1
My Australia - Mutual Reflections of Personal and National Identities
in Ami Drozd's Auto-biographical Film.
Professor Aner Preminger
Introduction
Ella Shohat (1989), one of the pioneers of Israeli Cinema scholarship, deploys
postcolonial theory1
to explore the ways in which Jewish-Israeli cinema that was
created in Palestine and then in Israel, from the beginning of the 20th century through
1986, ignored the Arabs living in the country. Though she does not say so explicitly,
Shohat appears to be leaning on Siegfried Kracauer's theoretical approach, according
to which a national cinema expresses, whether consciously or not, the deep
undercurrents of a nation's soul (Kracauer, 1947). The obvious link between
Kracauer's theory and later postcolonial theories is a natural one to draw on, as Shohat
does. Following Shohat and Kracauer, many scholars explored in depth the concept of
"The Other" in Israeli Cinema, e.g.: (Gertz, 1998; Lubin, 1998; Naaman, 1998;
Preminger, 2012; Shemer, 2013) But in all the studies concerned with the complicated
issue of the representation of the Other in Israeli Cinema, the Other always was the
Palestinian, or Oriental Jew, (the Sephardim) – the Arabian Jew in Shoat's idiom –
and later the Homosexual (Yosef, 1998), Woman (Lubin, 1998) or the Holocaust
Survivor (Gertz, 2004, Preminger, 2012). The White Western Heterosexual Male has
always been conceived in Israeli Cinema research, as well as in all postcolonial
theories, as the one representing power and hegemony.
This chapter, however, will explore Ami Drozd's Auto-biographical film My
Australia (2011) as a case study for an original approach to the issue of migration and
its implications for personal identity as well as national and Jewish identity. In the
light of My Australia, the concept of the "Other" attains new meaning in the context
of Israeli society. It is one of the few Israeli films in which the "Other" is not the
Palestinian or the Sephardic Eastern Jew, but a Polish immigrant, who has
experienced the trauma of belatedly discovering that he is Jewish, after having been
1
Mainly: Lucien Goldmann, Fredric Jameson, Ismail Xavier (pp. 7-11); Edward Said (pp. 2).
2
raised as a Christian, and even participating in the persecution of Jews, and now in
Israel he becomes an "Other" to his peers, who perceive him as a "Polish Goy".
The issue of the "Other" has been dealt with frequently in Israeli culture and Cinema,
as well as in the political and cultural discourse. My Australia brings a fresh
perspective to this highly charged topic and also to the universal problems of
migration and identity.
Back from Golgotha – The Via Dolorosa of Descending from the Cross in My
Australia
The way to Golgotha – Jesus' walk of suffering carrying his cross on the way
to his crucifixion – is inscribed in collective memory as the ultimate journey of pain,
after which there can be, if anything, only spiritual redemption. But isn't it also
possible to imagine a journey in the opposite direction, a descent from the cross, not
on the way to heaven, but as the beginning of a terrestrial journey back from Golgotha
to Jerusalem? Would such a journey be as excruciating as the one Jesus suffered? Ami
Drozd's unique film My Australia affords us a cinematic experience suggesting a
possible journey from the cross back to life. Although the descent from the cross
towards a rebirth is the metaphorical meaning of this film, in fact the film takes us on
a concrete voyage from Christianity to Judaism, which begins with a death-experience
(the pogrom) and ends in rebirth.
The movie begins in Wroclav, Poland, with an exposition presenting the core
of the film. 11 year old Tadek (Jakub Wróblewski) is pulling, out of a private hiding
place in an attic, a miniature maquette with tiny animals - his secret friends. This is
"His Australia", his heaven on earth, his dream. Here his life's troubles are resolved,
his loneliness allayed, and his conflicted soul seeks its voice and self-definition.
Tadek speaks for the animals and to them. They are the only ones he can hold a real
heart-to-heart with. The animals are rejects or deformed, but he loves them, perhaps
precisely because of their anomaly. He says to one of the animals he has created:
"look this is my Australia, don't be afraid. Meet new friends". Tadek, who is actually
talking about his own predicament, unaware that he will soon find himself in a similar
situation, is dealing with the anxiety of alienation in a new and unfamiliar world. He
goes on: "They are also from Australia. I'm sure you are going to like them. This is
Piglet." Emblematically, she is the filthy and greedy animal that, to the viewer,
3
represents all that is contrary to Judaism. But Tadek loves her: "…One can always
count on her, a real pal. Here is your new friend. …He is too black for a kangaroo".
The icon of his Australian dream – albeit outsider, outcast, "black". At this stage of
the film Tadek doesn't like "Blacks" - "…I don't like him. He's dumb too.
(Impersonating the other animals) "Maybe we should give him a kick? After the kick
he will start speaking". Indeed Tadek will be suffering many a "kick" before he finds
his voice and emerges from the prison of his muteness. Tadek declares that he doesn't
like the "black" but still identifies with the black kangaroo through which he
articulates his cry, which resounds all through the film: "…If anybody comes near me
I'll smash his face to bits, so even his mother won't recognize him". Little Tadek's
experience of life so far has taught him that in his world it is only force that protects
him, and he will continue to need it until he completes the voyage of his maturation.
This poetic exposition encapsulates both the film's essential diegetic gesture and
young Tadek's mental journey. It also defines the film's style: the movement back and
forth within the interval of the tension between the realistic and the fantasticmysterious:
The realistic design of the attic, the pigeons on the red roof tiles seen
through the small window, and the low key yet forceful acting of Jakub Wróblewski
vis-à-vis the miniature world of fantasy reflecting Tadek's inner world; the warm
high-contrast lighting and his realistic concrete speech to the animals - the creatures
of his imagination. The "theatrical" act performed by little Tadek in the miniature
world reflexively corresponds to the cinematic act of mature Tadek (Ami Drozd's
Polish name), the film's director. The conversation Tadek holds, puppet show style,
between the mute animals mirrors the dialogue Drozd is having with the spectators,
and also had with the actors and the crew in order to make this film and to thereby
redefine his identity through cinema. For just as Tadek's existence is projected onto
the piglet, the black kangaroo and the rest of the animals created by him, so the film's
director's existence is projected onto the various characters, conspicuously on Tadek
himself, but also on Andrzej (Łukasz Sikora) his 14 year old brother, and on his
mother, Halina (Aleksandra Popławska). The kid striving to control his fate, and
seeking refuge in his imaginary Australia, corresponds to the mature director, who
never really found his yearned-for "Australia" even in Israel – as is implied by the
ambivalent conclusion of the film - and now finds it only through the cinema.
Tadek's play-acting is cut short by a sudden whistle, summoning him to carry
out a "smashing of the face" act, of the kind promised by the black kangaroo to all
4
who threatened his identity. Tadek leaves his imaginary friends and hurriedly joins
Andrzej, his brother. It is at this moment that his smallness and innocence are
conspicuous, compared with his brother and the band of Neo-Nazi hooligans, on their
way to performing a violent pogrom, an act that appears quite routine. The dissonance
between the fantasy, the childish innocence and the magic of the attic scene, and on
the other hand, the harsh violence in the following scene, is amplified by Drozd's
cinematic choices: the rhythm of the editing sharply changes from slow and quiet to
fast cuts and loud music. The static photography abruptly changes into quick camera
movements; the high contrast mysterious lighting of the dark attic is now replaced by
the cold white light of the outdoors. When the fearsome gang leader slightingly
addresses Tadek: "Little-one, what are you doing here?" Drozd focuses on Tadek's
face; he is looking from below upwards to the big ones, with admiration and envy,
while they are dealing out especially hurtful clubs and spiked knuckles. The cries of
battle are heard as the camera rests on the pure face that is momentarily screened by
the black rubber clubs passing through the frame and representing the thoughts
rushing through the mind of an entranced Tadek.
The casting of Jakub Wróblewski in the difficult role of Tadek, along with
Drozd's skillful work with the kid, place the film in a small group of movies in which
children carry a large portion of the burden (Chaplin's The Kid, De Sica's Bicycle
Thieves, Truffaut's 400 Blows). Already at the preparation for battle scene,
Wróblewski dominates the screen with extraordinary force. Casting specifically him,
with his innocent look, for the role clashes with the stereotype of the rough street
thug, who abuses innocent people - a clash that runs all through the movie, lending it
much power.
On their way to the Jewish school to beat their victims to a pulp, the camera
fastens on Tadek, who is trying to keep up with his brother and his big comrades,
making an evident effort to emulate them and prove his worthiness. Thus, when the
older ones club down an accidental passerby, Tadek stops to kick the fallen victim
and then catches up with them.
These two initial scenes lay down the film's basic premise: Tadek's being torn
between, on the one hand, the world of the imagination, a world of purity and hope
and also one of violent fantasies that are projected on to the animals, and on the other
hand, the tough and frightfully realistic world of the street thugs. At this stage, the
senseless and arbitrary violence of the youngsters could have any of several
5
explanations: Anti-Semitism, Neo-Nazism, emptiness and cruelty, or maybe hatred of
the different, the alien, the exception – as suggested by the attic scene, and also the
individual's need to define his separate identity vis-à-vis his supposed enemies. These
motifs crystalize, as the film unfolds, into a complex identity issue, where the tension
between Judaism and Christianity is among the dominant factors. The cross, swastika
and Star of David icons are dwelled on several times in the film, in order to concretize
this motif specifically by visual means. At the police station, when the mother comes
to release the boys from jail, she conspicuously exposes the cross on her chest, subtly
flirting with the police investigator. The cross, drawn out from her breasts and laid
over her dress, is seen in close-up through the big eyes of Tadek, who is peeping
through the door, and is possibly admiring his mother's manipulative playacting, or
maybe deriving a subliminal thrill from her insinuated eroticism. Much of the
fashioning of his Christian identity – before discovering its "falsity" - is projected
onto the cross. It appears that the mother, just like little Tadek and the grown up
director, makes up stories and is able to tell them with the precision needed in order to
manipulate her audience and achieve her purpose. Later, in their apartment, the cross
image is substituted by a swastika that the mother finds among the kids' things, and
finding it makes her realize the full price that is being paid for concealing their
Jewishness. Later, on the ship, the illusion that they are on the way to Australia begins
to dissipate when Tadek discerns a Star of David hanging on the neck of a boy on
deck. The Star of David image returns to plague him when it is seen hovering above
his head in the photo taken on their embarkation. A powerful moment is achieved,
poignant as well as funny, when on leaving the police station the mother inquires:
"Did you go to beat up the Jews?" Tadek, counter to expectations, does not apologize
or seem ashamed of his deed. He nods vigorously, barely hiding a smile, as if it was
quite the right thing to do that is sure to make his mother happy. But this comic
moment actually vividly dramatizes the contradictory existence of the Jewish mother,
the survivor of the Holocaust and of Polish Anti-Semitism, with her children, who
believe they are Christians, having been protectively brought up that way, and are
seen to join the persecutors. It is this survival choice of hers that has the extreme
implication of causing Tadek's dramatic identity confusion.
The cross motif, as an important ingredient in the representation of Tadek's
Christian identity, is developed in the church scene. Andrzej, in a white choir robe, is
accompanying the choir on the organ. Tadek, who is waiting for him, kneels and
6
crosses himself, intently contemplating and admiring the hypnotizing pictures of
Crucified Jesus. Drozd emphasizes these cinematic moments by choosing to place the
camera at Tadek's eye level, and so shoot the Crucified Jesus at a particularly low
angle. Crucified Jesus is thus amplified to unrealistic dimensions, the camera focusing
mainly on the wounds in His hands and feet, evidently strongly impressing the boy.
The importance of the Church and the deep Christian aspect of the identities of Tadek
and Andrzej, receives further emphasis in this scene. Moreover, if in the attic scene a
parallel is suggested between Tadek and both the piglet and the black kangaroo, in the
church scene a parallel is drawn between Tadek and Crucified Jesus. At the literal
level this correspondence serves to reinforce Tadek's image as sufferer. Allegorically,
this is an anticipatory allusion to the reverse Via Dolorosa movement of Tadek in the
film, on his way back from Christianity to Judaism. Moreover, the Crucified Jesus is
not only a functional metaphor for the process Tadek is undergoing. He sincerely
identifies himself with Jesus. What begins in the church with admiration and being
hypnotized by the Crucified is developed later in the film into a strong sense of a
common fate with Him. An ironic effect is created, which is part of the implied
ideology of the film: Jesus is deprived of the status of "exclusive absolute" victim,
and "victimhood" is granted to every "Other" as such. The film thereby gains
universal validity.
Andrzej, the church organist, seems fully integrated in it. Tadek is entranced
by the music and the pictures of the saints. The juxtaposition of this scene with the
previous pogrom scene, especially Andrzej's being so active in both, not only
emphasizes the depth of the Christianity in their identity, but also suggests the
connection between the previous scene's violent brutality and the ethos surrounding
the Crucifixion. One cannot avoid recalling the deep historical connection between
seeing the wounds, as Drozd skillfully shows them through Tadek's eyes, and
incitement to slaughter. The particular case of Tadek and Andrzej lends this context
an ironic and subversive twist. For later in the film, in Israel, both will become the
"Others", the oppressed ones, for being "Polish Goyim". The irony, which fully
surfaces only much later, is anticipated here when Andrzej discards his choir robe and
replies laconically to Tadek's inquiry why, that he has no further use for it. Andrzej is
thus demonstratively shedding the first layer of his old identity.
The revelation to the lads of their Jewish origin turns out to be unexpectedly
complicated. Unable to maturely confront Tadek's emotions surrounding his Christian
7
identity, the mother uses the mediation of Andrzej whose age is between childhood
and adulthood. The dramatic unfolding of Tadek's finding out the shocking truth,
which is intensified by the fact that Andrzej already knows the secret, is the drama of
the film. The spectator experiences the discovery along with Tadek and exclusively
from his point of view. In that way Drozd doubles the tension surrounding the multistage
discovery. At the beginning of the film the secret exists as a "skeleton in the
closet". In the sequel, Andrzej already shares the secret that is unspoken, though
insinuated by cinematic devices, by the mother's reactions and the mounting tension
between the brothers. Finally, the moment of truth arrives, and the secret is revealed
to Tadek. This precise build up lends greater credibility and force to his inability to
cope and hence to his outburst. The disclosure of their identity-secret is
metaphorically the narrative counterpart of the suffering Jesus undergoes on his way
to Golgotha.
The piecemeal disclosure of the secret begins after they emerge from the
church, as they are sitting on a wall in a deserted courtyard. Andrzej starts:
A: Listen, do you remember Uncle Felix?2
T: I remember. Did something happen to him?
A: No, only that…you know…how shall I say…he is Jewish.
T: How can that be? ...how did it happen to him?
A: It didn't happen to him, he always was a Jew.
T: Really? Fuck. He was such a nice guy.
A: And this aunt of ours who used to send us presents from Australia...
T: She's also ...- A bloody Jew?
A: Don't shout!...
T: How did all those Jews get into our family?
A: Mother is too.
T: She too? You aren't lying? Our mother?
Tadek is overwhelmed, unable to deal with the information that has hit him
suddenly. This moment is accentuated by his jumping off the wall just when Andrzej
mentions that their mother is also Jewish. The camera and the mise-en-scene both
emphasize Tadek's being below, while Andrzej, who accepts the reality, remains on
the wall higher than Tadek. Tadek inquires, raising his head up to his brother:
2
The original dialogue of the film is Polish. The translation here, as well as in the rest of this essay was
made with the help of both the English and the Hebrew manuscripts supplied by Ami Drozd.
8
T: What about our Father?
A: No, Father isn't.
T: You see? So we also aren't. It's not about us.
His enormous relief, that he can count on his father's not being Jewish, makes
him hop back onto the wall and join his brother. At that moment there appears a group
of workers. Of all of them, it is the dwarf, the exceptional one, who addresses him. A
secret pact is thus formed between the dwarf and Tadek, who has just discovered his
"defectiveness", which is entailed by his Jewish flaw.
While the boys are venting their anger and frustration by smashing glass
bottles against the wall, Gypsy-circus music emerges in the soundtrack, stressing the
otherness and anomaly motif, yet bestowing on the occasion a Felliniesque air of
fantasy. In a sharp transition from the camera being directed to the sky –
metaphorically suggesting Jesus' Ascension – the camera turns back downwards to the
sea and reveals a ship on its way to the Land of Israel. The film's second act, the sea
voyage to Israel, is a sequence in which Tadek mourns his Christian identity so
violently torn away from him. The ship in the middle of the sea is like a womb where
everything begins; the water is the water Jesus walked on; a Jungian liminal space
between one continent and the other. The Christian has died - at least formally; the
Jew is beginning to grow in torment. At sea there is an inverted Baptism, a ritual of
exiting from Christianity. It is also a visual allusion to Moses in the basket. The Jew
who was hidden in the Nile, and was raised as an Egyptian by Pharaoh's daughter, is
now in a large "basket" on the way back to his Jewishness. The sequence activates a
wealth of highly significant associations and allusions that hint at possible
explanations of Tadek's previous false identity, and relates the story to Jewish
mythical traditions, without detracting from the story's total concreteness and
relevance to our times.
The breach between the dream of traveling to Australia and the actuality of
sailing to Israel is first disclosed through an encounter on deck with a Jewish boy. Not
having a common language, the two communicate by gesture, sounds and visual
images – essentially all the means of cinematic expression used by Drozd the
filmmaker in communicating to his audience. Tadek is trying to convey to his new
friend that he is going to Australia, by imitating a kangaroo. The friend understands
him to be talking about a sheep. An ironic dissonance is thus generated between the
image that is evocative of the expanses of Australia and the sense of freedom
9
suggested by the hopping of the kangaroo, and the sheep, the creature of the flock, an
iconic traditional representation the Levant, to which they are headed. The kangaroo
also echoes the opening of the film. All of a sudden the "Black kangaroo" acquires the
additional connotation of "black sheep", referring to Tadek's oddness and "trouble
making" nature. Moreover, in the new context it acquires the sense of the kangaroo's
being a pouch animal, carrying its young close to the womb. This image emphasizes
the mother's mal-functioning, and conveys that during Tadek's journey from his
childhood in Poland towards what will supposedly be his new home, he is in effect
displaced, homeless, and in desperate need of a mother who would carry him in her
pocket like a kangaroo.
Consequent to the encounter with the Jewish boy, the skull caps seen and the
Benediction over the Wine at the dining room, and finally the Star of David stamped
on their photo, his mother, Halina, is compelled to divulge the disheartening secret to
him and admit to the worst lie:
H: We're not really traveling to Australia.
T: Where to then?
H: (showing him pictures in the Jewish Agency brochure)
Look it's so nice there…it's exactly like in Australia.
T: But where are we going?
H: There is lots of sea, beautiful beaches… Sun…
it used to be called Palestine…and now it's Israel.
But for you it's the same. It looks just like Australia.
Tadek bursts out in rage, smashes the framed picture and shouts:
T: Lies! It's all lies! You are lying to me all the time!
I won't go to any stinking Palestine! I don't believe you!
You are not a Jewess! I won't have anything to do with
this shit!
H: Try to understand, I am Jewish! And I am in this shit!
And you are too! And your Jesus was also a Jew.
Tadek who escapes to the deck says to Andrzej:
T: Not only are we some sort of Jews, we are also going
to their country!? The parcels were also Jewish.
And Jesus was a Jew!? It's all lies and you're lying too.
A: But Jesus was a Jew.
10
T: Nonsense. Jesus - a Jew? They killed him.
You're telling me they killed one of their own?
During this horrifying dialogue the realization hits him about the absurdity in which
he is entrapped. Here the film begins to develop the subversive insight that the Jew's
being a victim of anti-Semitism is not a unique "Jewish Problem" but a universal one,
namely, an existential condition of otherness and anomaly. If Jesus was a Jew, there is
no essential difference between Jew and Christian. The distinction is a mere artificial
ploy for the purpose of rejecting the Other's faith. Hence follows the universal and
complex conclusion of the film regarding the general deceptiveness and vagueness of
identity as such, alongside the issues of xenophobia and racism. Tadek who
persecuted Jews in Poland, is about to be persecuted in Israel for being a "Goy",
different and other.
Simultaneously with the unsettling revelation about Jesus' Jewishness, the
circus-like music heard at the beginning of the sequence recurs, and there appears the
icon that embodies Zionism: the shores of Israel come into view. The moment of joy
of the passengers is amplified by the soundtrack calling on them to look at the shores
of the holy land. The fulfillment of the Zionist dream, viz. the arrival in the Holy
Land, is also the height of Tadek's grief, the moment of the shattering of his
"Australian Dream". The cinematic means of expression create irony and complexity
through the sad Gypsy music that gradually turns into joyful circus and carnival
music.
The mother and the two sons – a skewed allusion to the Holy Family – are
born from the sea into their new identity as Jews. The reception procedure on their
arrival is portrayed as an act of violence, of violating one's privacy, in anticipation of
the "violent act" toward the end of the film. The Jewish Agency official registers the
immigrants; the Doctor examines them for "imported" diseases, and the Rabbi peeps
very casually into their underpants and witnesses their shame. At the entry test, then,
the uncircumcised boys fail. This iconic scene gains, in the new context, horrifying
connotations. Its place in the film, the simultaneous medical examination by a doctor
together with a rabbi examining whether they are "kosher Jews", in conjunction with
the Neo-Nazi tones at the beginning of the movie in Poland, suggests a distorted
mirror image of the "medical" examinations the mother's family probably underwent
by Dr. Mengele and his horrid crew. That was arguably the reason why the mother
concealed her Jewish identity even from her children. Furthermore, the humiliating
11
examination first outlines the equation, central to the film, between becoming an
integrated Israeli and being circumcised. However, when Tadek is finally
circumcised, by Jewish tradition he enters the Covenant of Abraham and is officially
received into the bosom of Judaism.
The shock of the transition from Poland to Israel receives highly expressive
cinematic meaning through the changes in lighting and color, in the precise camera
work of the Polish photographer, Adam Sikora, who succeeds in reflecting the gap
between the opposed worlds through light and color. The colors in Poland belong to
the yellow-brown family whereas the dominant white, in Israel, represents the glare
that strikes you wherever you look, to the blinding point. The warm colors and soft
light in Poland express their belonging to and being comfortable with Polish culture,
whereas the cold colors in Israel faithfully reflect the boys' alienation and their feeling
of being rejected by their new surroundings.
A scene that is central to the identity issue and to the complicated relations
between the brothers occurs on the Haifa beach. Since they are not accustomed to
enjoying the beach, they go into the water in their under pants. Andrzej loses the
elastic of his underpants. Tadek, who assumes the role of the grown up problem
solver exchanges his good underpants for Andrzej's. Tadek puts on the huge
underpants without the elastic, and with a quick improvisation ties them round his
waist with a long wire that he finds in the sand. Thus, when with his enormous shorts
hanging on the wire that is dangling behind him like a tail, he leaps and playfully
fistfights with his brother, Tadek is acting out his maquette vision of the "black
kangaroo" outsider – beating up anyone who is trying to attack him. This connotation
of the Kangaroo association is borne out, of course, in their ensuing playful dialogue,
when Andrzej says:
"Don't think you're Cassius Clay" Tadek replies: "I am a kangaroo. Try me again".
The exchange of shorts also echoes the swapping of roles between the two –
the young one becoming the senior – and it epitomizes their identity through the piece
of garment that shields the genitals, whose shape distinguishes Jew from Christian, as
will soon transpire. The nostalgic intimacy between the brothers, when they do not
have to hide their identity, allows them also to express their animal, vital and wild
side. The two wrestle and go wild, attempting to bridge the gap between their Polish
past and Israeli future. At that liberating moment Tadek allows himself to curse in
12
Polish, and even to emit anti-Semitic cries, which still express part of his identity.
And then he starts the following exchange with Andrzej:
T: You know what bothers me all the time?
A: The wire?
T: Yes, that too. But, also that I can't curse properly here.
Both of them begin to curse together:
T & A: Dirty Zhids! Fucking Zhids! Schmuks!
Stinking dogs! Sons of bitches!"
T: It's very weird, all the children here aren't ashamed
to be Jews. They're even proud of it.
A: That's because they don't like non-Jews.
Never show your dick to anyone.
T: Why not?
A: Theirs is a little different.
T: What do you mean, different?
Andrzej makes drawings on the sand and explains:
A: Ours is like a church tower.
Theirs is like a mosque's minaret.
These two precise visual images, actually an aesthetic-architectural observation, bring
to the fore, the entire historical inter-religious tension surrounding circumcision, now
crucial to the boys' experience. We thereby get a humorous highlighting of the full
weight of the problem laid on the boys' shoulders – a burden impossible to shirk.
In the process of their shedding their "Goyish" identity towards acquiring a
Jewish-Israeli identity, the boys are taken to a kibbutz because of their mother's
inability to provide for them as well as her inability to deal with their difficulties. On
the kibbutz, the sincere effort made by the members that adopt them to genuinely
accept the boys is vividly portrayed. Particularly conspicuous is the warmth lavished
on Tadek by his adoptive mother, and the fondness shown him by his teacher. Still
despite all this, the Israeli melting pot, in its kibbutz guise, is presented here as a
failure; the failure of Israeli society to embrace the stranger and contain his
foreignness. And perhaps at the universal level it is our failure as human beings to
contain and accept the Other. Xenophobia deals Tadek severe blows. When his
classmates speak behind his back, he escapes to a hiding place that he has found near
the kibbutz. The role of the secret attic in Poland is now fulfilled, ironically, by an old
13
trench, a remnant from the war of liberation. In the Israeli trench Tadek erects a
surrogate alter, with an old postcard of the Madonna and Child hanging on the bunker
wall. Only there, below the ground, is he able to kneel in the way he used to in
Poland. After the prayer he plays at shooting at the ruin opposite. He does not realize
its significance, but it is an abandoned ruin of Palestinians who were driven away.
Thus, the treatment of the issue of the native and the foreigner acquires an additional
layer of complexity at the metaphorical level. On one of Tadek's flights to his hiding
place, he addresses Mary and Jesus in a monologue reminiscent of the attic scene:
Holy Mother, you must help me. I am afraid they will find
out the truth, and that will be the end. That's why I appeal
to you, dear Jesus. You are the only one who can understand
me. You too were a Jew and a Christian. I can't talk about it
with my brother because he sins all the time, and doesn't want
to stop sinning. I can stop sinning and be like them.
Tadek genuinely wishes to change, hence the tragic complexity and emotional
force of the process he undergoes. He wants to belong, but his brother clings to his
alienation and keeps on stealing and clashing with the members of the kibbutz. The
older Andrzej no longer helps Tadek join the grown-ups, as he used to. At this stage
Andrzej appeals to Tadek for help only when it suits his purposes, but he sabotages
Tadek's integration into the kibbutz when he feels threatened. Drozd weaves a
complicated tale of an incessant struggle between the desire – sometimes fulfilled - to
assimilate, and the barriers to integration that are almost insurmountable. At the
height of the drama, when Tadek's classmates try to undress him by force to see if he
is circumcised, he returns to his hideout, and to his dismay finds a huge bulldozer
filling the trench with earth. The bulldozer has buried Jesus and Mary deep in the
ground and with it Tadek's last sanctuary. Ironically, the Israeli bulldozer also
destroys the trench, the memorial to the war of liberation. In the attempt to force
conformity, according to the requirements of the melting pot, Israeliness erases our
individual and collective memories, our past in the Diaspora, and the heritage of our
war of independence. This connotation becomes yet richer and more complex, as the
wide angle shot reveals the abandoned Palestinian ruin in the background. Thus we
get, in one visual space, a presentation of a coalition of the Jewish, Christian and
Moslem individuals who are downtrodden and effaced in the name of the new
Israeliness and its ethos of building the country. The music in the scene is a variation
14
on the circus-gypsy theme that has already appeared twice in the film. The music thus
connects the discovery in Poland of their Jewishness with the arrival in Israel as the
fulfillment of the Jewish identity, and finally, with the burial of their Christian
identity.
Tadek realizes that he must give closure to the transition by externalizing his
acceptance of the new identity. His decision to be circumcised constitutes a critical
stage of his maturation. For the first time in the film he actively assumes the Jewish
identity without direct external coercion. This time he is the one to reveal a secret to
his mother and brother and he chooses to make his announcement at an intimate
moment of reconciliation between the three, after a scene of a violent outburst of his,
which could still lead to his expulsion from the kibbutz. On the lawn under the trees
Tadek reveals to his mother and Andrzej his determination to enter the Covenant of
Abraham. To his surprised mother's question, "Are you really suffering all that
much?" he replies simply: "I want to be like everybody." His determination and
confidence is totally devoid of religious and national romanticism. For him it is not
the Covenant of Abraham, but just a deforming excision which will enable him to
assimilate. There is here an ironic suggestion that even crucial changes and decisions
which are supposedly ideological or identity-shaping, do not necessarily stem from
psychological or philosophical insights, but rather from sheer survival, almost animal,
drives. The boy who in Poland wanted to be like everybody and therefore acted like a
good Neo-Nazi hooligan, now in Israel wants to be circumcised and become a
complete Israeli. What are the implications of these choices for one's national
identity? Drozd leaves the answer up to the spectator. He has created a story that
compels the audience to deconstruct this human complexity and lay it bare. His
autobiographical story thus achieves universal subversive relevance, expressing the
truth of many of us.
The film's resolution sequence opens in the hospital, with Tadek's being
conveyed to his circumcision. He is wheeled in a bed to the operating room – a
journey that recalls the Via Dolorosa. He is lying helplessly on the moving bed,
mumbling, being present at his own metaphoric execution. The circumcision is the
final act of his violent removal from the metaphoric cross. The camera does not show
the cutting of his genital, or his unconscious face when he is anaesthetized, but rather
focuses on the face of the rabbi, who is reciting the benedictions and conducting the
religious ceremony – for him it is the covenant of Abraham. The rabbi here is
15
reminiscent of the rabbi peeping through his underpants on his arrival. Then the
camera turns onto the Doctor, as a stream of blood is splattered on his face and gown.
The photography and designing of the scene is such as to echo the sight that
transported Tadek in the church, when he was watching the blood in Jesus' wounds.
After the recovery from the operation, Tadek accepts his new self, with his new and
"defective" genital. He addresses his new member: "you now look like a jerk",
echoing his words to the ugly Piglet at the beginning. One is also reminded of
Andrzej's words on the beach, "ours is like a church tower. Theirs is like a mosque
Minaret". The visual reinforces this association, when at the end of the movie the
children and their mother march toward the sea and pass through a domed entrance. Like
the dome of a mosque? Like the new "dome" in Tadek's genital? The shore,
which on their arrival to Israel aroused ambivalent feelings, is now a "sanctuary" for
the three of them, enabling reconciliation with their new-old identity. The circle of
Christian images is closed; it is now interwoven with Jewish images. The sea that
hitherto was an enormous womb, echoing the water Jesus walked on and the water of
Baptism now reverts to its literal and direct meaning, the shore of the Land of Israel.
Conclusion
We have thus seen that the film My Australia places its protagonist in two conflicting
cultural contexts that constitute mirror images of each other. In Poland Tadek is an
"other" who seeks to belong, but fails because of his Jewishness that surfaces
suddenly at a critical moment, precisely because his desire to belong is based on his
differentiating himself from the Jewish "Other". In Israel he is an "other" because he
is a Polish "Goy" who is later willing to pay a very high price in order to integrate and
eradicate his otherness. But the Polish and Christian "Otherness" that he was reared
on has become an integral part of his personality, and he therefore cannot shake it off.
Moreover, erasing parts of one's identity is necessarily violent. The "Other" is
therefore a vague and elusive concept that does not essentially depend on the
individual. It is rather the society, within which one belongs to a minority, which
determines one's otherness. Again, in any individual there are many sides, each one of
which possibly constituting the "Other" of opposing inner ingredients. In the Israeli
case, otherness does not necessarily derive from ethnic, religious, or gender origins, or
from whether one is a native, old or new comer, but from the degree of one's
16
deviation from the new Sabra ethos, and is in inverse proportion to one's ability to
conform to the spirit of the place and the times. The parallel cinematically established
between the erasing of Tadek's "sanctuary" or symbolic church, in the trench near the
Kibbutz, and the Arab building that became the ruin; the parallel between the erasures
of these two entities, and the effacement of renewed Israel's own history, the
affirmation of this parallel is essentially subversive and it raises new thoughts about
the connection between personal and collective identity. This image is important
because it illuminates the "grades of nativity" scale obtaining between the Arab
native, relative to whom all the kibbutz members are mere immigrants from abroad,
and the kibbutz members born in Israel who are the Jewish "Sabra" natives, relative to
Tadek and Andrzej – the new new-comers. The film proposes a new discourse
wherein there is a continuity of personal and collective identities that bridges over and
connects the many identities that constitute the whole, be they individual or collective.
Only an ongoing dialogue between the different and opposing components of identity
could enable the structuring of a complex personal identity, alongside a multi-layered
collective identity.
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