Walk on Water

The name of the film comes from a famous story from the Bible where Jesus walks on the Sea of Galilee to save his disciples from the storm. He says to them, “Take courage, don’t be afraid.”

This reflects on life in general. We all go through difficult, faith-testing circumstances in life. But if we know that we are moving on the right path we should gather courage and move on. The ‘storms’ will come and go.

Eytan Fox opens his film Walk on Water (released in 2004) with an Israeli Mossad (Israeli intelligence and security force) agent, Eyal, poisoning a Hamas leader who is vacationing with his family in Istanbul. When he returns home he finds his wife dead with a suicide note by her side. Eyal is a stereotypical Israeli man, sure of himself. Even after facing the suicide of his wife, he stubbornly refuses to seek outside help and talk to a psychologist, despite his boss’s instructions to do so. Sensing that he needs some time to regain his footing, Eyal's boss assigns him to find an elderly Nazi officer, Alfred Himmelman, whom he wants to get before God gets him.

For this Eyal has to befriend this Nazi officer’s grandson, Axel, who is coming from Germany to visit his sister, Pia, in Israel. Pia had left home a few years back and Axel has come to Israel to convince her to come home for their father’s 70^th birthday. Eyal poses to be a tour guide and takes Axel around the country, to Galilee (where Axel tries his walk on the waters of the sea), to the Dead Sea, the Palestinian territories and other places. He is with them most of the time, but he places a recording device in Pia’s dorm which covers what he misses.

Axel has the skill to make friends very easily. He makes good friends with Eyal, letting down Eyal’s tough-guy machismo. Their friendship softens Eyal’s heart, giving him second thoughts about his commitment towards his work. Eyal finds himself taken with Pia, who displays warmth and openness which he had never expected to find in a German.

When Eyal realises that Axel is gay, he initially is disgusted by the thought. He asks his boss to remove him from the assignment as he thinks that it anyway is pointless because neither Axel nor Pia know anything about their grandfather. He misses Axel and Pia’s conversation when she reveals to her brother that her estrangement with her parents began when she discovered that they were hiding her grandfather (who played a major role in the Nazi war crimes).

When Eyal’s boss later discovers this conversation he sends Eyal to Berlin to kill the old Nazi ex officer. Here he again meets Axel and realises that his orientation has nothing to do with who he is as a human being. Axel’s and Pia’s company helps Eyal develop the ability to see people as individuals and not merely as representatives of the larger group.

When Eyal is faced with killing the old man, he is unable to do it. He breaks down in Axel’s arms and says that he doesn’t want to kill anymore.

The film is cinematically very simple. Light music, smooth camera movements, very little use of flashbacks. The performances of Eyal (Lior Ashkenzi) and Axel (Knut Berger) hold the film together. They don't act to the film's shifts in tone, but like two men at an impasse. They want to be friends, but can’t put all of their ideological baggage and prejudices aside. The film focuses on this uncomfortable human conflict.

The film also concentrates on the very little things that add to the storyline. The suicide bombings, the dinner in the kibbutz dining hall, the tug between Eyal and Rafiq (a Palestinian waiter), the mention of Pia’s boyfriend leaving her because she was a German and her grandfather an ex Nazi officer. Sometimes these details in the film are criticised to distract attention from the main storyline. But they are very important as they set the overall mood.

I’d like to end this post with the letter that Eyal writes to Axel two years later, when he is married to Pia and they have their kid Tom. This also justifies the title of the film:

Hi Axel

It’s 5 in the morning and Tom is finally asleep again. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to you and your dear sister. All that talk about having babies and how it would change my life. It did. I have become a sleepless slave. I would go back to bed now, but I can’t. We’re picking melons this week. Anyhow, you and this Andreas of yours should come for a visit. You know, do the loving uncle thing...so Pia and I can get away for a few days.

The truth is being a father is not that terrible. It’s actually quite fascinating. All kinds of new things are happening to me. I dream. Last night I even dreamt of you. We were in the North again, by the sea of Galilee. And you take off your sandals, step forward...and simply begin to walk on the water. And you don’t fall. You don’t sink, nothing. You’re just walking on water...as though it was the easiest thing in the world. And then you turn around...and hold out your hand, and I...I follow you. And suddenly both of us are walking on water. And we keep walking and walking. There is this music all around us. And I look at you, and you smile at me...and everything is so peaceful. And we feel good. Just...good.