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Last update - 22:19 06/07/2008 Jerusalem Film Festival 2008 Preview Let my critics go By Darren Garnick Tags: "Exodus, " Leon Uris  Author Leon Uris has been blasted for employing stereotypical characters, comic book dialogue and even too many exclamation points. But 'Exodus' remains an amazingly timeless advocate for Zionism and Jewish pride Exodus, directed by Otto Preminger, screenplay by Dalton Trumbo (United Artists), 1960 More than four decades before his face was plastered on salad dressing, lemonade and microwave popcorn, Hollywood heartthrob Paul Newman -- a.k.a. Israeli commando Ari Ben Canaan -- posed a frightening question to the Jewish people. In a world oversaturated with anti-Semitic zealots and apathetic bystanders, who can we really depend on in a crisis? In the blockbuster 1960 movie "Exodus," based on Leon Uris' bestselling novel that debuted two years earlier, Ben Canaan loses his temper with a Cyprus businessman who is helping to smuggle Jews into British-controlled Palestine. Asked by fellow Haganah fighters to apologize, the future Israeli snaps: "All over the world, they work for us and tell us how terrible it was that six million Jews went into the ovens. But when the showdown comes, we always stand alone. Mandria will sell us out like all the others. We have no friends, except ourselves. Remember that!" In the tense days leading to Israel's War of Independence, Ben Canaan reluctantly learns he is an exception to his own rule. An American nurse saves his life from a bullet wound, while a Palestinian Arab hides him from British authorities hell-bent on his capture. "Exodus" will be screened on July 16 at the Film Festival, a special selection honoring the country's 60th birthday. Clearly, both the book and the film deserve credit for tremendously boosting Israeli tourism and making millions of people sympathize with Israel in a Mideast conflict they may have previously ignored. All it took was a shirtless, 35-year-old Newman with a gleaming Magen David dangling over his pecs. Pushing aside the Exodus franchise's widespread political and pop cultural impact, I'm amazed by how much it personally influenced me. A nation of Aris Straight out of college in the early 1990s, I volunteered for a one-year social service program in Israel called Project Otzma. My fellow "Otzmaniks" and I became obsessed with "Exodus" and some of us began calling each other by the names of characters from the book. Apparently, I wasn't cool enough to be Ari or Barak, a Ben Gurion-like patriarch who gave the name buzz long before Mr. Obama. I wasn't even cool enough to get a Uris-inspired nickname at all. But that tattered blue paperback in my backpack was my travel guide. When I volunteered at an Ethiopian and Russian youth village outside Haifa, I often walked the largely abandoned beach at Atlit, former site of a British detention center for illegal Jewish immigrants. The city of Acre, scene of the Irgun prison break, reminded me of the best action sequences in the movie. Years later, before I got married in Massachusetts, I jokingly wrote a note to Uris asking his "permission" to use the riveting "Exodus" movie theme as a wedding march. The Oscar and Grammy-winning soundtrack, composed by Ernest Gold, obviously had no connection to the author. Nonetheless, in blunt Ari Ben Canaan style, he wrote back that he thought the music "sucks" and suggested that I consider alternate melodies. (We ultimately went with "Jerusalem of Gold," played on the harp.) My wife Stacy and I actually did play the Exodus soundtrack in the delivery room when our first son, Ari, was born. Before we settled on a boy name, Stacy had been inexplicably pushing for "Ira" -- a name that would have doomed him to become an accountant and face daily torment on the playground. "Ari" and "Ira," you may have noticed, are palindromes. And I would argue that Uris almost single-handedly transformed the image of the Jewish people from a nation of Iras into a nation of Aris. In the recent blockbuster comedy "Knocked Up" -- a film unlikely to come up in discussions on Israel's Independence Day -- issues of Jewish identity unexpectedly surface between the pregnancy jokes. In a nightclub scene, Seth Rogen's chubby character, Ben Stone, declares his love for the Steven Spielberg movie "Munich," because it features Jews "kicking ass." Focusing on the Mossad's methodical hunt for Palestinian terrorists who murdered Israeli Olympic athletes in 1972, that movie probes the psychology of an assassin and questions the premise of justice-motivated vengeance. None of those heavy themes made it into the "Knocked Up" dialogue. "Dude, every movie with Jews, we're the ones getting killed," Stone says. "'Munich' flips it on its ear... if any of us get laid tonight, it's because of Eric Bana in ?Munich!" That theme may be becoming the norm. Adam Sandler's new comedy, "You Don't Mess With The Zohan," which opened in Israeli theaters late last month, mockingly imagines a macho Israeli soldier who pursues a lifelong dream to be a hairdresser. But even this androgynous goofball is also a Jew kicking ass. Ineptly written Uris' fixation on tough Jews has plenty of detractors. The British Guardian newspaper predictably wrote in it 2003 obit for the author that his pro-Israel "prejudices reduced reviewers and readers to a feeling that they had been mugged." One of the most recent commentaries on Amazon.com, written by an anonymous critic, dubs "Exodus" as one of the top five most "ineptly written books in the world." The writer's anger was fueled by Uris's use of way too many exclamation points. And Israeli historian (and Ha'aretz columnist) Tom Segev dismisses the "Exodus" author as the "chief mythologist of Zionism," telling the Associated Press that "none of us is Ari Ben Canaan, none of us is Paul Newman." And none of us can be Hannah Montana either, Mr. Segev. By definition, novels and movies are allowed to delve into fantasy. Outside of the genres of news or documentary film, it is totally kosher to exaggerate the positives of the good guys -- and to kick the bad guys in the rear a few more times. "Exodus" is an unapologetic pro-Israel book and movie. It highlights the inconvenient truth of Palestinian nationalism -- that its early leadership allied itself with Hitler with hopes of expanding the Holocaust to Tel Aviv. Other critics giddily slam Uris' work as having the depth and complexity of a comic book. I say: guilty as charged, guilty of entertainment. The movie adaptation is especially cartoonish. All of the British soldiers come across as clueless Elmer Fudds and the Haganah is filled with wisecracking Bugs Bunnies. (By extension, I suppose, the more temperamental Irgun fighters are Yosemite Sams.) The Haganah is constantly tricking British officers to sign phony documents, and many of its soldiers sport an annoying permanent smirk. During one corny scene, an anti-Semitic British officer (Peter Lawford) tells Ben Canaan that he can spot a Jew from a mile away. "A lot of them try to hide under gentile names," he says. "But one look at that face and you just know." Ben Canaan asks the Brit to help him take something out of his eye, encouraging him to stare into a Jewish cornea and test his theory. For me, the biggest disappointment of the Exodus movie -- and Uris cannot be blamed for this, since he was ordered off the set by director Otto Preminger -- is the marginalization of Ari's sister, Jordana. She'd make the ultimate comic book character, a kibbutznik Wonder Woman. Jordana, who boasts "a statuesque carriage and long shapely legs," fearlessly rides a white Arab stallion through neighboring Arab villages. The gorgeous redhead is not only a keen military strategist, but also an eloquent Zionist orator. "I am Jordana Ben Canaan," she says, introducing herself to new child arrivals on kibbutz. "I am your Gadna commander. In the next weeks, you will learn spying, messenger work, arms cleaning and firing, stick fighting and we will have several cross-country hikes. You are in Palestine now, and never again do you have to lower your head or know fear for being a Jew." In the movie, however, Jordana comes across as an inconsequential aerobic-dance instructor. One character who doesn't get ignored in the book or film is the grim reaper. Uris characters die often, and when they do, there is no such thing as a non-melodramatic death. Consider this hokey line delivered in the last breath of Akiva Ben Canaan, Ari's radical uncle who leads the Irgun: "In terms of fatal optimism, you are Haganah. In methodology, you are Irgun. But in your heart, you are Israel." "Fatal optimism" is the best way to describe Ari Ben Canaan. At the end of the film, he officiates at the double funeral of a 15-year-old kibbutz girl kidnapped and murdered during an Arab raid and his childhood Arab friend, killed as a collaborator for warning the Jews about an upcoming attack. In a eulogy that sounds eerily like Yitzhak Rabin's "enough bloodshed" speech on the White House lawn, the hero of "Exodus" declares he wants to "howl like a dog so the whole world will hear it and never forget it." "It's right that these two people should lie side by side in this grave because they will share it in peace," he says. "But the dead always share the earth in peace. And that's not enough. It's time for the living to have a turn." More so than any of Uris' characters, Middle East peace might be the most unrealistic fantasy of all. Darren Garnick is a writer and documentary filmmaker living in New Hampshire. He can be reached at www.cultureschlock.com. Haaretz Books, July 2008 Bookmark to del.icio.us   Video attack West Bank settlers tie Palestinian man to phone pole and beat him. A static future Iran's nuclear program remains unchanged despite economic incentives.

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