Broken Wings | Review

Film puts politics aside and delivers a real, sympathetic portrayal of a family living through grief.

Sometimes the band-aid stops the bleeding, but it can take an infinite amount of time for the wound to heal. This newest drama from Sony Pictures Classics reveals that when an open gash is left untreated, it can expose itself to infection. Director Nir Bergman’s well-traveled festival-winning film captures the essence of a family torn apart, this Hebrew version of ( In America ) surprisingly leaves politics of the region out of the picture and focuses rather on a global collective sentiment, one of left-over pain from an untimely death. Euro Disney was perhaps partially invented for a family like this.

Featured in a weather-beaten 48-hour stretch, Bergman’s unflinching look focuses on a morally dejected six-minus-one family of the Ulmans which features a matriarch and her four kids who range in age from the adolescent teens to the littlest member, a girl who needs a grown-up to help her cross the streets. Besides the enormous bags under her eyes, actress Orly Silbersatz Banai gives a textbook definition of a mother living in a silent desperation and sharing the role of the protagonist are the experiences of the teenage daughter providing a more explicit and emotional meaning to the core of the crisis. Interestingly developed from the five vantage points, the prevailing concrete texture of the locations shots of various institutions demonstrates how the film intertwines each individual experience with a certain “impassive” response. This emotional resistance that is felt throughout finally busts open in the final act’s denouement where the drama flood gates break.

Perhaps the strongest suit is that there is nothing pretty about Broken Wings, powerfully told in a thin narrative, Bergman delivers a film strong in screen symbolism. The engine problems of the broken down car emphasize the need for the family to start anew, the empty swimming pool demonstrates the void that all of the character feel and when the mother takes her well-deserved bath it shows her almost inability to keep her head above water. An equally powerful scene is when a tired, clumsy doctor interested-in-the-other-party holds the drained mother in his arms. This scene elaborates on the fragility of life and relationships and pushes the notion of a unified struggle and compassion.

Bergman’s film is perhaps not an original in-sync piece; we’ve witnessed the whole looking-at-video-of-deceased family-members narrative inclusions and the female child singing her heart out in recent versions, but this tale of an Israeli family offers this all in a fresh, sensitive perspective. Bring tissues.

Viewed in original Hebrew language with English Subtitles.

Rating 3 stars