The Other Son Blu-ray Review
Nature vs. nurture?
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, March 16, 2013
There is probably not a parent alive who hasn't looked at their child at some point and asked themselves, "Where did
you come from?", or at least joked, "You can't
possibly be my child". Kids can be so different from their
parents that it's sometimes a bit amazing, and even kids from
the
same parents can be like night and day in everything from appearance to food choices (and I say this from
personal experience). So when we hear of these oft-told "switched at birth" stories and some wonder "how could they
not know that child wasn't theirs", I for one want to respond with a hearty, "Easy".
The Other Son takes
that general setup which has been fodder for countless Lifetime outings and various movies of the week through the
years and refracts it through the prism of the seemingly eternal conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That
gives what is at its core a rather soap operatic plot an unexpectedly potent and poignant perspective, though perhaps
strangely, the film isn't overly political and in fact has a rather surprisingly sanguine attitude about Israeli-Palestinian
relations. Fundamentally
The Other Son is a film about two families suddenly thrown into unfamiliar territory (no
pun intended) when they discover their babies, now approaching eighteen, had been switched at birth. The interpersonal
dynamics between the parents and ultimately the boys themselves forms the basis of a fascinating and intimate drama
that may have larger issues on it mind, but which has the grace not to foist them on the audience as part of a screed like
propaganda effort.
Israel has a requirement that all able bodied young citizens engage in some form of civil service, and for Joseph Silberg
(Jules Sitruk) that means joining the Israeli Defense Forces. That in turn leads to a blood test where a stunning
discovery is made: Joseph cannot possibly be the child of his supposed parents, Alon (Pascal Elbé) and Orith
(Emmanuelle Devos). Ironically it turns out that the long roiling tensions in the Middle East led to the horrifying mixup
when during a bombing attack and resultant evacuation of a hospital, two new mothers were given the wrong babies
during the ensuing chaos. Even more troubling is the fact that the other family turns out to be Palestinians, the Al
Bezaaz family, consisting of Yacine (Mehdi Dehbi), who is in reality the Silberg's son, as well as Yacine's parents Leila
(Oreen Amari) and Said (Khalifa Natour).
Part of the emotional impact of
The Other Son is watching the unfolding realization on the part of these two
young men as they
come to terms with the fact that they're not whom they've thought of themselves as being. It may sound like an
impossible, or at least
improbable, thing to happen to anyone, but as repeated news reports over the years have proven, these mixups
do actually occur
from time to time. If I might be permitted a brief sidebar into autobiography, in my own personal experience, I had
something at least somewhat similar happen. I grew up as
the child of a so-called
"mixed marriage" between a Jew and a Christian, although my father's Judaism was
never mentioned in our
home life (I know some may find this hard to believe, but it's the absolute truth). Orphaned at an
early age and left to fend for himself in a variety of foster homes, my father had come
from an immigrant
generation that wanted more than anything to assimilate, to blend in to the so-called melting pot, and to not be
defined by his previous nationality or supposed
religion, and in fact my
sisters and I found out later that he had never divulged his background even to my mother (again, hard to believe, but
true). Though my sisters and I
always suspected we
had this ethnic identity, it wasn't until we were clearly informed by our Uncles (my father's brothers) of our background
that we had "proof",
and even then, my father refused to discuss it and my mother refused to believe it. When my eldest sister ended up
living in London for
several years, she was able to track down birth certificates for my father and his siblings as well as marriage certificates
and other data of
our long deceased paternal grandparents, all of which clearly showed our Jewish heritage (my father had even changed
his original Hebrew
name to an Americanized form sometime in his teen years). This might seem like a minor "revelation" compared to what
the kids in
The
Other Son go through, but it perhaps illuminates how many of us find out things about our past or our families that
suddenly put
everything we've experienced in a completely new light.
Co-writer and director Lorraine Lévy does a commendable job in personalizing the age old conflict between the
Palestinians and
the Israelis, but perhaps even more importantly, she attempts to peek beneath the surface of how we all tend to
identify ourselves within our particular family unit. The relationships between the parents are fascinating to behold in
this film. The fathers are both like boxers, having retreated into their various corners before engaging each other in a
sociopolitical ring, while the mothers (perhaps expectedly) tend to view things more from an emotional angle. But there
are fascinating little moments between the husbands and wives themselves, including intimations of guilt at not having
recognized they ended up with the wrong child.
The most moving elements here are the interactions between Joseph and Yacine, two young men on the cusp of real
adulthood (we'll forego the traditional Jewish custom of anointing a 13 year old male an adult after his Bar Mitzvah) who
suddenly have to figure out who they are, both individually and in this new forced relationship with each other. Joseph
has to come to terms with suddenly
not being Jewish (incredibly his Rabbi tells him he'll have to convert in order
to be recognized, something that I, too, have heard through my life since only my father was Jewish and I'm therefore
not considered to be "really" a Jew by the Orthodox and Conservative wings of the religion). Yacine on the other hand
has to deal with his supposed brother Bilal (Mahmood Shilabi), who somewhat akin to the Rabbi in Joseph's life,
completely ignores Yacine's history and decides his "onetime" brother is now The Enemy.
Perhaps the most salient philosophical point that Lévy is positing to the audience is that labels are meaningless. Yacine
and Joseph are still the admirable young men they have always been, no matter what nationality and/or religion
they've been raised in and no matter what choices they make going forward. Some may be put off by the almost
nonchalant conclusions that Lévy comes to in the film's closing act, but that may in fact be part of her design, to let us
all know that no matter how seemingly traumatic the issues we confront, there are at least semi-happy endings to be
found if only we look hard enough for them.
