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HOLY LANDS
Director: Amanda Sthers Cast: James Caan, Tom Hollander, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Efrat Dor, Rosanna Arquette, Patrick Bruel MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:40 Release Date: 6/21/19 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 20, 2019 Holy Lands tells the story of a family that seems incapable of spending any significant time together. They communicate mostly through letters, in part because the patriarch has moved to a patch of land in Israel, where the phone lines are down and cellphone reception is non-existent, but mostly because refuse to make any face-to-face expressions of emotion. Well, except for anger of the active and passive varieties, that is. They have plenty of that to spare. The father, by the way, has moved to Israel to raise pigs on a farm that also is supposedly the site of Jesus' childhood home. It's a great way for Harry (James Caan) to offend at least two local faith traditions, although his motives seem less to do with religious protest and more to do with the fact that he's just, in general, a miserable S.O.B., who likes to know he's in miserable company. That bit of jokey blasphemy is the gimmicky foundation of writer/director Amanda Sthers' movie, which is based on her novel. Harry makes up only a quarter of the family unit, which also includes his son David (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), his daughter Annabelle (Efrat Dor), and his ex-wife Monica (Rosanna Arquette). The son, whom Harry essentially has disowned, is gay and a successful playwright in New York. The daughter is student in Belgium who lives off a recently discontinued allowance from her father. Monica discovers she has cancer and about a year to live. They kind of talk to the old man: David through unanswered letters, Annabelle by way of a short visit (where she's greeted by a slap across the face), and Monica through an occasional video chat or phone call. Eventually, the mother and daughter get closer, while David begins to distance himself in a way akin to his father's behavior. Harry becomes friends with a local rabbi (played by Tom Hollander), who's perhaps the only reasonable and believable character here, and is threatened by an ex-communicated fanatic of a priest, who believes Harry's land belongs to the Catholic Church—all while the farmer treats a piglet as a pet. It's a strange story about emotionally stunted people, which distances itself from the emotional core of these relationships in favor of all the weirdness, the obvious conflicts, and the angry outbursts. Holy Lands mistakes the sweep of its story for depth. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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