Hatufim (TV series)
Sep. 12th, 2013 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWell, it's spelled with a "H" on the German DVD cover, anyway. As the season consists of nine episodes, I have finished it, or rather, the first one, because the ending let me conclude that like Homeland, the show it inspired, it's meant to be an ongoing show. Definitely worth watching in its own right, telling its own story in a very different setting. If they wouldn't partly share producers, I wouldn't even call one an adaption of the other if I didn't know, though knowing that, it also makes for a fascinating intermedia dialogue, because it's intriguing to contrast and compare different storytelling choices and aesthetics. It says so much about fears, hopes, things that resonate differently in a different cultural context and things that are universal.
One of the key differences is of course that in Hatufim, you have three Israeli soldiers who were held prisoner over 17 years until two of them were released and one does not come home, whereas in Homeland, you have one soldier (well, okay, there is also another one, but that's not apparant from the outset), who is "found" during a different military action, and he was imprisoned for eight years. That the release of Nimrod and Uri, the Israeli soldiers, was negotiated, and also means the release of (non-specified, with one exception, Libanese and Palastininan prisoners on the Israeli side ) would not have been possible in an American context, but it is an important part of the story in an Israeli one. In episode 4, Nimrod is confronted by the family of a victim of the bombing attack whose mastermind has now been released so that Uri and Nimrod could come free. While the release of Uri and Nimrod is generally celebrated, there are also counter voices and "the price was too high" demonstrations. This is something the show presents as a shades of grey matter and deals with, whereas it completely avoids any exploration of the Libanon war where Nimrod, Uri and Amiel were captured, and the word "Palestinian" is never spoken except in a flashback to the video shot after the soldiers' original capture, by one of hte captors, who makes a reference to "Palestinian soil", but that's it. Nobody ever talks about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. There are (Israeli, not Syrian or Libanese) Arab characters showing up in the last third of the season, and they're important, but not (at least not yet) in a way conneted to domestic or foreign policy; instead, they provide Nimrod and Uri with keys to a puzzle which I'll talk about later.
(Meanwhile, Homeland uses US drone strikes in the Middle East as an important plot element that provides a key motivation to one of the two main characters, while the Nine/Eleven attack provides a key motvation to the other. Of the various one shot or recurring characters, at least one names the Palestinian question as a motivation.)
Both shows present a less than flattering picture of the secret services per se, but this is given different weight in the narratives. Not least because of the central dynamics. The character investigating Nimrod and Uri, Chaim, is a middle aged mid level male, after his prominent place in the second and third episode fades into the background and only gets a few appearances during the rest of the season. The agent he charges with becoming Uri's girlfriend in order to spy on him and find out whether or not the two soldiers were turned (I was wrong about the show not using this as a plot point, obv.), Iris, similarly is a minor character and we find out little about her. She becomes attached enough to Uri to feel bad about what she does, but that's about the only characterisation she's given, and Chaim is most definitely no Saul. (Or David Estes, for that matter.) He's good at his job and spotting inconsistencies, but not paternal or sexist and vindictive; what he isn't good at is whole human interaction thing. When he says "I'm on your side, Uri" it comes across as so creepy and fake that you don't even need the flashback to Uri's interrogators/torturers saying hte same thing to understand why Nimrod and Uri don't believe a word of it. While the state in both shows spies on its returned imprisoned soldiers, the methods used in Hatufim are curiously (for this day and age) old fashioned; Iris encourages Uri to write a diary and steals it later, as opposed to, you know, his house being bugged. And the emotional twists are in exact reverse. The first half of the first season of Homeland lets the audience guess whether Carrie is right or simply paranoid; then, when both she and the audience conclude that Brody is in fact innocent, it's revealed that yes, Brody was turned. Hatufim in a way does the reverse. It lets Chaim figure out right at the start that something is off about the story Nimrod and Uri tell, he finds out how they're communicating while fooling the surveillance (fingertapping is used on both shows), and by the start of ep 4, he pronounces the suspicion that they may have been turned while the audience is treated to the flashback of one of the Syrians giving Nimrod a telephone number. A few eps later, however, it's become clear that neither Nimrod nor Uri were turned, while the whole telephone number thing starts Nimrod on a quest that leads them to realise there may have been something dodgy about their original capture and/or years of imprisonment from the Israeli side, that there was a curious involvement of the former (and now dead) boss of the Mossad. (This, btw, Chaim has no idea about; he's only mid-level.) There is none of the glitz and high tech of an American spy show; the way Uri realises who Iris is working for is by accidentally spotting her car in the parking deck of the goverment building he and Nimrod go to to get their physio therapy, and he and Nimrod are able to visit an Arab village twice without being tracked.
As Nimrod and Uri aren't double agents, they are less ambiguous than Brody, though only as much as the lack of willingness to blow up the VP and assorted dignitaries to kingdom come and destroy the woman who is on to you makes you a better person; they're not uncomplicated or without flaws. At first, Nimrod seems to be the stable and Uri the broken one but as the show continues it becomes clear that Uri's open jitteriness and emotional acting out makes him in fact more grounded, while Nimrod's repression means he not only can't confront one of the most horrible things that happened to him - his belief that he killed the third prisoner (this is not a surprise when you've watched Homeland) - but also can't truly connect to his wife and children, while Uri at least reastablishes relations with his father. Their central bond is with each other, and reminds me not of Homeland but of the various books about the hostages in the 1980s I've read, most of all of Brian Keenan and John McCarthy. Incidentally, here's where you can tell this is not an American show: Nimrod's daughter, Israeli!Dana (whose brand of brattishness is different to American!Dana's, I'll get to that), who can be relied upon to say the most crass thing imaginable in any given situation (which is used as a source of black humour in the show more often than not) asks Nimrod in the pilot whether he was raped during his imprisonment, and while that's clearly meant as a provocation, Nimrod and his wife Talia several eps later in a quiet moment discuss the question of sex for each of them during those 17 years apart, and she not only asks him about the possibility of rape (which he denies, though a quick flashback makes it clear he's lying) but also whether he had sex with Uri. (Not in a scandalized manner, just, well, thinking that this would have been an option when you're locked up together for 17 years.) Whereas both male rape and consensual m/m action still tends to be avoided on the US network shows I'm familiar with when they offer war prisoner stories. (For all that Abu Nasir's relationship with Brody is paralleled with Carrie's in season 2 of Homeland, the show painstakingly avoids suggesting sexual interest on Nasir's part, or the idea that Brody at any point during his captivity/turning would/could have had sex with another man.)
While Nimrod and Uri are the main male characters, the three main female characters are not supporting their story but, at least in the case of two of them, treated as main pov characters as well. They're Talia (Nimrod's wife), Yael (the sister of the third soldier, Amiel), and Nurit, Uri's former fiancee; I've talked about Nurit before and sadly her narrative is the one I have the most criticism about. While the early episodes present it from her pov, and the public slut shaming for the fact she didn't wait for Uri but fell in love with his brother and married him is horrible but also presented as unfair and wrong, this culiminates in a big fight and reconciliiation with Talia in ep 4 ... and from this point onwards, while the slut shaming is over, so, more or less, is Nurit's pov. Instead of giving us, say, more scenes with her and Talia, the scenes involving her are about Uri still being in love with her and his brother, her husband, being jealous and insensitive and thus inadvertendly driving her towards Uri. It's a rare soap opera type story in this show, and I wish they'd found something else to do with Nurit. Talia, however, is treated very well by the show. She's brought up her children on her own, has a well paid job, and the fact that Nimrod doesn't (having been captured as a young soldier, he has no experience of civilian life and no qualifications, and is lucky an old friend gives him a job that basically amounts to putting stamps on envelopes) is one of many strains between them, which the show presents from her pov, ditto Nimrod's inability to deal with their son (who was born in his absence). Nimrod fares a little better with Dana but by no means developes the close bond with her which Brody does with American!Dana. There are reasons - his guilt over what happened to the third prisoner, his need to find out whether there was some sense and agenda in how he and Uri were treated - why Nimrod isn't emotionally or physically available at several important moments for her and their children during the season, but these reasons aren't treated as more important than Talia's, and while she's super patient and understanding at first, and tries her utmost to find ways to help Nimrod, you're - well, I was - relieved when she finally snaps and has had enough, giving him an ultimatum.
While Brody's son in Homeland exists but is narratively irrelevant, Nimrod's two children, both older than their American counterparts, are both developed and contribute to the story. The son, Hafzab (spelling?) has a problem which again could not translate into an American context, because military service is obligatory in Israel, and Hafzab, with a father who has been a tortured prisoner for 17 years, is genuinenly and understandably scared. Which he can't confess to his parents. So he dodges the first few summons to present himself for physical testing, and when it inevitably comes out and he runs away, the fact that Talia has to deal with this alone with no help from Nimrod is the straw that finally breaks the camel's back. Meanwhile, Dana (who is old enough to already be in uniform) is a firm believer in the Cordelia Chase credo that "tact is just saying stuff that's not true" and as I mentioned finds a way to go for the crassest punchline, which however because Talia tries to be so hard to be understanding and Nimrod is so repressed almost feels like a relief. While like American!Dana she has a joint now and then, what troubles her mother isn't that but her tendency to act out her issues by having casual sex with older men. (Obvious Freudian implication is obvious and Dana is self aware enough to make fun of it to her therapist before trying to seduce him, too, so she doesn't have to go to therapy any longer. He's wise to her ways, though, and foils her.) That Dana has far more scenes with her mother and brother than with her father is another key difference to the emotional dynamics of the Brody family in Homeland.
The third female main character is Yael (or is it spelled Jael), the younger sister of the prisoner Amiel who doesn't come back. While the families of Nimord and Uri offer stories of how families cope (or not) with the trauma of enforced long absence and then return, Yael's story is about grief and irrevocable loss. It uses a device that made me think of Six Feet Under - Yael regularly talks to her brother, not as an actual ghost but a manifestation of her psyche and emotional sate - and intersects not so often with the others, but it still feels like part of an organic whole, even before the twist of the very last scene revealing something about her brother. If I have a criticism, then only that the actress chosen for Yael looks a bit too young to have many memories of a man who was captured 17 years ago, but maybe she just has a youthful face. She is very good, though, through all the denial-anger-bargaining-acceptance stages of grief.
Minor observations: like Homeland, Hatufim mid season reveals there was an Arab boy whom the prisoner taught and formed an emotional connection with. Here I have to give Homeland the advantage, though, because Abu Nasir has a reason to bring Brody and his son together to begin with; as Carrie later says, after putting Brody through hell, he gave him someone to love so of course Brody got attached. There is no Abu Nasir equivalent in Hatufim, there are several characters in charge of the prisoners over the years, not just one mastermind; one of them has a son whom Uri gets to teach starting when the boy is six. But the boy doesn't die, and Uri in fact says goodbye to him before getting released, at which point he's just passed his A-levels, for which he compliments his teacher. Here I have to question the logic. I mean, Uri has no more professional qualifications than Nimrod does - he also was a young soldier when taken prisoner - and while I can buy he can teach a six years old kid maths (Uri's father being a shop owner), it does beggar belief he's also qualified to teach him/help him through the entire curriculum including final grades. Just how good is the Israeli school system? Also, isn't a powerful Libanese or Syrian Arab (the show is not specific there - the soldiers were originally captured in Libanon, but released in Syria) able to afford other teachers to help his son in maths if it's not about turning a prisoner via emotional attachment? (And no such attempt seems to have been made with Uri.) Incidentally, the names of the respective boys carry their own symbolism. In Homeland, he's Issa, which unless I misrenember is the Arab version of "Jesus". In Hatufim, he's Ismail, and that's of course Abraham's other son, the ancestor of all the Arabs as Isaak is the ancestor of the Jews. Ismail's father has a photo in his house that's identical to one Uri later spots when he and Nimrod are on the trail of the mysterious phone number - a dead Arab garage owner in an Arab in Israel who as they find out got regular money from the former (also dead) Mossad boss has the identical photo in his house, an adult male figure with two boys. Leaving aside the Abraham, Isaak and Ismail symbolism, it asks for the speculation that the dead Arab garage owner was an informer working for the Mossad and that Ismail's father (who dies in the show's last episode, though of natural causes) is as well, so maybe Uri got the math teacher job because Ismail's father couldn't help him without blowing his cover yet made his existence a bit more bearable this way. But then again, there is the very last scene of the sason offering yet another twist, which I shan't spoil.
Torture scenes: are gruesome on either show though working effectively via implication - i.e. you see the before and after, and only very brief flashes of the during. (As when Talia asks Nimrod if he was raped, he has a flash of several men holding him down, no more than that, and in the present says "no".) But because Nimrod and Uri at least had and have each other, whereas Brody was alone, the resulting brokenness is of a somewhat different nature. Carrie and Brody forming a genuine if completely fucked up connection in s1 is partly possible becaause Brody finds it impossible to relate to his wife and only partly to his teenage daughter (and of course because of his secret mission, but even leaving that aside). Uri and Nimrod still have each other in freedom as well, so there is not the same need to find someone, anyone, who can relate. (Btw, in ep 4, Talia in her big fight and reconciliation with Nurit says they - Talia, Nurit and Yael - were prisoners as well, and that Nurit marrying someone else meant she just deserted and left them there, but the tentative paralel/contrast here established isn't explored further where Nurit is concerned.)
Spy scenes: worlds apart. As I mentioned, Iris uses the old fashioned method of diary reading (after encouraging Uri to have one in the first place), which is privacy violating and intrusive but doesn't have the extra high tech voyeurism/creepiness of Carrie in early s1 being able to watch Brody and his wife have sex (or not). And clearly the reputation of the Mossad is overrated when two traumatized POWS can throw them off the trail not once but twice when meeting Arabs. While there is a gender hierarchy going on in both shows - Carrie being a woman is a very important part to her clashes with her superiors in the CIA - it's not really addressed in Hatufim. I mean, you have Chaim as the superior and female subordinates - Iris and the two girls originally charged with the surveillance of Uri and Nimrod -, whereas you don't see high ranking female spies, but then again, you don't see many spies, full stop - the ones around are minor supporting characters. Oh, and the sex question is treated completely differently. Carrie's affair with Brody is part of what allows him to basically destroy her with the CIA at the end of s1. Meanwhile, the state basically asks Nurit to be available to Uri for the first few days until they can break it to him she's moved on, and no one but her husband is allowed to find this objectionable, and while Iris later on starts to feel guilty about Uri because she becomes attached to him, the fact that she's originally assigned to him as a girlfriend is treated as normal as well.
Tension: is character-driven on Hatufim - there is a cliffhanger at the end of most episodes, but no ticking bomb somewhere, and while Chaim suspects Uri and Nimrod, there is no suggestion as to what he thinks these two could actually do if his suspicion turns out to be true (whereas Carrie from the start suspects Brody was turned for something big), so the questions driving the story are more "what happened to these two and why, and how do they and their families cope?", as opposed to "will it be found it in time what the plan is and which of our two main regulars will crack first?"
In conclusion: Hatufim makes for compelling watching in a way that's not spoiled at all if you've watched Homeland first.
One of the key differences is of course that in Hatufim, you have three Israeli soldiers who were held prisoner over 17 years until two of them were released and one does not come home, whereas in Homeland, you have one soldier (well, okay, there is also another one, but that's not apparant from the outset), who is "found" during a different military action, and he was imprisoned for eight years. That the release of Nimrod and Uri, the Israeli soldiers, was negotiated, and also means the release of (non-specified, with one exception, Libanese and Palastininan prisoners on the Israeli side ) would not have been possible in an American context, but it is an important part of the story in an Israeli one. In episode 4, Nimrod is confronted by the family of a victim of the bombing attack whose mastermind has now been released so that Uri and Nimrod could come free. While the release of Uri and Nimrod is generally celebrated, there are also counter voices and "the price was too high" demonstrations. This is something the show presents as a shades of grey matter and deals with, whereas it completely avoids any exploration of the Libanon war where Nimrod, Uri and Amiel were captured, and the word "Palestinian" is never spoken except in a flashback to the video shot after the soldiers' original capture, by one of hte captors, who makes a reference to "Palestinian soil", but that's it. Nobody ever talks about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. There are (Israeli, not Syrian or Libanese) Arab characters showing up in the last third of the season, and they're important, but not (at least not yet) in a way conneted to domestic or foreign policy; instead, they provide Nimrod and Uri with keys to a puzzle which I'll talk about later.
(Meanwhile, Homeland uses US drone strikes in the Middle East as an important plot element that provides a key motivation to one of the two main characters, while the Nine/Eleven attack provides a key motvation to the other. Of the various one shot or recurring characters, at least one names the Palestinian question as a motivation.)
Both shows present a less than flattering picture of the secret services per se, but this is given different weight in the narratives. Not least because of the central dynamics. The character investigating Nimrod and Uri, Chaim, is a middle aged mid level male, after his prominent place in the second and third episode fades into the background and only gets a few appearances during the rest of the season. The agent he charges with becoming Uri's girlfriend in order to spy on him and find out whether or not the two soldiers were turned (I was wrong about the show not using this as a plot point, obv.), Iris, similarly is a minor character and we find out little about her. She becomes attached enough to Uri to feel bad about what she does, but that's about the only characterisation she's given, and Chaim is most definitely no Saul. (Or David Estes, for that matter.) He's good at his job and spotting inconsistencies, but not paternal or sexist and vindictive; what he isn't good at is whole human interaction thing. When he says "I'm on your side, Uri" it comes across as so creepy and fake that you don't even need the flashback to Uri's interrogators/torturers saying hte same thing to understand why Nimrod and Uri don't believe a word of it. While the state in both shows spies on its returned imprisoned soldiers, the methods used in Hatufim are curiously (for this day and age) old fashioned; Iris encourages Uri to write a diary and steals it later, as opposed to, you know, his house being bugged. And the emotional twists are in exact reverse. The first half of the first season of Homeland lets the audience guess whether Carrie is right or simply paranoid; then, when both she and the audience conclude that Brody is in fact innocent, it's revealed that yes, Brody was turned. Hatufim in a way does the reverse. It lets Chaim figure out right at the start that something is off about the story Nimrod and Uri tell, he finds out how they're communicating while fooling the surveillance (fingertapping is used on both shows), and by the start of ep 4, he pronounces the suspicion that they may have been turned while the audience is treated to the flashback of one of the Syrians giving Nimrod a telephone number. A few eps later, however, it's become clear that neither Nimrod nor Uri were turned, while the whole telephone number thing starts Nimrod on a quest that leads them to realise there may have been something dodgy about their original capture and/or years of imprisonment from the Israeli side, that there was a curious involvement of the former (and now dead) boss of the Mossad. (This, btw, Chaim has no idea about; he's only mid-level.) There is none of the glitz and high tech of an American spy show; the way Uri realises who Iris is working for is by accidentally spotting her car in the parking deck of the goverment building he and Nimrod go to to get their physio therapy, and he and Nimrod are able to visit an Arab village twice without being tracked.
As Nimrod and Uri aren't double agents, they are less ambiguous than Brody, though only as much as the lack of willingness to blow up the VP and assorted dignitaries to kingdom come and destroy the woman who is on to you makes you a better person; they're not uncomplicated or without flaws. At first, Nimrod seems to be the stable and Uri the broken one but as the show continues it becomes clear that Uri's open jitteriness and emotional acting out makes him in fact more grounded, while Nimrod's repression means he not only can't confront one of the most horrible things that happened to him - his belief that he killed the third prisoner (this is not a surprise when you've watched Homeland) - but also can't truly connect to his wife and children, while Uri at least reastablishes relations with his father. Their central bond is with each other, and reminds me not of Homeland but of the various books about the hostages in the 1980s I've read, most of all of Brian Keenan and John McCarthy. Incidentally, here's where you can tell this is not an American show: Nimrod's daughter, Israeli!Dana (whose brand of brattishness is different to American!Dana's, I'll get to that), who can be relied upon to say the most crass thing imaginable in any given situation (which is used as a source of black humour in the show more often than not) asks Nimrod in the pilot whether he was raped during his imprisonment, and while that's clearly meant as a provocation, Nimrod and his wife Talia several eps later in a quiet moment discuss the question of sex for each of them during those 17 years apart, and she not only asks him about the possibility of rape (which he denies, though a quick flashback makes it clear he's lying) but also whether he had sex with Uri. (Not in a scandalized manner, just, well, thinking that this would have been an option when you're locked up together for 17 years.) Whereas both male rape and consensual m/m action still tends to be avoided on the US network shows I'm familiar with when they offer war prisoner stories. (For all that Abu Nasir's relationship with Brody is paralleled with Carrie's in season 2 of Homeland, the show painstakingly avoids suggesting sexual interest on Nasir's part, or the idea that Brody at any point during his captivity/turning would/could have had sex with another man.)
While Nimrod and Uri are the main male characters, the three main female characters are not supporting their story but, at least in the case of two of them, treated as main pov characters as well. They're Talia (Nimrod's wife), Yael (the sister of the third soldier, Amiel), and Nurit, Uri's former fiancee; I've talked about Nurit before and sadly her narrative is the one I have the most criticism about. While the early episodes present it from her pov, and the public slut shaming for the fact she didn't wait for Uri but fell in love with his brother and married him is horrible but also presented as unfair and wrong, this culiminates in a big fight and reconciliiation with Talia in ep 4 ... and from this point onwards, while the slut shaming is over, so, more or less, is Nurit's pov. Instead of giving us, say, more scenes with her and Talia, the scenes involving her are about Uri still being in love with her and his brother, her husband, being jealous and insensitive and thus inadvertendly driving her towards Uri. It's a rare soap opera type story in this show, and I wish they'd found something else to do with Nurit. Talia, however, is treated very well by the show. She's brought up her children on her own, has a well paid job, and the fact that Nimrod doesn't (having been captured as a young soldier, he has no experience of civilian life and no qualifications, and is lucky an old friend gives him a job that basically amounts to putting stamps on envelopes) is one of many strains between them, which the show presents from her pov, ditto Nimrod's inability to deal with their son (who was born in his absence). Nimrod fares a little better with Dana but by no means developes the close bond with her which Brody does with American!Dana. There are reasons - his guilt over what happened to the third prisoner, his need to find out whether there was some sense and agenda in how he and Uri were treated - why Nimrod isn't emotionally or physically available at several important moments for her and their children during the season, but these reasons aren't treated as more important than Talia's, and while she's super patient and understanding at first, and tries her utmost to find ways to help Nimrod, you're - well, I was - relieved when she finally snaps and has had enough, giving him an ultimatum.
While Brody's son in Homeland exists but is narratively irrelevant, Nimrod's two children, both older than their American counterparts, are both developed and contribute to the story. The son, Hafzab (spelling?) has a problem which again could not translate into an American context, because military service is obligatory in Israel, and Hafzab, with a father who has been a tortured prisoner for 17 years, is genuinenly and understandably scared. Which he can't confess to his parents. So he dodges the first few summons to present himself for physical testing, and when it inevitably comes out and he runs away, the fact that Talia has to deal with this alone with no help from Nimrod is the straw that finally breaks the camel's back. Meanwhile, Dana (who is old enough to already be in uniform) is a firm believer in the Cordelia Chase credo that "tact is just saying stuff that's not true" and as I mentioned finds a way to go for the crassest punchline, which however because Talia tries to be so hard to be understanding and Nimrod is so repressed almost feels like a relief. While like American!Dana she has a joint now and then, what troubles her mother isn't that but her tendency to act out her issues by having casual sex with older men. (Obvious Freudian implication is obvious and Dana is self aware enough to make fun of it to her therapist before trying to seduce him, too, so she doesn't have to go to therapy any longer. He's wise to her ways, though, and foils her.) That Dana has far more scenes with her mother and brother than with her father is another key difference to the emotional dynamics of the Brody family in Homeland.
The third female main character is Yael (or is it spelled Jael), the younger sister of the prisoner Amiel who doesn't come back. While the families of Nimord and Uri offer stories of how families cope (or not) with the trauma of enforced long absence and then return, Yael's story is about grief and irrevocable loss. It uses a device that made me think of Six Feet Under - Yael regularly talks to her brother, not as an actual ghost but a manifestation of her psyche and emotional sate - and intersects not so often with the others, but it still feels like part of an organic whole, even before the twist of the very last scene revealing something about her brother. If I have a criticism, then only that the actress chosen for Yael looks a bit too young to have many memories of a man who was captured 17 years ago, but maybe she just has a youthful face. She is very good, though, through all the denial-anger-bargaining-acceptance stages of grief.
Minor observations: like Homeland, Hatufim mid season reveals there was an Arab boy whom the prisoner taught and formed an emotional connection with. Here I have to give Homeland the advantage, though, because Abu Nasir has a reason to bring Brody and his son together to begin with; as Carrie later says, after putting Brody through hell, he gave him someone to love so of course Brody got attached. There is no Abu Nasir equivalent in Hatufim, there are several characters in charge of the prisoners over the years, not just one mastermind; one of them has a son whom Uri gets to teach starting when the boy is six. But the boy doesn't die, and Uri in fact says goodbye to him before getting released, at which point he's just passed his A-levels, for which he compliments his teacher. Here I have to question the logic. I mean, Uri has no more professional qualifications than Nimrod does - he also was a young soldier when taken prisoner - and while I can buy he can teach a six years old kid maths (Uri's father being a shop owner), it does beggar belief he's also qualified to teach him/help him through the entire curriculum including final grades. Just how good is the Israeli school system? Also, isn't a powerful Libanese or Syrian Arab (the show is not specific there - the soldiers were originally captured in Libanon, but released in Syria) able to afford other teachers to help his son in maths if it's not about turning a prisoner via emotional attachment? (And no such attempt seems to have been made with Uri.) Incidentally, the names of the respective boys carry their own symbolism. In Homeland, he's Issa, which unless I misrenember is the Arab version of "Jesus". In Hatufim, he's Ismail, and that's of course Abraham's other son, the ancestor of all the Arabs as Isaak is the ancestor of the Jews. Ismail's father has a photo in his house that's identical to one Uri later spots when he and Nimrod are on the trail of the mysterious phone number - a dead Arab garage owner in an Arab in Israel who as they find out got regular money from the former (also dead) Mossad boss has the identical photo in his house, an adult male figure with two boys. Leaving aside the Abraham, Isaak and Ismail symbolism, it asks for the speculation that the dead Arab garage owner was an informer working for the Mossad and that Ismail's father (who dies in the show's last episode, though of natural causes) is as well, so maybe Uri got the math teacher job because Ismail's father couldn't help him without blowing his cover yet made his existence a bit more bearable this way. But then again, there is the very last scene of the sason offering yet another twist, which I shan't spoil.
Torture scenes: are gruesome on either show though working effectively via implication - i.e. you see the before and after, and only very brief flashes of the during. (As when Talia asks Nimrod if he was raped, he has a flash of several men holding him down, no more than that, and in the present says "no".) But because Nimrod and Uri at least had and have each other, whereas Brody was alone, the resulting brokenness is of a somewhat different nature. Carrie and Brody forming a genuine if completely fucked up connection in s1 is partly possible becaause Brody finds it impossible to relate to his wife and only partly to his teenage daughter (and of course because of his secret mission, but even leaving that aside). Uri and Nimrod still have each other in freedom as well, so there is not the same need to find someone, anyone, who can relate. (Btw, in ep 4, Talia in her big fight and reconciliation with Nurit says they - Talia, Nurit and Yael - were prisoners as well, and that Nurit marrying someone else meant she just deserted and left them there, but the tentative paralel/contrast here established isn't explored further where Nurit is concerned.)
Spy scenes: worlds apart. As I mentioned, Iris uses the old fashioned method of diary reading (after encouraging Uri to have one in the first place), which is privacy violating and intrusive but doesn't have the extra high tech voyeurism/creepiness of Carrie in early s1 being able to watch Brody and his wife have sex (or not). And clearly the reputation of the Mossad is overrated when two traumatized POWS can throw them off the trail not once but twice when meeting Arabs. While there is a gender hierarchy going on in both shows - Carrie being a woman is a very important part to her clashes with her superiors in the CIA - it's not really addressed in Hatufim. I mean, you have Chaim as the superior and female subordinates - Iris and the two girls originally charged with the surveillance of Uri and Nimrod -, whereas you don't see high ranking female spies, but then again, you don't see many spies, full stop - the ones around are minor supporting characters. Oh, and the sex question is treated completely differently. Carrie's affair with Brody is part of what allows him to basically destroy her with the CIA at the end of s1. Meanwhile, the state basically asks Nurit to be available to Uri for the first few days until they can break it to him she's moved on, and no one but her husband is allowed to find this objectionable, and while Iris later on starts to feel guilty about Uri because she becomes attached to him, the fact that she's originally assigned to him as a girlfriend is treated as normal as well.
Tension: is character-driven on Hatufim - there is a cliffhanger at the end of most episodes, but no ticking bomb somewhere, and while Chaim suspects Uri and Nimrod, there is no suggestion as to what he thinks these two could actually do if his suspicion turns out to be true (whereas Carrie from the start suspects Brody was turned for something big), so the questions driving the story are more "what happened to these two and why, and how do they and their families cope?", as opposed to "will it be found it in time what the plan is and which of our two main regulars will crack first?"
In conclusion: Hatufim makes for compelling watching in a way that's not spoiled at all if you've watched Homeland first.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 09:08 am (UTC)Out of curiosity, is the German DVD subtitled or dubbed?
I'm very glad that you've managed to see this now, as the comparisons are fascinating (and the two storylines are sufficiently different that one isn't really a spoiler for the other, though having seen Homeland does prepare the viewer for the first-season cliff-hanger). I'm rather worried that I may miss (or have missed) the second season, as I don't follow the TV listings closely and it was on a rather obscure channel last time, no doubt because of the subtitles.
What did you make of Ilan, the liaison officer? Who seemed too nice to be true most of the time, except that I think he was one of the men who told Nurit she had to pretend to be Uri's loyal fiancee on his return (I'm not quite sure as it was the first episode, before I was sure of who was who), and I was rather doubtful about whether it was proper for him to enter a relationship with Yael as professional v vulnerable client.
As you now know, Uri was fully aware that Nurit was not his loyal fiancee, but I still find the way she was expected to play the role, even temporarily (or maybe especially temporarily) horrific, and a sign of the authorities' callous attitude, to him as much as to her.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-12 11:15 am (UTC)Ilan: I'm not sure whether he was one of the men who told Nurit that, either, but it would definitely have been his job to be there on the occasion, so - probably? You're right, that reduces his too-nice-to-be-trueness a bit. I thought he would turn out to be married, but then it turned out the reason why he didn't want Yael to visit were the files and articles about all the bereaved families, so there went my idea about what Ilan was hiding.
As the authorities didn't know Uri knew, it didn't impact on their behaviour. Btw, that Uri knew and let her play along for one night (without sex, with clinging) and then went home to his father was just the degree of messed up ness where it didn't make me dislike him, which it would have done if he'd continued it for longer. But one night, in the state he was in, okay. But the authories had no such excuse.