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Reviews Counted: 30
Fresh: 25
Rotten:5
Average Rating: 6.7/10
Consensus: Mihaileanu's story of an Ethiopian orphan's struggles overcomes an inflated length and script problems to explore universal issues of racial and religious identity.
Theatrical Release: Feb 1, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: Based on the exodus of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, LIVE AND BECOME is a harrowing and poignant look at the struggles of cultural and personal identity. In 1985 Operation Moses is launched to airlift thousands of persecuted Ethiopian Jews... [More]
Starring: Yael Abecassis, Roschdy Zem, Mosche Abebe, Sirak M. Sabahat
Director: Radu Mihaileanu
As a piece of cinema, Live and Become is a touching and engaging work. A fine cast delivers complex characters and the screenplay speeds through years that are not central to its story of how indeed Shlomo went, lived and finally became.
Top Critic If Live and Become told only the story of Schlomo's childhood and adolescence in Israel, it would have been a better movie.
The bounty of incident is balanced by knowing humor, compelling characters and a dedicated compassion toward those for whom the search for home sends their head, heart and feet flying in all directions.
Top Critic This movie, so dramatic and different from any other we've seen about Israel, may well have worked with three other actors. But it's hard to imagine it working as well.
Writer/director Radu Mihaileanu (Train of Life), an emigrant from Romania, has made a film that is fascinating on different levels....builds to an unforgettable final image.
At nearly two and a half hours, Radu Mihaileanu's film is unnecessarily long; a few incidents could have easily been cut. But it's still worth the time. It manages to be, at points, heartwarming, tragic, and funny.
Don't be put off by the film's length. It's fascinating to see familiar history flash by as a backdrop to the equally compelling account of a life spent in pursuit of totality.
The first part of Radu Mihaileanu's tale of an Ethiopian refugee's life in Israel promises more than the often trivial soap opera that follows.
With the secret 1985 airlift of thousands of Ethiopian Jewish refugees into Israel as a historical starting point, writer-director Radu Mihaileanu turns one fictional boy's story into a loaded, didactic drama about survival, adaptation, and identity.
This overlong story of a Ethiopian boy's experiences attempting to pass himself off as Jewish in order to enter Israel, gets bogged down with a meandering script that fails to gain momentum.
Earnest and overlong, the result is a meandering short story of a movie that, for all its good intentions and occasional insights, doesn't gel.
Fundamental issues of ethnic and religious identity and the agony of exile are at the heart of Live and Become.
Top Critic The beauty of Live and Become is found essentially in one very specific place - the relationship between Solomon and his mothers.
Both a love story and inspirational tale of an individual finding peace with himself in a hostile environment.
A powerful and poignant film about an Ethiopian Christian's long and dramatic spiritual journey in Israel.
If the film sometimes feels overwrought -- and at once too long and too short -- its subtle motifs and loud silences, as well as the enormity of its subject matter, keep us absorbed until the devastating end.
The film is long, often tedious, and burdened by sudden leaps forward and a perplexing withholding of information, but not unlike Schlomo, it perseveres.
A wholly worthwhile enterprise loses its initial impetus and insight and becomes increasingly meandering and melodramatic.
Top Critic
January 31, 2008:
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This week at the movies, we've got creepy visions (The Eye, starring Jessica Alba), haunted romances (Over Her Dead Body, starring Paul Rudd and Eva Longoria Parker), woodland... More...
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