It may seem like the distant past, but it wasn’t so long ago that the British were the sworn enemies of the Jews — the Jews of Palestine, that is, who fought them with every means at their disposal.
The year was 1947, and Britain’s hold was crumbling in the face of armed Jewish resistance and growing international support for a Jewish state. Even as the British clung tenuously to their mandated territory, they callously prevented Holocaust survivors fleeing displaced persons camps in Europe from entering.
It was an anxious period fraught with rumor, uncertainty and paranoia. Not quite enough of that tension and danger makes it into “The Little Traitor,” a child’s-eye view of the possibilities and pitfalls of befriending the enemy.
Adapted from Amos Oz’s 1997 novella “Panther in the Basement,” set in and around Jerusalem a half-century earlier, the film evokes but doesn’t embrace the darkness at the heart of its coming-of-age story.
After a year on the Jewish film festival circuit, “The Little Traitor” opens May 14 at the Opera Plaza Cinema. The poignant movie is suitable for all ages, though adult viewers will wish it were more layered and complex.
Bright, precocious 11-year-old Avi “Proffy” Liebowitz (Ido Port) and his two friends secretly plan attacks against the British occupation, mimicking in their own tiny way the campaigns of the resistance groups Haganah and Irgun. This isn’t a game for the lads, who despise the British interlopers with every inch of their beings.
Proffy (a reference to his professorial prowess in the classroom) is the only child of Polish parents who fled their homeland before the war. He’s given free run, regularly breezing through the Arab market to buy candy when he’s not hanging out with his mates, so long as he’s home by the British-declared early evening curfew.
The boy always cuts it close, and one day is snagged by a chunky soldier in the requisite khaki shorts and red beret. This would be Sgt. Dunlop (Alfred Molina), an easygoing chap who threatens to arrest Proffy but instead escorts him home. In the wake of this chance meeting, Proffy starts visiting Dunlop at British headquarters to chat, play snooker and trade vocabulary lessons. (The film bounces between English and Hebrew, with a bissel Yiddish.)
Unlike Proffy’s secretive, authoritarian father, Dunlop is open and approachable. Personality aside, the Brit represents not just the adult world but also the outside world. The fascination he holds for Proffy is both clear and innocent, but that’s not how it appears to outsiders.
When his friends espy Proffy making regular trips to the British compound, they conclude he’s a collaborator supplying information and report him to their parents. The strange and disturbing events that follow lead one to imagine the setting transposed to the West Bank today, and the Israelis and Palestinians subbing for the British and Jews.
Consider a harrowing early scene where three British soldiers rap on the Liebowitz door to make an unannounced search for a forbidden radio or signs of subversive activity. Proffy and his parents can only watch helplessly while the armed men root through their possessions.
We sympathize, of course, with the Jewish family whose home has been violated. At the same time, we can’t help but think of all the Palestinian families who’ve endured similar intrusions by brusque young Israeli soldiers.
One of the film’s weaknesses is its overreliance on dialogue to convey everything from the passage of time to relationships between characters to the impending end of the British occupation.
The boy gleans some painful life lessons from his central role, not least a searing awareness of the casualties when nationalism is allowed to trump humanism. “The Little Traitor” doesn’t simply present this theme through the eyes of one boy but implies, in an unexpectedly effective way, that Israel has gone too far in justifying harsh policies and measures in the name of national security.
By no means, though, is “The Little Traitor” all heavy-going for Proffy. Our little hero picks up another valuable insight: At heart, he’s a lover, not a fighter.
“The Little Traitor” opens May 14 at the Opera Plaza Cinema in San Francisco.