E.M.E.T

Yaron Allouche

Israel

Synopsis

A man awakes, suffering from amnesia, after a terrible war. As he tries to uncover the secrets of his past, he finds a world with a history so dark that no one can remember.

REVIEW

Visually stunning and intellectually provoking. E.M.E.T. ("emet" means "truth") tells a post-lapsarian story in a post nuclear holocaust landscape. But it is not Adam and Eve that director Allouche has thrown out of Paradise and into this modern world. Rather, the man is a very human representation of the legendary Golem, the first robot, and his (perhaps) partner is none other than the reviled though nowadays admired, Lilith, the very first femme fatale.

The epigraph from the apocryphal Book of Creation warns us about the unusual blending of myths and legends. Even more challenging is the notion of Lilith, supplanted by Eve in the original creation story for her promiscuity and independence, being coupled with the creature who appears at times of great stress and danger to Jews.

The stark urban landscape far removed from bucolic Eden seems a rather bleak environment for the new first couple, but both the interiors and exteriors of this new world is rendered in such gorgeous cinematography that the texture of the film itself offers hope for the world of this mismatched but intriguing pair.

Frames register on the eye as exquisite paintings, deep bands, lines, and splashes of color and shape. Earth, water, wind, and fire are lit with primary blues, reds, and yellows. Behind the dramatic faces in the foreground are endless depths of color, carefully composed.

The richness of background dares offer an alternative to the sunlit blandness of the conventional notions of the Garden of Eden, arguing for the ultimate triumph of human art, even if history is nothing more than man and woman eternally coming together, separating, and searching for each other again.

-Tom Friedmann