Few things are more inspiring than meeting older people who will not go gentle into that good night.
And fewer things are more tiresome than being subjected to large doses of unadulterated irascibility from those very same people. The Israeli documentary “The Cemetery Club” straddles the line between grating and feisty, which means that it hits rock as often as it strikes gold.
Tali Shemesh pokes and probes, trying hard to extract insights from her aged subjects. But they are wise enough not to submerge themselves too deeply in the past, and eventually the filmmaker lets go of the urge for profundity.
We’re left with a colorful, hit-and-miss documentary that easily holds our attention but ultimately doesn’t tell us much we didn’t already know about Israel, the Holocaust, family or aging.
“The Cemetery Club,” which is being co-presented by the Holocaust Center of Northern California and Temple Sinai of Oakland, screens in the Berkeley and Palo Alto portions of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
The documentary gives viewers the pleasure of eavesdropping on the Academy of Mount Herzl, a group of now-elderly Israelis who have met every Saturday for years in a park next to the national cemetery on the Jerusalem hilltop.
These frail men and women continue to embrace a life of the mind, although it must be said that they are far better talkers than listeners. The rambunctious conversation ranges from reminiscences to political diatribes to original poems and stories along the lines of one man’s poignant description of waiting in vain for his son’s visit.
These folks live in the present and the past, for the future doesn’t extend much beyond the next Shabbat meeting They share a certain history, evoked through one man’s concern about whether he should read a Schiller verse in the original German lest that upset some members.
The filmmaker is especially interested in two Academy regulars, her sharp-tongued grandmother Minia and her great aunt Lena. In fact, so much of “The Cemetery Club” focuses on Shemesh questioning Lena that it often feels like a glorified home movie.
Minia is a quiet lady who is happy to be left alone or to make small talk. Her sister-in-law, on the other hand, is a live wire who sparks disagreements between them without even trying, notably on a trip to the Dead Sea for a soak.
At one point, Minia asks why she’s nervous. “I’m not nervous,” Lena replies. “I’m traumatized.”
Perhaps the most stunning revelation is that, after Lena immigrated to Israel following the war, she put their children in orphanages so she could study (and eventually become an attorney). Apparently they were nice institutions, and it was a time when nation-building took precedence. But still.
Lena admits, after all these years, that it was an odd thing to do. But it’s still unclear whether she links her decision with one son’s estrangement for the last dozen years.
The film begins with a prolonged, amusing scene in which Lena angrily lectures Shemesh that “The Cemetery Club” is a terrible, misleading title because the group does not meet IN the cemetery but in an adjacent park.
Alas, the title seems more and more appropriate every time a member of the Academy passes away, and we are reminded that the remaining survivors are getting closer to their end.
Of course, from that perspective we are all members of “The Cemetery Club.”
“The Cemetery Club” screens at 12:30 p.m. Sat., July 28 at the Aquarius in Palo Alto and 4:15 p.m. Tues., July 31 at the Roda in Berkeley. Tickets: (925) 275-9490 or www.sfjff.org.