Right before the film’s title card drops, the story of Blue Box takes an unanticipated turn. At first, it seems like we will be treated to a nice, if bland, series of recollections related to Joseph Weitz by his great-granddaughter and the film’s director, Michal Weits. The movie is anything but that, she announces in narration, voice defeated by a sense of disappointment and a bit of disbelief. The man was originally known as the “father of afforestation” throughout Israel, admired by many for his philanthropy and his unassailable work ethic. Others would come to know him as the “Architect of Transfer,” though, in the expulsion of the Arabic population during the events that would shape the Israel-Palestine conflict for decades to come. Things may never be the same in the Middle East again, barring the kind of interfering diplomacy that comes along every millennium or so, and Weitz had no small part in that.
Weits has a lot of warring feelings about the discovery she made in a colossal series of notebooks that acted as a comprehensive and meticulous diary of her great-grandfather’s actions during the ‘30s and ‘40s (actor Dror Keren voices passages from those diaries). On one hand, she knows she cannot and should not feel responsible for whatever he might have done to broaden the divide between the peoples of Israel and Palestine. On the other hand, whatever wealth she might have inherited from her ancestor possibly was made on the backs of refugees fleeing or being evicted from the place they once called home. The disappointment is not only with one family member, then. It’s also with every family member who might make excuses for him.
This was, after all, a different time, says a couple of uncles and maybe a cousin, who are among the various Weitz family members acting as interview subjects in the course of this investigation. Weitz was a strident nationalist, whose belief in the sanctity of his homeland extended to an isolationist belief that any immigration to or emigration from Israel weakened its international reputation. For all intents and purposes, Weitz must have felt his heart was in the right place, as all people with firmly held beliefs likely do. That isn’t an excuse or a justification, though, and part of the challenge for Weits with her film is to explore, through her great-grandfather’s own words, what justification there could possibly have been.
Interwoven into the documentary is all the historical material one might anticipate from a documentary that touches on a significant moment in history. What is unique about the material, though, is that Weits contextualizes it within something of a biography of the film’s subject. Each of the various landmarks of the period is recounted in order to tell Weitz’s story, which is then deepened further by some passage from the various diaries. It’s a smart way of handling the bunch of information that is told to us – much of which works to build the portrait of Weitz as a man whose genial family life he maintained as separate from his political and moral stances – in an efficient way that also speaks to the history of the time.
If the film were only a solid exhibition of the historical and the personal, it would be successful, but it should be noted that Weits’ own agenda with the documentary lifts Blue Box above the typical success of the form. Some in her extended family bristle at the idea of making a film about their relative in this way, and if the reactions of one man here are any indication, it may be that this movie’s production has ended a relationship for good. It might seem crass to say so, but it is a testament to the filmmaker’s thoughtful attitude toward and courageous use of access that such an outcome could even be possible.
Photo courtesy of Cinephil
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