This the boy does, discovering a talent for comedy and, egged on by his drunk father, drinking too. Flashback over, Moishe is now with greying beard and desperate to revive his reputation as the go-to stand-up for Chasidic weddings, a mission interrupted by frequent visits to the Chasidic branch of Alcoholics Anonymous. He is also desperate to find the money to pay for his daughter’s wedding.
“It’s not that I like to do that,” says Dar of his instinct to find unexplored subjects. “It’s just that it happens,” he adds, speaking to me by video from his home in Atlit, 15 minutes down the coast from Haifa.
There is no better example of this instinct to choose the path less travelled than his remarkable film Legend of Destruction, about the destruction of Second Jewish Temple in 70CE – a brutal blow to the First Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire.
Legend is nothing like previous Roman-era epics that for over 75 years have attracted Hollywood’s square of jawed, from Charlton Heston’s Ben-Hur and Kirk Douglas’s Sparticus to Russell Crowe and Paul Mescal’s gladiators.
Epic: a scene from Legends of Destruction[Missing Credit]
True, in Dar’s movie the director can boast a cast of big names such as Oscar Isaac (Marvel’s Moon Knight), Evangeline Lilly (The Hobbit) and the perennially loved Jewish M*A*S*H and Friends star Elliott Gould.
But the real stars are the 1,500 specially created paintings created by Israeli Waltz with Bashir artists David Polonsky and Michael Faust. It is these images, carefully filmed by Dar in a way that reveals the caught movement in the paintings, that transports the viewer back 2,000 years. That and the actors’ voices.
The story charts how corruption and the polarity of politics in ancient Judea, along with the rise of Jewish rebel groups, contributed to the kingdom’s destruction. After the film premiered in Israel in 2021 it became required viewing for those who saw parallels with the modern Jewish state. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett urged members of the Knesset to watch the film and see the it as a cautionary tale about today’s Israel.
You might expect international film festivals to fall over themselves to screen a movie with such a distinctive directorial vision. But no. Dar’s film, which is now available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV and Google Play (its cinematic vision deserves the biggest screen you can find) was rejected by every festival. It was as if a consensus had formed about which Jewish stories are acceptable and which are not. And it may just be that any reminder of an ancient Jewish connection to Jerusalem inconveniently complicates a preferred narrative of Jews being seen as colonialists.
But this was not the first time Dar had faced what to him felt like an incomprehensible rejection of his work internationally. It even happened with Ushpizin in 2004.
“I was sure all the festivals were going to pick it up immediately and none of them did. And I knew the film was good because it was a hit in Israel, which is considered a lab for [audiences in] in the West. There had been big successes with TV remakes of a lot of Israeli shows. People would say whatever works in Israel works in the West as well. But not Cannes, not Berlin, not Locarno where I got a prize for my previous film [for the 1992 crime caper Eddie King]. None of them screened Ushpizin. And this was years before October 7.”
The film, in which Shuli Rand and his then wife Michal Bat-Sheva play a couple who yearn for a miracle to alleviate them from being both impoverished and childless, was a game-changer.
“It opened the door for many other movies and shows [portraying Chasidic life],” says Dar. “Shtisel and all of that came through the doors we opened. We’re very proud of that.”
It was filmed in the neighbourhood where Rand lived. The actor had became Chasidic after working with Dar on their previous film and now the director had rare access to a community who allowed Dar to put them on screen.
Jewish themes: Michal Bat-Sheva Rand and (right) Shuli Rand in Ushpzin[Missing Credit]
For the secular director the film became the first step in a mission to link most Israelis to their diasporic and ancient past.
“Look, Israelis want to disconnect themselves from the diaspora Jew. The Chasidim are a symbol of everything we don’t want to be – weak, not allowed to work the land, unable to protect yourself. This was also true for many [non-Chasidic] diaspora Jews because they were – are – in the custody of other nations. So although big parts of the country were say, pro-Palestinian or anti-Palestinian, everybody was against the Chasidim. Our political act was to force the audience to identify with them.”
The project carried reputational risks for Dar. He was afraid that his own secular world would “hate and despise me for touching the subject of Chasidism”. So visceral was this view he likens it to making a film about cannibals.
“So, would what would be a better approach? How terrible is it is it to eat humans or how great it is to eat humans? I would say the second one is much more interesting. I mean, you know how terrible it is, but would you like to see how great it is?”
Confirmation that he achieved his objective came after the screening in 2004 when the, as Dar describes him, “leftist, liberal anti-Chasid, anti-Charedi Haaretz film critic Uri Klein came over to me, shook my hand. “He said, ‘Thank you for letting me love them for an hour and a half.’ And I knew it was the best review I’m going to get because that’s exactly what we wanted to do.’”
Where Dar says “we” instead of “I” he is talking about Rand who also co-wrote Legends of Destruction with the director.
“We’ve been a team for the last almost 40 years,” he says. Their latest film cam about after “Shuli came over to my house and was laughing. He had just met this guy who is a badchan, a Yiddish wedding entertainer. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. We talked about it and I said, maybe we do something.”
After Legend of Destruction Dar was up for some comedy. The result is like a modern-day Sholem Aleichem story.
“Shuli is a Sholem Aleichem freak. I mean I am a small freak, but Shuli is crazy,” says Dar.
Might the director’s talent for making secular Israelis love Chasidim – even for an hour and a half – be deployed so that the world and its film festivals might view Israelis with less prejudice?
“I’ve had various thoughts about making films that would address the way Israel is perceived from the outside. They tend to be documentaries rather than fiction, which is tricky because it can so easily slip into propaganda. Ultimately the quality of the film is always the most important to me. So for now I’ll stick to making my own movies.”
The Wedding Entertainer (The Tale of Moishe Badhan) will be screened as the UK Jewish Film Festivals Centrepiece Gala on Nov 12 at the Curzon Mayfair
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