Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/629850
46 P E R S P E C T I V E | M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 6 the books had taken control of the house and were engulfing the inhabitants. The family's modest life is conducted amidst these books; at night the living room turns into the parents' bedroom when a sofa is pulled out and opens into a bed. A narrow, long corridor connects between the living room and the kitchen. The kitchen reflects its status as well as the family's character: ascetic, grey and austere, remarkable in its exemplary arrangement against peeling walls. The house is surrounded by a small yard and fence, which includes areas of barren earth, a pomegranate tree and a scarecrow. The establishing scene of the turning point in the movie is placed in a prestigious restaurant with rich, decorative and unrestrained Byzantine architecture in complete contradiction to the family's austere life. This scene comes as a direct and contrasting continuation to the previous one, in which mother and son are portrayed in a highly festive atmosphere where they surprise the father at his workplace. They are both elegant and excited and he is shown as apathetic and distant. Beit Jamal monastery was the location chosen for Amos' school, actually a Catholic church. I was looking for a building which would contrast the warm Ottoman structures. Beit Jamal is a monumental structure, minimalistic and cold. The walls were painted in shiny oil-based paint to especially enhance the effect of the grey, empty nakedness of the open spaces. In this way, the place impersonates the first challenge of Amos with the difficult world outside his home environment. There he uses for the first time the tools that his mother secured for him and here Amos the author was "born." Whilst Jerusalem and Tel Aviv represent the realistic aspect of Fania's life, her stories to Amos are embedded in a world of colorful and exciting fantasy. Portman, in focusing the work on the relationship between the young Amos and his mother, created a specific need in the film: a different world, the world of Fania's stories told to Amos. The deep bond between them sways between a realistic maturity and a world of dreams. It is a story of an inevitable and unavoidable clash between fantasy and the harsh reality of life. Designing the film as a legend, but one that really happened, spiced with interludes of dream sequences as part of a continual sequence of dramatized fantasy images, is integral to the film.