Hannah Espia’s Transit is a heart-rending story of Phillipine workers in Israel forced to hide their children for fear of their deportation.
One narrative strategy at first appears to be a redundancy in editing. A scene we’ve seen is repeated, usually with a little more information. This occurs frequently, as the narrative provides the different perspectives of five characters, climaxing with the threatened four-year-old boy’s. This device has at least two thematic effects. It dramatizes the inter-weaving of different characters’ lives. Society is a web of such intersections, which means a single person’s predicament can affect many others. Hence Janet’s criticism of daughter Yael’s irresponsibility. Ironically, little Joshua is deported not as a result of Yael’s selfishness but because the boy rushes out to get help for his father’s ailing Jewish employer. Joshua's new toy plane, a gift from the old man, is both a boundless joy in its promise of soaring freedom and an omen of his deportation.
Also, the device validates the individual experience over any abstract principle. An incident can mean quite different things to each of its participants. As in the different versions of the Janet-Yael confrontation, we get a different emotional settling in the two perspectives. Our next step is to read the abstract law not as a principle but as a harsh intrusion into individual lives.
While the film clearly criticizes the Israeli government’s policy to deport immigrant children under five years old, the film works as a kind of love song to that nation. The immigrants clearly find a life, freedom and opportunity there. Some like Yael come to feel primarily Israeli. Some like Joshua even want to become Jews. Unlike much criticism of Israel, this film targets a government policy but endorses the culture and opportunities the nation provides.
The film might have taken a small step further — providing at least some rationale for the government’s policy. After all, Israel is not the only country wary about its intake of immigrants. And Israel uniquely faces threats -- internal as well as from its surrounding neighbours -- to its very existence. Tthe film does grant that the harsh policy has been softened with some exceptions, but the mass of immigrant labourers still feel compelled to hide their children.
As little Joshua is deported and his father Moises is permitted to stay and work in Israel, the film plays a reversal on the Biblical forebears. Moises can return to the promised land, which Moses I was denied. But where the Biblical Joshua led his people into the promised land this little Joshua is deported to the Phillipines — even though he was born in Israel, speaks Hebrew fluently and can recite at least the first lines of his father’s boss’s bar mitzvah Torah reading. The reversal of the Biblical names’ signification recalls Israel’s mission to provide a home for the homeless, a haven for the persecuted -- but what should be done when that openness runs up against the threat to the unique character of the one Jewish state?
One narrative strategy at first appears to be a redundancy in editing. A scene we’ve seen is repeated, usually with a little more information. This occurs frequently, as the narrative provides the different perspectives of five characters, climaxing with the threatened four-year-old boy’s. This device has at least two thematic effects. It dramatizes the inter-weaving of different characters’ lives. Society is a web of such intersections, which means a single person’s predicament can affect many others. Hence Janet’s criticism of daughter Yael’s irresponsibility. Ironically, little Joshua is deported not as a result of Yael’s selfishness but because the boy rushes out to get help for his father’s ailing Jewish employer. Joshua's new toy plane, a gift from the old man, is both a boundless joy in its promise of soaring freedom and an omen of his deportation.
Also, the device validates the individual experience over any abstract principle. An incident can mean quite different things to each of its participants. As in the different versions of the Janet-Yael confrontation, we get a different emotional settling in the two perspectives. Our next step is to read the abstract law not as a principle but as a harsh intrusion into individual lives.
While the film clearly criticizes the Israeli government’s policy to deport immigrant children under five years old, the film works as a kind of love song to that nation. The immigrants clearly find a life, freedom and opportunity there. Some like Yael come to feel primarily Israeli. Some like Joshua even want to become Jews. Unlike much criticism of Israel, this film targets a government policy but endorses the culture and opportunities the nation provides.
The film might have taken a small step further — providing at least some rationale for the government’s policy. After all, Israel is not the only country wary about its intake of immigrants. And Israel uniquely faces threats -- internal as well as from its surrounding neighbours -- to its very existence. Tthe film does grant that the harsh policy has been softened with some exceptions, but the mass of immigrant labourers still feel compelled to hide their children.
As little Joshua is deported and his father Moises is permitted to stay and work in Israel, the film plays a reversal on the Biblical forebears. Moises can return to the promised land, which Moses I was denied. But where the Biblical Joshua led his people into the promised land this little Joshua is deported to the Phillipines — even though he was born in Israel, speaks Hebrew fluently and can recite at least the first lines of his father’s boss’s bar mitzvah Torah reading. The reversal of the Biblical names’ signification recalls Israel’s mission to provide a home for the homeless, a haven for the persecuted -- but what should be done when that openness runs up against the threat to the unique character of the one Jewish state?
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