'Time of Favor'

Beauty and the beast

FOR BETTER OR for worse, it's a sure bet that even the least-sound bite-savvy rube or yokel is now conscious of the atrocities committed in the name of god(s) and country over certain holy grounds. A recent headline that simply read "Violence in Middle East Escalates" was noteworthy not only for its brevity but also for proving that listing the details themselves is no longer a necessity; by now we can probably fill in the tragic specifics on our own with an increasingly smaller margin for error. And while no particular conflict takes center stage in the new Israeli film Time of Favor, the threat of violence hanging over every scene doesn't require any exposition to stoke its dramatic fires. An army officer (Aki Avni) runs a unit of Orthodox soldiers composed of West Bank yeshiva students. Taken under the wing of the demure but dangerous demagogue Rabbi Meltzer (Assi Dayan), he finds himself caught between the military brass and his mentor, who follows a faith-based militia ideology. Throw in the rabbi's rebellious daughter (Tinkerbell ... you read that right, the actor's name is Tinkerbell) as a romantic interest, a spurned suitor/vengeful comrade-in-arms (Edan Alterman), and a plan to bomb the symbolic Dome of the Rock, and the powder keg's fuse is lit. Director Joseph Cedar's take on tensions surrounding Israel's ground zero has garnered a slew of awards and popular success in its homeland, thanks in no small part to having two leads able to put a photogenic face to the story's frisson. One wishes that the film's subject wasn't so thoroughly filtered through the prisms of romantic melodrama and political thriller, but Favor still resonates, thanks to being torn not from today's headlines but from the same decades-long cycles of righteousness and hostility that continue to stain its sacred ground. (David Fear)