In brutally hilarious and ultimately sobering detail, the excellent Israeli satire “James’ Journey to Jerusalem” portrays the education of an innocent abroad.
From religious idealist to callow sellout, from exploited to exploiter, James’ “progress” illustrates capitalism’s downside. That’s a benign reading of the movie, believe it or not — at its core “James” is a scathing indictment of the way in which Israel has sold its soul to pay for a Western lifestyle.
“James’ Journey to Jerusalem” opens Friday, May 14, in San Francisco and Berkeley, fresh from its local premiere in the San Francisco International Film Festival. Since Israeli films rarely linger longer than two weeks in theaters, procrastination is not recommended.
Wide-eyed James (played perfectly by the young South African actor Siyabonga Melongisi Shibe) lands at the airport in Lod as a pure-hearted Christian emissary of his African village. But a cynical immigration officer — every Israeli James meets is cynical — figures him for a job-seeker rather than a tourist, and throws him in jail.
Salvation arrives in the form of a balding Tel Aviv hustler, Shimi, who covertly bails out a few unlucky travelers, including James. A supplier of cheap menial labor to a variety of businesses, Shimi (Salim Daw) now controls James’ passport and destiny.
Unlike most of Shimi’s other migrant workers — who live together in cramped rooms under the watch of a beefy Russian foreman — James isn’t a loafer or a drinker. He’s a fine young man with an impeccable work ethic and the sole goal of fulfilling his pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
Shimi can’t believe his good fortune. As a bonus, James is the one worker who passes muster with Shimi’s irascible father, Sallah. A farmer back home, James transforms Sallah’s yard from a patch of weeds to a triumph of landscape design.
In return, Sallah (Arie Elias) teaches James how to succeed in Israel, and encourages the young African’s heretofore unknown entrepreneurial skills.
Sallah’s most important lesson: “Don’t be a frayer.” That is, don’t be the kind of person who others take advantage of.
Meanwhile, James’ embrace of asceticism is challenged at a mall filled with colorful athletic shoes and consumer products.
All in all, it proves to be a surprisingly short hop from the first lie James tells to protect a fellow worker to the full-blown deception and corner-cutting necessary to run his own temp-worker business behind Shimi’s back.
Writer-director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz (“The Inner Tour”) does a marvelous job in his narrative debut of subtly leveraging and shifting the audience’s sympathies for the three central characters. The movie’s greatest irony is that the more familiar James becomes — that is, the more like us — the less we like him.
Countless movies have taken digs at shallow materialism, but “James”‘ setting gives it a shocking resonance. This is the Holy Land, after all, where the communal spirit fueled the kibbutz movement and pilgrims still journey to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
By the time James finally gets to Jerusalem, both have fallen off the pedestals erected at the beginning of the movie.
A singularly pithy and disturbing fable, “James’ Journey to Jerusalem” is not to be missed..
James’ Journey to Jerusalem” opens Friday, May 14, at the Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness, S.F., and the Act I and II, 2128 Center St., Berkeley.