"I think parents here are conditioned, or trained, to repress in a very, very, very unnatural way, very un-instinctive, the most basic drive that parents have – not only mothers, but parents – which is to keep their child alive,” said Netalie Braun, director of the movie Oxygen, which opened around Israel on Thursday.
Winner of the Haggiag Competition for Israeli Feature Films at the Jerusalem Film Festival this summer, Oxygen tells the story of Anat (Dana Ivgy), a single mother and teacher in her early forties, and her extremely close relationship with her son, Ido (Ben Sultan).
Their bond is threatened when he insists on remaining in his IDF combat unit, even though he has asthma, against his mother’s wishes. His choice to be in a fighting unit – which was facilitated by his war-hero grandfather (Marek Rozenbaum) – becomes more fraught for Anat as a new war breaks out. Panicking, she does everything she can to try to get him moved out of his unit, before he crosses over into Lebanon.
Reflecting on the pressure Israeli parents are under and the feeling that it is taboo to speak about this conflict, Braun, who has children herself, said, “I think that if some outsider were to look at Israeli society from the outside, they would simply think this is a completely insane society. We bring them into the world, we put sunscreen on our children, we make them sandwiches, we kill the mosquitoes around them so they won’t get bitten, we do everything for them – and then at 18, that’s it, it all ends. And it’s insane. It’s so, so strange.”
LIKE ANAT in the movie, Braun isn’t oblivious to Israeli reality. “I’m not naïve, and I don’t live in la-la land. I know it’s not only in our hands whether there will be a war or not,” she said. “I do think you need an army.”
Beyond politics: Netalie Braun explores mother-son bonds
Braun, whose other movies include the documentaries Shooting and Hope I’m in the Frame, grew up in a national-religious family and was in the Bnei Akiva youth movement. “Back then, it was still allowed [in this community] to be a little left-wing; a little leftist within Bnei Akiva.”
She also took part in Meimad, a religious youth movement and political party that advocated for peace and coexistence.
“Later they didn’t succeed – the religious Zionist public became so nationalist that they couldn’t even get half a Knesset seat… What I’m trying to say is that it’s not that I went through some kind of political awakening, because I was always somehow there.”
Years later, she began to think about telling a story of a mother and son whose bond is tested by his determination to be a combat soldier. But she didn’t want the story to be generic, so she created a very particular family, whose story draws in the viewers, while at the same time strives to be universally relevant.
Aside from the politics of the movie, she really wanted to deal with motherhood in a universal sense, “with the relationship between a mother and son, of total love, of symbiotic relationships, of boundaries within a relationship – of when and to what extent we can decide for our children, and at what point, if at all, that’s it: They are autonomous human beings and we have to let them go. These are many questions I had – and still have – as a mother,” she said.
“Also about eroticism, or the erotic charge that exists between parents and children – which is another taboo that people don’t talk about,” the director said. “I wanted to place it on the canvas, so to speak: on the canvas of cinema and the screen – and look at it.” That’s why she chose this subject.
TO MAKE such an intimate film, she needed to find the right actors to bring the story to life.
“I was so lucky to work with Dana,” Braun said. Ivgy, a three-time Ophir Award winner, delved deeply into the role.
“She really became the character completely… I can tell you a story that shows just how strange it was. In the first week of shooting, we dyed her hair white a bit, to make her look slightly older,” she said.
“And then, in the second week of shooting – her hair suddenly turned white. Literally, in the second week of filming, she had these white hairs coming out. It was insane.”
Ivgy, who has a younger brother who is a combat soldier, channeled her relationship to him to bring out the essence of her character. She also became very close to her co-star, said Braun.
“There was such chemistry between them, such an immediate bond, it’s impossible to describe. She became his mother. To this day, he is in very close contact with her. She helps him, works with him before roles; he consults with her.”
Sultan, a rising star who recently starred in the series Hooligans, Bad Boy, Fireflies, and Wonder, got to show a different side of himself in Oxygen. “It’s the first time that he isn’t playing a criminal,” she said. “He got to play emotions that are very unlike the other roles he’s been cast in.”
As the movie goes on, it becomes less realistic and more allegorical to portray Anat’s heightened emotional state. While it might seem to be specifically formulated to appeal to Israelis, it has elicited emotional responses from audiences at film festivals abroad, including at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival in Estonia.
“It touched something in people who saw it, even outside of Israel,” she said. “I really hope that it will spark discussion. Look, during the last war, this discourse has already developed. So, I don’t think the film will start this conversation – it joins an existing one.
Because the way I look at art – art is a space for imagination,” Braun said. “Before things happen in reality, you have to expand the imagination. You have to imagine reality differently. You have to believe, somewhere, that it can be different.”