Trailer for the series "Berlin Blues"/yes
In Berlin, the city that defined the 20th century, history hides underfoot. You can walk around it for hours from a shopping center to a club, from a fountain to a museum, and absorb with your eyes a beautiful city that never stops and celebrates a lively present. But those who walk stooped, looking down, can suddenly discover a small, golden stumbling block on the floor near the building, which reminds him: these Jews once lived here, and they are no more.
All free men, as John Kennedy said, are citizens of Berlin. In the ironic way of history, it has also become a magnet for Israelis, some of whom are of German origin themselves, who seek to open a new chapter in it, without wars, without the weight of Israeli and German history. Is this even possible? This is what the new series "Berlin Blues" (yes), created together by Dana Idisis ("On the Spectrum") and Itamar Rothschild (star of "Hed Kolach"), and directed by Ram Nahari ("That's how it is") seeks to find out.
The series follows an Israeli couple who moved to Berlin for a year, and find themselves strangers there and here. Jonah (Rothschild himself), is an oboe player who is accepted into a local orchestra in the country that his grandfather left, and wants to believe that he is able to assimilate into it again; Talia, his wife (Shira Naor, "The Jews are coming"), is a promising writer who hopes to write her next book from there, but sinks into depression and finds it difficult to find herself. Among themselves, and each in their circles and in front of their family and colleagues, they are constantly forced to discover, despite the initial denial, that the immigrant always remains an immigrant, that the past is always a part of the present, and that even in a global, free and liberated world, the point from which you started your journey has deep meanings.
Alone in Berlin. Shira Naor and Itamar Rothschild/Nik Konietzny
Thus, Yona tries to be accepted as one of the band of musicians, but is shocked to discover that completely normal Israeli behavior is accepted as horrible rudeness elsewhere; And Talia discovers that she can't really write from anywhere, and that the only support she will find in Berlin will actually come from the Facebook group she belongs to, of the Israeli community in the city. When in the background of comfort, the violence and fear of Israel always stick out through the distance, the helplessness intensifies the difficulties of the couple, parents of a little girl who entered a German kindergarten, and re-pose dilemmas of every modern family: who gives up for whom, and to what extent can the private framework be sacrificed for self-fulfillment , and vice versa.
"Berlin Blues" is a series of contrasts: although it is short - six episodes of about 35 minutes each - it is a very slow series; And despite its dominant comedic element, which includes a series of great comedic actors in the central roles - it is also very melancholic. In the end, it is an atmospheric series, such that its episodes stand on their own as short films, without really having a big story with a beginning, middle and end. What does it have? The same sad blues, infinite loneliness of an individual in front of his communities of belonging, in front of the dream of a free and happy and comfortable life that is smashed in the face.
Rothschild is assimilated into the embarrassed and annoying musician, Naor plunges into the deep sadness of loneliness, but this feeling encompasses not only the couple, but every character in the series. In particular, two of them steal the show: Yona's friend from the kibbutz (Tamir Bar), who has lived in Berlin for a decade and remains an Israeli, is rude and a hooligan to the extent that he has already learned to swim well in German life; And Yona's mother, played by Laura Rivlin, as someone who loathes the country that expelled her father but is also somewhat obsessed with her culture. In a key scene, these two great comedians sit together in a German restaurant alone, and have a laugh-out-loud dialogue, including an amazing speech in German by the Israeli grandmother that includes the sad family history to the hapless waitress, who tearfully begs her forgiveness.
An amazing scene. Laura Rivlin/Szabó Gábor
Beyond the personal-family-national drama, two additional layers make "Berlin Blues" a fascinating black comedy. One of them concerns part of the art of dealing with all of this, which is reflected in the occupations of the two main characters, and especially in Yona, who ran away from oboe lessons by experimenting with concerts in cathedrals, but only really breaks down in tears when he arrives at his daughter's kindergarten and plays "Yimi Binyamina" there. (It is interesting to compare this wing of the series to the drama "The Winner", which was also broadcast on yes several years ago, with some similar ideas and even with the same Laura Rivlin).
But just as Yona is haunted by Ehud Manor's classic - and this is the more interesting layer - so all the characters are haunted by the weight of history, and cannot escape it. Yona tells himself and his mother that his grandfather's story doesn't really interest him when he arrives in the city from which he was expelled, but he tells his new friends that he actually feels German, and when he arrives at the address in question he is drawn to it like a charm. He can tell himself that he is beyond all this, but is horrified to realize that in his group there are xenophobes and supporters of the far-right party AFD.
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dive into solitude. Naor and Rothschild/yes
For Talia, this tension is less on the axis of time and more on the axis of the soul. She too can tell herself that she is just a tourist who can write from anywhere, but this year she will discover how much reality does not align with this idea, and when she encounters refugees from Syria and stories about sheep being led to slaughter, the irony will not escape her. Not even when you return to Israel, to the warm, Hebrew, familiar and comforting bosom, and you will again encounter war, missiles on Tel Aviv and a partially functioning family. Both she and Yona imagine the transition as a kind of capsule that will heal the deep holes of life, only to discover that their personal and intergenerational wounds cannot be solved with a magic wand.
And out of this sadness, they always find themselves foreigners, immigrants in Germany, outsiders in Israel. And so in some ironic way, the ideal of the modern metropolis is fulfilled - the home of all foreigners, the place that absorbs all the exceptions. First they occupied Tel Aviv, and then also Berlin.
More on the same topic:
Dana Idisis
Enlightened poetry
Itamar Rothschild
Tamir Bar
Laura Rivlin