MovieChat Forums > Walk on Water (2005) Discussion > Eyal's mission

Eyal's mission

posted 19 years ago by helitzur
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My Hebrew is not particularly good, so when I first saw this movie in theaters, I wondered a bit about what Menachem was saying to Eyal about wanting to "get him before God does," referring to the old Nazi. Watching it on DVD now, I can tell that they're saying "l'hagdim et elohim"--what I'm wondering about is what exactly the verb "l'hagdim" means, which I can't find in my Hebrew/English dictionary. The feeling I get is that the subtitle translation accurately conveys the meaning, but that the Hebrew phrase has a more Biblical sense to it. Maybe they're sort of saying (wild guess) "to usurp God's mission from Him"...anyway, you get my point here, the translation in the movie works, but I get the sense that there's a little something that can't help but be lost in the translation.

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] helitzur 19 years ago

Ah, l'hakdim, of course. With the same root as "kodem," meaning "before." That definitely makes sense.

Also sort of lost in translation--or at least, lost in not having recognition--for most people would be when the drag queens start hitting on Eyal in the Berlin parking garage, and when they hear that he's Israeli, one of them says "ma'nishma!" A German drag queen hitting on him in Hebrew...far too funny to understand for anyone who doesn't recognize it right off the bat. :)

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] helitzur 19 years ago

Yeah, I read through some of the other threads here where you were talking about those things, pretty interesting stuff. I was surprised to hear that Lior had trouble playing the tough guy, I thought he couldn't have been more natural and convincing as that type. Definitely a testament to his acting talent.

More generally speaking, what do the PAL DVD extras have to say about the casting of Knut Berger and Caroline Peters? Both of them were so brilliant, just perfect for their roles, and they even looked like they could be brother and sister. What sort of process did the filmmakers go through to cast those roles in Germany?

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] helitzur 19 years ago

For the region 1 DVD, Sony presumably would have had to pay to get those extras, since they had been produced in a different part of the world for a different distributing company. They must have decided that it wasn't worth it for a DVD that wasn't likely to generate that much money for them to begin with. So it's disappointing, but not too surprising.

The screw-up on the R1 DVD box, saying there's a making-of featurette included when there isn't one, might have been the result of a planned inclusion falling through at the last minute. Unless it really was just a mistake in the production of the box art itself.

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] helitzur 19 years ago

Yeah, I'm straight, and I didn't pick up on that angle. I guess that's what they were going for, but I don't think it needs to be that way to work. A macho and somewhat prejudiced guy becoming close to a gay man through a serious of tense developments is plenty drama enough, so I don't think he necessarily has to realize a gay or bi identify himself.

Not sure why they would see any need to change their ending just for American audiences. They surely must have understood that this wasn't going to be any bigger than most other foreign films in the US no matter how they ended it. American audiences are far from monolithic, particularly when it comes to arthouse/foreign movies. It isn't painting with too broad a brush to point out that the types of people in this country who go and see a movie where half the dialogue is subtitled aren't exactly the types to be offended by some gay content. Almodovar (just to name one) doesn't exactly hold back on that stuff.

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] helitzur 19 years ago

Right, the bizarre rules and deadlines are always messing things up for foreign films at the Oscars. The Nazi/Jew = Oscar thing does get commented on a lot (also in reference to the Oscar for documentaries), but it doesn't always apply. Downfall was up for best foreign film last year, and it lost to The Sea Inside.

I looked at the box office/business numbers, and it looks like Walk On Water never played on more than 50 screens in the US. With an audience of that size--and surely the filmmakers didn't think they'd get a bigger one than that, just getting it distributed in the US in the first place might very well have been a small victory for them--it doesn't seem likely that they'd incorporate any real concerns about tailoring the movie for an audience that isn't going to be very big no matter what they do. From a quick look at other box office numbers, it looks like Almodovar's movies usually play on at least 2-3 times that many screens in the US.

[–] tim_spec 18 years ago

Hey Tom

This is a REALLY interesting point if you think about what happens in the end. Because "speeding up what god does" is exactly what Axel, (not Eyal) does. He takes Opa off his oxygen, turns off his monitors and "lets nature take its course"

To my mind this is quite a different thing to giving someone a lethal injection.

Tim

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] le21 19 years ago

I saw the movie just yesterday and I also noticed that line of dialogue, though I don't know any Hebrew at all (I'm Polish by the way) and my thory is based on the Polish subtitles (which were "zdazyc przed Panem Bogiem" to be exact).

I suppose this quote might be referring to a book by a Polish Jewish reporter Hanna Krall under the exact same title: "Zdazyc przed Panem Bogiem" which is translated "To outwit God", but the literal translation would be "To be faster than God". The book is a long interview with Marek Edelman, the last living leader of a tragic Jewish uprising against the Germans in Warsaw in 1943. He witnessed the tragic events of the Holocaust. He survived the war and became a doctor (cardiologist).

The title of the book is actually a quote of Edelman and may be interpreted in many different ways. Here's the easiest 2 interpretations:

1.The title refers to the fight for life of every Jew (including Edelman) in the ghetto during the war.

2.It describes the post-war activity of Edelman as the doctor, which was basically saving lives of his patients, fighting with death, with destiny, "outwitting God"... Edelman believes that this fight is worthy, because he learned the true value of life during the war.

So in my opinion Menachem's intention was to make a kind of pun out of it: Eyal's mission is obviously opposite to Edelman's, but the quote may still apply to it...