A Tale of Love and Darkness

Portman's adaptation lacks dynamic range; Unlike the often humorous book, her work is downbeat from start to finish, stuffy, and too many scenes end with a silent reaction shot of young Amos (Amir Tessler) after seeing something sordid or learning a life lesson from mom (Portman) or dad (Kahana). Despite its crippling conventionality, and sorely needing more "air", it is by no means bad. Affectingly emotional, it's a respectable debut for Portman as a director.

Our lives don't automatically have meaning just because we were alive, but only because we lived for a purpose. That holds true for stories as well--they don't necessarily say anything just because they are told. This is a tale of love, but one "seen through a glass darkly". But even love is a form of Truth, which purpose here is obscure at best. A collection of random thoughts is antithetical to coherence without a unifying thread. At least it was well titled.

This film is Natalie Portman's passion project, a kind of movie so rare in formula-obsessed Hollywood that at first you might not recognize the breadth of its feeling or the scope of its ambition. Portman enters the world of Amos Oz, Israel's leading author, through his acclaimed 2002 memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness, a book in which the writer tracked his own coming of age along with the state of Israel. Portman's film, told in subtitled Hebrew, is miles from a conventional biopic.

I feel sorry for Natalie Portman. This must have been a project very close to her heart. Directing, writing and starring in a Jewish story in her birthplace of Jerusalem, Israel and spoken in her native tongue of Hebrew. All that, yet can't left the story to become even remotely interesting.