Director: Dondi Schwartz
Writer: Dondi Schwartz
Cast: Josh Sagie
Running time: 1hr 39mins
Take me Tzoran is a uniquely terrible attempt at filmmaking. Bereft of redeeming qualities, what is perhaps most surprising about it, is that the writer-director-producer-editor-craft-services-provider who usually also inserts themselves as the main character is actually not our lead. Perhaps he thought better of associating too closely with the traits of the titular Tzoran, a man who must be in his 60s, and whose ex-girlfriend is still young enough to ride a pushbike.
Tzoran only ever communicates with his ex via the phone – quite possibly to avoid a jarring visual contrast between her obvious youth and his leathery, bespectacled visage. The first of these conversations hurriedly lets us know that Tzoran will let the girl keep the car he bought her – making it clear to the raised eyebrows in the audience, look, she’s at least old enough to drive – she’s of age.
Since the relationship seems to have been established exclusively to confirm the desirability and virility of Tzoran, rather than any kind of teachable moment, or source of criticism in the story, however, it’s a contemptable attempt at an excuse. Indeed, the former relationship may have ended, but we repeatedly return to the character of the ex to talk about how she misses Tzoran, and how actually she really wants him to be part of the life of the twins he has impregnated her with.
Moments after Tzoran hears that his now-expectant ex would still like him around, his instinctive response is to get shit-faced in a local bar, and immediately hit on an (admittedly more age-appropriate) actress. Having signed up for intimate one-to-one acting classes, Tzoran is told his next object of desire has a conveniently scripted kink, where she immediately becomes aroused by poetic language – and begins to recite Shakespeare, at which point the director calls on the poor actress to simulate an orgasm opposite a man who closely resembles a scrotum in glasses.
The pair begin to go steady – before Tzoran lets his new victim partner know that he is already expecting twins with someone else, and actually he would like to knock her up as well. When she is a little less than receptive to this idea, he pays someone else one-third his age to flirt with him in a bar – to make the object of his affections jealous. And of course, it works – she agrees to marry him on the spot. And even when she finds out that Tzoran is manipulating her into a legally binding union, he’s just so charming that she decides she’s into it.
The thing is, as obscene as all this is, it is not the only reason the film will remain Unrated. Because the character of Tzoran actually manages to be something even more insidious than the embodiment of a sad old misogynist’s grotesque fantasies. Tzoran is an insanely misjudged artefact of propaganda. He lives in a kibbutz on the ‘Gaza envelope’, an area within 7 kilometres of the Gaza Strip. And he is a veteran, having apparently served in the Lebanon war of 1982 (assuming he was a maximum of 18 at the time, that is how I place him as a 62-year-old), who spends half of the film trying to process his survivor’s guilt. (Unsurprisingly, the impacts of any of this on the people on the other side of each conflict don’t factor in – but this is hardly Waltz with Bashir, so you would probably have guessed as much.)
Tzoran is upset that when he was wounded, his commanding officer ordered him to stay behind on a particular mission, during which one of their unit was killed in an ambush. When the pair meet in the modern day, they fantasise about preventing the incident by firing rockets first. They also talk about the first Gulf War, which Tzoran says was a mistake, but was signed off sick for – so conveniently didn’t make any kind of stand that might have inconvenienced him legally.
Tzoran is filled with these kinds of ‘conflicts’, which seem designed to make him come across as a rugged individualist – even cooler than just a borderline pensioner who dates teenagers – but which don’t really lead to any kind of sacrifice. He angrily shouts about judicial reform taking place in Israel, which you might have read about a few years ago, but disappeared from the agenda almost entirely in the conspicuously unmentioned events since 2023. Those reforms matter if you take it for granted that a country is still a democracy where rule of law matters, when half its residents are denied citizenship or basic civic, economic, human rights, when its incumbent prime minister can avoid jail by simply starting another war, and when protesters storm a military base to prevent soldiers – accused of torturing and sexually abusing prisoners abducted during military actions which the UN has classified as genocide – from facing any kind of reprimand.
An impassioned call from Tzoran to preserve the dream of Israel outside the Knesset, which sidesteps that to talk about judicial reform, is a disgusting and cynical act. The idea that this is still a state where liberal debates around due-process should top the political agenda, and that we should perceive a character bringing up this debate as a brave and brilliant individual, come across as a ploy to normalise a distinctly abnormal state of affairs.
As does a later scene, where Tzoran finally receives the ultimate commendation. As he once more castigates himself for his survivor’s guilt, and for not being seen to do more to stop the Gulf War, his new woman – the prize of all his masculine energies – tells him he doesn’t need to blame himself, that he did all he could. And that does it for Tzoran – he’s convinced, cue the triumphant and over-long happy ending.
But he didn’t do all he could, really. There are people in Israel, even now when they would face so much backlash, who would rather go to jail than serve in the military. They don’t shoot and cry. They don’t hide on medical grounds. They put their futures on the line, without bowing to the pretence that this is situation that calls for minor, incremental, comfortably liberal stances. Those are the individuals whose stories still deserve to be heard, who should be understood as taking a stand – who are willing to sacrifice something to stop, or at least inconvenience, a military and government still embroiled in the ethnic cleansing of areas across the West Bank and Gaza – ‘ceasefire’ or not.
There is not one moment which merits further discussion from this disgraceful outing. It should not be considered something which we should debate its qualities or values – it should not receive such a platform. The only way it deserves to be remembered, is if Jonathan Glazer is ever trusted with a budget to make a follow-up to Zone of Interest. The set-up would be a perfect encapsulation of this latest wretched chapter in human history. The image of a hack director standing in a kibbutz, filming a romantic take on an abusive relationship and war-trauma, masquerading as a conscientious liberal – but occasionally having to yell cut and reshoot a scene, because of the screams coming from nearby Gaza as shells fall.
First as tragedy, then as tragedy with farcical characteristics.