The Day After I’m Gone, written and directed by Nimrod Eldar - 8.5 out of 10

The Day After I’m Gone, written and directed by Nimrod Eldar

8.5 out of 10

For those who have a teenage daughter – like this viewer – and others actually, this film would echo, provoke emotional empathy and perhaps create some significant worries – is the ‘child’ safe? – in one scene in the movie, the father of the missing girl says she is no longer a child, when asked by a police woman, but she then underlines that for the law, up to a certain age, she is still ‘a child’.

Menashe Noy is wonderful as Yoram, the father of a troubled daughter, a man whose silences are formidable - the actor can evidently play in some of those Japanese plays where they say nothing with words, but speak volumes with their face changes – a doctor at a wild life park, where they bring in a jaguar – at least it looked like one – which seemed so real and yet one would wonder if they used special effects, or they just filmed when such an animal happened to be brought in for some checkup or an issue…

Maybe they adapted the script to the animal…if the park had to examine some other species, we would have seen the panther brought in – maybe this was the panther – and some interaction is filmed among the animals, where some visitor walks out of the car, to get the ball for his son, attracting the criticism of the doctor and the wrath of one of the guardians, who explains that in case the rhinoceros were to come charging, the guard would have had to ‘annihilate it’…that was not the word he used, which was anyway translated from Hebrew, but it was a suspense moment for the under signed…

What does he mean? He would kill the poor beast for a stupid ass?

The daughter of the veterinarian, Roni, is missing and he has to call the police, where they emphasize that she is a ‘child’ and ask him some questions that bring forth amusing answers, that also show how old fashioned the man is, at least in things connected with iPhones – he has a cellular that appears to have been made sometime before 2002, or cost $ 2 – tweeter, social media, because he has no idea if the daughter has an Instagram account and almost nothing about what she does online…

Roni returns nevertheless, but just as we may think this problem is over, in the middle of the night, there are heavy knocks at the door and when the father opens, a uniformed man and a woman are at the door, together with some other emergency response people behind.

Although it may look clear that this is official and not a prank call, Yoram wants to see identification – this being Israel, it could actually make a lot of sense, given the many attacks, the permanent state of alert cause by various murderous lunatics that kill innocents, the rockets that come raining down from fundamentalists, Hezbollah and so many others.

Alas, the hero becomes more than unreasonable, quite pathetic in his opposition to the emergency unit at the door, even after they say that there is an outfit which has received an alert message, indicating that someone had expressed the intention to commit suicide at this address, identified with the IP numbers on the net…the father is insisting that she has returned, it is alright, he had made a notification about her missing, but all is fine now, she is asleep, in her room and there is no need for all this kerfuffle in the middle of the night.

It goes on like this for what appears to be a very long time, until the emergency responders get into the room of the girl, who has indeed taken something dangerous, but the fight is not over, because now the veterinarian shouts he is a doctor and explains what they need to do…she has taken ‘x’ and he gives the name of whatever he is sure she has ingurgitated and makes every effort to act in the direction he is sure it must be acted…

The others are successful finally in restraining him and they take the girl to the hospital, where another somewhat amusing, if also outré scene takes place, for while Yoram is waiting on a hall, others are in the same place, two of them ultra- orthodox, religious men, with the well-known hats, the curly long sideburns and the continuous bending back and forth, accompanied by the reading of holy texts and while they do this, another ‘man of god’ comes to the waiting, anxious veterinarian and offers him some texts, just like Mormons, Witnesses of Jehovah and other denominations often do and indicates where to read…what passage.

Yoram is a freethinker – or at least he looks it and his attitude looks like he does not give a penny for the idea of reading prayers to make his child recover – but this turns out to be a critical moment, that would reveal just how much he loves his daughter, because he would relate that he prayer for her while waiting for her hopeful recovery, though there would be many tensions between them.

Indeed, he would comment on the fact that there is an element of hate included in…love and he is not saying it, but positive psychology studies have shown that parents experience a boost in wellbeing when…their children leave home – there would be some, better said many explanations for that…teenagers can be difficult to handle, as Roni proves so eloquently, and the continuous fights between the guardians that have to impose limits on alcohol, time to come back from parties, smoking weed or anything in the house or anywhere leads to a sensation of relief when this clash is over…

The film is not just about the relationship between widowed man – his wife had died – and motherless daughter, for they visit with relatives and the theme of racism, intolerance is exposed through Arie, a fundamentalist on this side of the divide, upset for good reason though when a monument is almost destroyed, though his explanations, rants, abuses and disgusting racism and intolerance are there on scree to show us how terrible this attitude can be…