An Article of Hope (2009). Directed by Daniel Cohen, Produced by Daniel Cohen and Christopher G. Cowen. English, 54 minutes.
By Yiftach Levy
SANTEE, California–When you see the typical blockbuster box-office offerings – action/adventure, animated, sequel-driven franchises, what have you – it may be hard to believe that a simple, straightforward talking-heads documentary can be as compelling and moving as An Article of Hope is. But such is indeed the case with this 2009 documentary about the first Israeli astronaut in space, Air Force Colonel Ilan Ramon. Ramon was killed along with the six other crew members aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated after reentry and crashed in Texas in 2003.
Several years had passed from the crash by the time the filmmakers spoke to the relatives of the astronauts, volunteers who searched for remains, and others involved. This passage of time means that these people have presumably moved beyond the pure grief, and now speak of their loved ones and their actions with some sadness, yes, but more with palpable pride and love. There are very few instances of speakers tearing up or getting choked up with emotion on screen; it is the viewer who is forced to feel the loss now, with an immediacy and a weight that is at times tough to handle.
Ilan Ramon would have been a fine subject for a documentary film all by himself, what with his key role in the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor site in 1983 and numerous other notable and inspirational personal and professional accomplishments. An Article of Hope is not just an homage to Ramon and his colleagues, though. The film is a powerful testament to the resiliency and potency of the human spirit, even though a considerable amount of screen time is devoted to an inanimate object. Also on board the Columbia, and playing a central role in the documentary, was a tiny Torah scroll given to Col. Ramon by his friend, Professor Joachim Joseph. Prof. Joseph was a survivor of the Shoah, and had read from the miniature scroll in a clandestine bar-mitzvah ceremony in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He recounts in vivid detail the circumstances of his family’s capture and deportation from Holland, his internment at the camp, and the astonishing circumstances of the religious coming-of-age ceremony held in the midst of the destruction of so much of Europe’s Jewry. His story is accompanied by photographs of some of the people involved. Where those are not available (primarily in the climactic scenes in the camp), his narration is augmented by beautiful charcoal-like drawings (by Nate Crane) that powerfully animate his life-affirming tale.
There is certainly a great deal of sadness inherent in this story, but the film concludes on a positive, even upbeat note, with the Columbia crew’s families’ visit to Israel, and the revelation that another sefer Torah – a “twin” to the one Ramon carried – existed, and was carried into space and successfully back to Earth on a subsequent Shuttle mission by an astronaut who’d befriended Ramon during training years earlier.
Who among us couldn’t use a reminder of the capacity of the human race to attain astounding heights – physical, spiritual, and psychological? An Article of Hope delivers us, as one speaker says about the tiny Torah, “From the depths of Hell to the heights of space.”
An Article of Hope will be screened twice during the San Diego Jewish Film Festival. It will be shown at 5:30 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 15, along with Cohen on the Bridge at the Carlsbad Village Theatre, 2822 State Street, Carlsbad. On Sunday, Feb 20, at 3:30 p.m., it will be paired with Born to Fly at the Clairemont Reading 14 Theatres, 4465 Clairemont Drive, San Diego.
*
Levy is a freelance writer who resides in Santee