If you want your heart broken and then put back together again...

then watch this movie:

Va, Vis, et Deviens
(Go, Live, and Become)

For the first time since around 1997 or 98 when I saw Earth by Deepa Mehta, a film has broken into the elite bubble in which I have placed Earth (the 'my all-time favorite movie' bubble). Earth still maintains the top spot, but I will now also have to list Va, Vis, et Deviens when asked.

This movie was amazing in so many ways. If the movie had consisted only of the first third, I would have told you that I absolutely loved it, but then it kept getting better. Usually when I really like a film, I have maybe five "moments" where I'm all "Ugh! That's awesome!". This movie, however, there were countless moments like that. It is the first movie of my life where I am crying, with tears and everything, trying to stifle sobs so I don't get kicked out of the theatre, and in the midst of that, laugh out loud. When it was over, I cried through the entire credits, and then when driving home I spontaneously broke into tears again.

Don't get me wrong, the movie has a happy ending! It won't leave you depressed. I am neurotic, remember?

Anyway.

Apparently in 1984 Israel rescued 4000 Ethiopian Jews from famine and opressive government. The Ethiopians walked hundreds of kilometres to Sudan, where the Israeli govt did secret airlifts. 4000 were saved, 8000 more died trying. This movie is the story of a little boy whose mother pushes him to the front of the line for one of these airlifts when another mother's son dies. The woman says nothing, and accepts him as her own to save his life. She dies. (Are you crying already?) After a trying beginning in his new country, he is adopted by a French-Israeli family. Shlomo (his new name) is only 9 years old, and alone in this new land, and pretending to be Jewish so that he will not be sent back to Ethiopia.

This is the first film I have seen which portreys the refugee experience (especially that of children) so (I feel) effectively. I often try to imagine and comprehend what it would be like to flee my country, family, and all familiarities, so abruptly, knowing that I will never be able to return, and go to a country where I do not speak the language, understand the culture, or know another soul. I try to imagine, but largely cannot. This film went a long way towards making me feel in some tiny way what it must be like.

I do have two criticisms about this film. However, I am not Siskel, nor Ebert (thankfully, since he's dead), nor Roeper, nor am I being paid the big bucks to ensure the movie-watching well-being of the general public. Hence, you would have to use wild horses and cold metal probes to drag these criticisms out of me. I shall not speak ill of this brilliant film which I loved like it was my own. So there.