerade ball.” They were less flattering.

“There was a huge archive to select materials from. Oz’s written archive is in Be’er Sheva, with his drafts and manuscripts. There’s also a huge audio-visual archive, mountains of material that had to be sorted and categorized. We were the first to see some of that material, real comparative research.”

And what did you find?

“For example – he had clips that he was constantly improving, polishing. There’s a dimension of awareness and intentionality that appears powerfully through the archival material. It wasn’t inspiration, or a moment of discovery, rather an active agent creating his own character. There are ones on writing, peace, relationships, and families. I later discovered that he made these for people he was working with. I reached out to his translator and agent in England. It was strange to see how an orphaned kibbutznik from Jerusalem worked together with the most skilled people in literature to create ‘Amos Oz.'”

Oz – “a cloud of ambiguity” – in Italy in 2010.
Leonardo Cendamo / Hulton Archiv

That raises the question of how much you’re interested in the author as a psychological persona rather than for his work.

“People present themselves through various media, but it’s not their natural habitat. And then there’s a person’s work, where there are endless layers and secret hiding places. I’m not pretentious enough to try and analyze a person. My ambitions are more modest. I try to conduct a delicate dance between these two elements. Then I feel like I can sense the person. You don’t spend so many days with a person without developing a sense of familiarity.”

And that requires going through dusty boxes in the archives, filled with yellowing notes.

“It’s usually less emotionally charged, both because more time has passed and with it, the artist’s status becomes clear. Once you hit that advanced stage, you have the ability to tell a different story. Here, you can’t see the different story yet.”

Your more recent films take a different turn than the ones that preceded them. There’s more of a focus on personality than the writer’s place in the canon.

“‘The Hebrews’ is a laboratory. I don’t want to repeat myself, rather I want to conduct new experiments. But it’s true that Amos Oz is not a regular car in this train,” Qedar says laughingly. “He’s a new kind of engine. Meanwhile ‘Bulli’ [about A.B. Yehoshua] is something radical. It meant casting aside everything I had sworn to do with ‘The Hebrews’ and doing something new.”

Amos Oz.
Michael Freidin

The last chapter in A.B. Yehoshua’s life

“Bulli” is the hero of “The Last Chapter in A.B. Yehoshua,” the 16th film in the project, or perhaps the second in the new chapter of “The Hebrews.”

“The Fourth Window” aired on September 29, and “Bulli” will hit screens in October. Both are part of a documentary series aired by Kan. The two films mark Qedar’s new direction, which break with his original rules, and will be followed by films on Freud, Marx and Spinoza.

“Bulli” depicts Yehoshua as someone with an appetite for life, full of humor and charm. Especially so because he’s the first living author to be featured in the series, and more so due to the particular stage of life he finds himself in. The 84-year-old Yehoshua has been battling cancer in recent years, preceded by the death of his wife Rivka in 2016. Grief hit him hard, compounded by his health issues. These conditions set the stage for an entirely different kind of literary film. It is a meditation on the departure from life and a film that is more about personality than literature, though books and life are inextricably linked.

In one bittersweet moment – heart wrenching and amusing – Yehoshua leans on his cane, tired, sick and panting as he searches for his parents’ graves on the Mount of Olives. He eventually succeeds, but only with the help of two Arab workers who carry him, as in a scene from one of his books.

At the film’s premiere at the Jerusalem Film Festival last month, Yehoshua recounted turning to Qedar and asking if he wasn’t fed up with dead people yet. Qedar says that initially replied that he only deals with dead people, but then regretted it. “Yehoshua is someone who is mentally younger than me by 20 years, with a wild streak and charm, twice as sharp as I am. He’s spunky, charming and inquisitive,” Qedar says.

Actually, the movie on Yehoshua is not especially literary but rather it’s a movie about an exceptional man departing life.

“Yes and no. It is a somewhat literary film, but it’s less biographical, with less of a focus on history than earlier films. Instead, we took the last two and a half years, the story of a writer who is bidding farewell to the world. It comprises two competing strands – the will to live and the will to die – that are battling within him. It’s a very literary story.”

The literary aspect of the film and the parts where you dwell on his oeuvre operate as a way of explaining his last act.

“Three films will be aired together – the one on David Grossman [“Grossman” by director Adi Arbel], the movie about Oz and the one on Bulli. All three are writers, but how is their literature connected to their persona? To their worldview? What place does it have in the way they present themselves to the world? Each movie reflects on these questions in a way that reflects its subject. Grossman came to me after the premiere of ‘Bulli’ and said that he felt the literary aspect was lacking. For him, it’s a key element. But for Bulli it isn’t. I thought that was excellent.”

A.B. Yehoshua in another film by Qedar.
Michael Dal

Because his personality was the core of the movie.

“We did our archival work as usual. But we felt we’d missed something when Yehoshua took on a lecturing tone and lost his charm. My first goal in this film was to depict the man I was charmed by, the inquisitive soul. But there were constraints. In the script I wrote, the last scene was meant to depict Yehoshua, with his white hat and cane, sitting on a beach in Amalfi, Italy, looking out over the Mediterranean. In another part of the script, we were meant to meet Ian McEwan in England. None of it happened because of the coronavirus epidemic. Instead, his apartment became a microcosm and the film moved indoors.

“People make pilgrimage to visit Bulli, a lot happens in that apartment. Only later did I notice that both movies deal with windows. Both writers experience the world from the vantage point of a window.”

Yehoshua’s observations seem almost forced at this stage in his life. He mourns his wife and wishes to depart from life, but travels to Ramallah to meet and talk with people. He’s tired but says he’s started writing something new. A lust for life is the organizing principle – that’s how Qedar sees him.

“His work allows him to live in isolation, giving him internal power and shoring him up. In the film about Goldberg there was the matter of her internal fortitude and her work. In 1960, literary critic Dan Meron wrote an article that ripped her apart. Later she was afflicted with cancer and couldn’t write any more. She then switched to painting and all her libido, her creative forces, were channeled into something else, since she had to continue working. There is a scene where she’s painting on the floor in a hospital.

“It’s a feature that’s common to several of the heroes of ‘The Hebrews,’ A.B. Yehoshua among them. They have to create. They have to be doing something. It burns with importance. I believe that the film’s redemption comes from focusing on this over his work – through the lens of compassion and love, old age and departure from life.”