Both of the previous reviews contain spoilers, and both are spot on in their discussion of the context and premise of "The Flat." However, as a viewer who enjoys documentaries and mysteries, but is neither Jewish nor Israeli, I found this film lacking.
"The Flat" posits and develops a mystery but goes nowhere with it. It ends focusing on little more than the relationship of the inquisitive film maker (a third-generation Israeli) and his see-no-evil mother (a second-generation Israeli), the two of them stumbling about in an overgrown German graveyard looking for a stone that isn't there, and that is unsatisfying.
Sure, German Jews, from not later than Mendelsohn, were pulled in different directions simultaneously, and that tension makes for a potentially powerful story. But ultimately the story here is that there is no story. "No one reads Balzac anymore," an estate sale buyer, with bound volumes in his hands, says dismissively in Tel-Aviv. Another tosses a piece of furniture off a third-floor balcony to the parking area below. Such insights into contemporary Israeli attitudes are interesting, but they fail to sustain this motion picture. When the credits rolled, I felt cheated.
"The Flat" posits and develops a mystery but goes nowhere with it. It ends focusing on little more than the relationship of the inquisitive film maker (a third-generation Israeli) and his see-no-evil mother (a second-generation Israeli), the two of them stumbling about in an overgrown German graveyard looking for a stone that isn't there, and that is unsatisfying.
Sure, German Jews, from not later than Mendelsohn, were pulled in different directions simultaneously, and that tension makes for a potentially powerful story. But ultimately the story here is that there is no story. "No one reads Balzac anymore," an estate sale buyer, with bound volumes in his hands, says dismissively in Tel-Aviv. Another tosses a piece of furniture off a third-floor balcony to the parking area below. Such insights into contemporary Israeli attitudes are interesting, but they fail to sustain this motion picture. When the credits rolled, I felt cheated.