The last decade has seen Eran Riklis establish himself as one of the most respected directors currently working in Israel. His 2004 film The Syrian Bride was a mainstay of international film festivals and collected awards at Montreal, Locarno and Ghent.
His follow-up, Lemon Tree (2008), was equally acclaimed, picking up the coveted Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Exploring internal relationships between Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, both films were relatively successful at the home box-office. But neither film gained significant recognition at the Israeli Academy Awards, in spite of seven nominations each in their respective years.
Adapting The Human Resources Manager (based on the novel A Woman in Jerusalem by A.B.Yehoshua) for the screen, Riklis moved away from more politically motivated films. A quiet, contemplative film, it surprised many in walking away with five awards at the 2010 Israeli Academy Awards, including best film, director and script.
The story
As the film opens, ‘The Human Resources Manager ‘(Mark Ivanir) of a successful Jerusalem bakery receives a fax of a forthcoming defamatory newspaper article.
In the report, ‘The Journalist’ accuses the factory of inhumanity: an employee, killed in a recent suicide bombing, remains unidentified and unclaimed in the city morgue. A partially legible wage slip has led The Journalist to the bakery.
To avoid a scandal, the owner (‘The Widow’) of the bakery instructs Ivanir, at the company’s expense, to accompany the body of Yulia to her home in Romania for burial. The Journalist is to travel with him to document the journey.
So begins a journey of self-discovery for The Human Resources Manager, with the support of the Israeli Consul and her husband in Bucharest, to return the body of a young woman to her family in a remote village in the Carpathian Mountains.
Underlying themes
Essentially a road trip, The Human Resources Manager is about the ‘forgotten’. Yulia Petrache, an itinerant migrant worker: her estranged husband eking out a living in a Romanian industrial wasteland: the abandoned 14 year-old son: a military outpost: a rural village and its population.
But for the eponymous ‘hero’, it’s also about rediscovery and his own self-identity, a sense of himself, his wife and his daughter.
Filmed during a bleak winter, the grey, lifeless Romanian landscape adds pathos to the tragic events unfolding as Yuiia’s body is moved across the countryside by different modes of transport.
It’s not an easy film. The vibrant opening scenes set in Jerusalem highlight the languid pacing and long silences of the road trip, with only an ebullient Consul providing any light relief.
But it’s not a depressing film – as Ivanir sets out to return to Israel, change has been made. By the bakery ‘doing the right thing’ in returning Yulia to Romania, The Human Resource Manager has learnt humility. Unlikely friendships have developed between total strangers and understanding reached.
The Human Resources Manager
- Directed by Eran Riklis (The Syrian Bride, Lemon Tree)
- Written by Noah Stollman (Adam Resurrected, Someone to Run With)
- Produced by Tudor Giurgiu (Ashes and Blood, Katalin Varga) Thanassis Karathanos (Irina Palm, Ajami), Talia Kleinhelder (Ajami, Restless), Haim Mecklberg (Five Hours From Paris, Mar Baum), Elie Meirovitz (Seven Days, Seven Minutes in Heaven), Estee Yacov-Mecklberg (Five Hours From Paris, Land of Genesis)
- Starring Mark Ivanir (Schindler’s List, Mr & Mrs Smith), Reymond Amsalem (Lebanon, Seven Minutes in Heaven), Gila Almagor (Munich, Summer of Aviya)
Keith Lawrence - Published writer of articles in magazines, newspapers and websites, predominantly on culture, alongside ghostwriter/editor/copywriter.
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