Tikkun

A deeply committed Hasid student at a Jerusalem yeshiva suffers a crisis of faith after a near-death experience in Avishai Sivan's visually striking but almost perversely enigmatic mixture of character study and surrealistic nightmare. Haim-Aaron (Aharon Traitel), elder son of a kosher butcher, obsessively devotes himself to his studies until he collapses in the shower of his family's apartment. Declared dead by paramedics, Haim-Aaron is miraculously revived by his father, but is much changed: he ceases to eat meat and neglects his studies. Even worse, he makes nocturnal excursions into the outside world, even visiting a brothel. Meanwhile, his father has terrible dreams about his younger son's death and an alligator emerging from a toilet, which cause him to wonder whether in bringing Haim-Aaron back to life he has offended God. Shot in luminous widescreen black-and-white, the imagery becomes ever more disturbing, including what appears to be an act of necrophilia. While the overall theme is clearly the clash between a repressive life of strict orthodoxy and the seductive power of the secular world, Sivan seems less interested in commenting on the disjunction between these two extremes in Israeli society than he is in presenting a Freudian portrait of related psychological trauma on an impressionable young person experiencing the first pangs of sexual longing. Tikkun will fascinate some with its intoxicating images presented at a glacial pace, and likely baffle and even antagonize others. A strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)