Adam Resurrected

A strange psychoterapeutic communion in the midst of an Israeli desert, in the late 1950s- early 1960s. Jeff Goldblum is the celebrity patient, practically reigning the community under the lenient eyes of Dr Derek Jacobi. How did he get there? Constantly travelling to mid-world-wars Berlin, where Goldblum served as a celebrity magician, and to the Concentration Camps, where Willem Dafoe casts a lasting shadow on prisoner Goldblum, and to Goldblum's mind, a shattered mind, able of brilliance and charm (to which the chief nurse, Ayelet Zurer is not indifferent), but also able of chaos.

An oblique film, but one that, after watching, can keep you awake for the rest of the night. Difficult to get through, full of grumpy details and aching, inhuman moments, but it grabs you and does not let go, through its depiction of pain, weirdness, surrealistic evocation of the concept of being Jewish and more importantly the concept of IDENTITY. Its grumpiness and thickness of content is exaggerated by the fact that it is directed by Paul Schrader, whose existential angst and grumpiness are suited to the material (an original novel by Yoram Kaniuk).

Goldblum gives the performance of a lifetime, climaxing tragically in his final confrontation with Dafoe/ himself, Dafoe and Jacobi add respect and the appropriate peculiarity in the background, while Ayelet Zurer's dark charm, in a brave performance, might surprise those who knew her only from Munich and Angels & Demons, or those who are in line to see her next year as Superman's mom.
A must-see actually.