Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Freaktana A Major Disappointment

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Curt Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

blumdeluxe "A tale of love and darkness" tells the story of young Amos Oz, living with his parents in the newly-born state of Israel. Under the pressure of war, the new environment and illness, cracks start to show in what seemed to be a happy family life once.Shortly into the movie, you notice that the style of telling the story diverges noticeably from your usual Hollywood film. Everything is a bit more poetic, more though-through and melancholic. This leads to a situation where you don't really notice what is about to unravel until it actually happens. A lot of warmth and humility accompanie this very personal story and make it universal. While some reviewers here mind that there's not a bigger picture evolving from this, I say that exactly this mixture of emotions and happenings is what makes it a bigger picture in the life of a boy.All in all this is a beautiful movie, that tells about misery whitout any anger. It shows how everyone has his own story and how others can just accompany you on this journey.

phd_travel This is the most boring movie I have seen for a while. There isn't much about the founding of the state of Israel if that's what you might expect to see. Instead it's mostly about the author's mother and her depression with only passing comment or two about the state of Arab Jewish relations. The melancholia headaches and death of the mother are the main story. What's so interesting about that? If it had shown her journey from Europe to Jerusalem then maybe you'd understand why she was like that. Instead it shows things that don't lead anywhere. The novelty of watching Natalie Portman speak Yiddish or Hebrew wears off quite quickly. She directed and wrote the screenplay.I would give this one a miss. It's a tale about nothing much. For fans of this writer's work only.

Howard Schumann In a quiet moment in Natalie Portman's ("Knight of Cups") beautiful and poetic A Tale of Love and Darkness, a mother says to her young son "If you have to choose between telling a lie or insulting someone, choose to be generous." When the boy asks her whether or not it is alright to lie, she replies, "Sometimes... yes. It's better to be sensitive than to be honest." It is an important lesson, one I wish I had learned earlier in my life. Written and directed by Portman, who also stars as Fania, Amos' (Amir Tessler) troubled mother, the film is based on the memoir of Israeli novelist and journalist Amos Oz and is set in Jerusalem in the critical period before the transition from the British mandate in Palestine to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 following the Arab-Israeli War.Opening in 1945 after the Klausner's escape from the desecration of a once vibrant culture in Eastern Europe, it is the story of the early influences in Oz's life that propelled him to become a famous writer. As narrated by Moni Moshonov and told from the viewpoint of the older Amos Oz recollecting his past, the film attempts to probe the depths of a family whose dream of a land of milk and honey becomes darker as it progresses, telling us that the worst thing that can happen to a dream is that it is fulfilled. Amos' father Arieh (Gilad Kahana, "The Man in the Wall") is a librarian who has just published is first novel and desperately wants to achieve the success of his own father, historian Joseph Klausner. Though he does not succeed, he never stops being thankful for Israel, telling his son, "You'll be bullied in school, but not because you're Jewish." We learn early in the film that Amos' mother Fania blames herself for leaving behind a life of wealth. It is a self-inflicted wound exacerbated by her own mother's verbal cruelty, one that is manifested by insomnia, migraine headaches, and a long struggle with depression that ended with her suicide at the young age of 38. Fania is a story teller whose stories, fables, and tales of far-away lands continue to enrich Amos' life and Amos himself begins to tell stories to keep bullies from attacking him at school. The humble Amos denies that he is sensitive, saying he wants to be a farmer or a dog murderer and goes to work on a kibbutz, but the sensitive can do nothing about who they are but only attempt to share it and make it real for others.Amos' story is depicted in the context of the short-lived joy after the U.N.'s vote to partition Palestine and the Arab attacks on Jerusalem that killed many of the family's friends and neighbors. Their home becomes a shelter for those fleeing the Arab bombs and the real consequences of Zionism and the ideal of statehood become apparent, a society caught between memories of the holocaust and fears that it will happen again. As Fania's growing depression and her drift from reality dominates the landscape, the film loses a measure of dramatic impact, yet it remains compelling and literate, attesting to the way the promise of Israel has been shattered by strident voices fighting centuries-old struggles for domination.A Tale of Love and Darkness is an intimate film, a film of memory, one told in incidents and flashbacks. Like a film of Terence Malick, it talks in whispers, a language that exists only in the soul. There is little plot to describe, only moods and gestures. Fania's death is the film's central theme and it remains a mystery, buried in the enigma of a woman who has forgotten how to dream, yet it is transcended by the death of the dream of two vibrant cultures living together in peace and brotherhood. Early in the film, Amos is on his best behavior at a party in the home of a Palestinian neighbor. When he meets an Arab girl who can speak Hebrew, there is an immediate connection and he tells her that "there is room for two peoples in this land," but the dream ends suddenly when Amos, playing at being Tarzan, falls from a tree when the chains of a swing break injuring a little girl and the sudden chasm between the two cultures becomes a sad portent of the future.

hadarbechor I had read the book when it was first published, and I felt it was a masterpiece. Oz captured the dark and difficult yet hopeful period of Jewish and Israeli history so well - from the siege on Jerusalem, to relations with Palestenians, to the impact of uprooted Eastern European Jewish survivors' lives. He also let us into the secrets of his childhood. It is a profound book.Of course to turn this long and complex tale into a movie is very challenging, and especially as a directorial debut. However, I felt that Natalie Portman and her team captured the essence of the book. The period scenes, the choice of important segments of the book, the characters - it felt familiar to me, true to the book.I'm sorry to read in a couple reviews that the historical references did not register. I personally feel that she did justice to the period, the place and the story. Yes, it was dark for the most part. Because Amos Oz remembered his childhood as dark, because of the times, the atmosphere in the home (his parents were mismatched), the poverty and the fear. And mostly because of his mother's falling into illness. In the book Oz never mentioned a diagnosis, but it was clear, and made clear in the movie as well, that she was clinically depressed, and no treatment was available. One of the parts I liked the best in the movie, was the sporadic appearance of the "new Jew" prototype, which she adored, and which her husband did not fit in the least. The handsome, strong man, the antithesis of the Eastern European Jewish nerdy and scholarly type. What she did with this mythic male at the end of the movie was brilliant, and the narrator also tells us that he himself tried to become this man, and couldn't. Maybe the viewers need to read some background before watching the film, but I felt justice was done to the book and to the spirit of it. Those who dismiss the linguistic aspects need to realize that the new and forming language, Hebrew, and the father and son's interests in life, are tied together, and represent a very important part of the story. That is probably why Natalie Portman insisted on the movie being in Hebrew. Will she adapt it into an English version? Maybe.