Old school

>> The Cemetery Club focuses on the colourful characters in an Israeli seniors’ learning group

by MALCOLM FRASER

Israel’s Mount Herzl Cemetery is the final resting place for many of the country’s founders and historical notables. For two decades, an adjacent park served as the meeting place for a considerably lower-profile bunch: the Academy of Mount Herzl, a loose-knit group of seniors who held weekly meetings to discuss philosophy, poetry and history, with the stated goal of “diminishing loneliness in old age, bringing people together, and mutual aid,” plus a potluck lunch. Filmmaker Tali Shemesh immortalizes the group, which included her grandmother Minya and great-aunt Lena, in her documentary The Cemetery Club.

The club is full of eccentrics—or perhaps when you get to that age, you have licence to act however you want. Shemesh captures instances of high drama—when one oldster starts spouting Jewish supremacist vitriol and another counters with a denunciation of the occupied territories, it makes the Mirror’s letters section look like a friendly agreement to disagree—but also moments of humour, like one lady’s protracted efforts to light a Virginia Slim while various male speakers ramble on about their chosen topics. There’s also a well-meaning but hapless woman who tries to regulate the debates with a referee’s whistle, but just ends up adding to the chaos.

But the club really just sets the context for the core subject of the film, Shemesh’s great-aunt Lena. A Warsaw ghetto and Holocaust survivor, she’s a fountain of arcane historical knowledge as well as a determinedly difficult woman who at one point freely admits, “I do a lot of things that a reasonable person wouldn’t do.” Cruelly browbeating her own sister and frequently berating the filmmaker—the opening scene shows her doggedly explaining why The Cemetery Club is a terrible name for the film—Lena seems to have a hardened heart, and as the film unfolds we get some insight into the reasons why.

Though Shemesh’s unflinching gaze at the worn down bodies and weary souls of old age might depress some viewers, and though the film has an extremely lo-fi look (I for one am a big believer in leaving shaky videography on the cutting room floor), it’s ultimately an effective, bittersweet look at some highly personal yet universal human truths.

The Cemetery Club opens this
Friday, Nov. 30

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