“Noodle” An Israeli Film

Sitting at home with my parents over thanksgiving break, the volume blaring in the basement as we sat around the television to watch this “ immigrant story” with the subtitles on, so my friend Katherine could understand the Israeli movie “noodle.” The Film recently won best film in Israel and in the Montreal film festival in 2007 and I couldn’t help but analyze the film without voices from our class discussions coming to mind. The film tells the story of a Chinese family that like many immigrant families from Asia which come to Israel to find work (often they are philippino) end up working as house-cleaners and helpers often assisting with elderly grandparents that live at home. The specific story here dives into the life of Miri a women who was widowed by the lost of 2 husbands who served in he IDF and has a women who come to her house to clean and often brings her little son Noodle along. One day the mother leaves the son, promising to return shortly, until it is revealed she was deported back to Beijing living the six year old boy with this widowed Israeli flight attendant living at home with her divorced sister. The plot unfolds to trace the relationship that forms between the two sisters and this Chinese boy, and their determination to unite him with his mother. The only trouble is that illegal immigrants are unaccounted for, and this child has no citizenship-neither in Israel nor in china.

Brilliantly directed, the film traces their daily lives over the course of a few months, trying to communicate with this boy, who in many regards fully embodies a stereotypical image of “the orient” and is treated as the other, unreachable and not understood in this Israeli society. Yet somehow, they manage to communicate as they slowly learn each other’s languages (the Israeli sisters and the boy) and embrace the universal non-verbal forms of communication, becoming fully invested in the mission of getting him “home”

But is “home” for Noodle in china where his mother was deported? Or is home in Israel where he was born and raised his entire life, though he speaks not a word of Hebrew? This torn identity reminded me of some of the books we read earlier in the semester and is definitely something that immigrants and refugees all over the world some coming from the Arab Countries have to deal with.

At first I was rather astounded by the film, extremely sarcastic in tone, it began depicting this boy slurping Chinese noodles, in what I found to be a rather stereotypical manner. Yet as i continued to observe, remaining open-minded and taking an analytical approach (the class theories streaming through my consciousness, some of which i blurted out to share with the other viewers- only to be told that my academic lens has incapsulated all i do, which i guess is a positive thing) i realized that despite some rather limited representations, the movie was striving to send a universal message of accpetance and anti-clash notions.

I loved it, my parents liked it a lot, and both of my friends, neither of whom speaks Hebrew- enjoyed it thoroughly- I definitely recommend it. I found myself relating it to the many discussions we had (My rating: ****) i would be curious to hear what fellow ILA Arab Media students would have to say in reaction to the film.