There seems to be a whole genre of films recently ,the theme of which is young people's daunting search for purpose in life in a world where external sources of values are no longer accepted. I am thinking of "Garden State," "I Heart Huckabees," "Closer " etc. The consensus, so to speak, if these movies are to be taken as a mirror of reality, is that there is no purpose to be found, and the only grounds for relating to other human beings at all is sexual attraction, or its concomitant sexual competition. In fact, I watched this film and "Thirteen" together, and found them strangely parallel. I mention all this because Knafayim Shvurot is different from all the others in a small but fundamental respect: here the characters have not quite given up the search. Perhaps this reflects a difference between Israeli culture which, jaded though it is, is indisputably younger, and American culture which seems to be declining into both hedonism and vicious religiosity. I didn't realize it while I was watching, but was somehow not surprised to notice afterward that the "family" of characters is played by a real-life family. I couldn't help wondering how the experience affected them...
Review of Broken Wings
