Elephant Graveyard

Avi Belkin

Israel

• Save
• Share

Synopsis

Old Mr. Weissmuller is 80 years old and in a psychiatric ward. Tired and humiliated, the former Tarzan actor feels that his time is up.

REVIEW

Avi Belkin's "Elephant Graveyard" is a tour de force, an English language film made in Israel (Beit Berl School), depicting an American icon. The fictional film imagines the final days of Johnny Weissmuller, the original Tarzan, intercutting black and white scenes from his first film with color scenes of his days at the hospital.

The film is elegiac rather than sad, filled with ironic contrasts. For example, fewer words are spoken in the contemporary scenes than in the inter-cut scenes, though those are from films that still skirted the days of the silent era! Equally striking is the contrast between the aged film star's slow shuffle and the flights of his younger self in the jungle. And at the end, Weissmuller is alone; no jungle, no Jane, no chimp, not even bad guys.

The actor playing Weissmuller achieves a dignity and solemnity that denies pity and makes his decision believable. Though the film ends in silence, what resonates at the end is the defiant, curling yell of the Tarzan, prince of the jungle. That the inarticulate noise is more significant than the spoken word makes an interesting statement about communication. 

Still, when it comes to words, the Israeli filmmaker is quite successful at evoking American English, with a few notable exceptions. The rhythms of narrator meant to recreate the typical news broadcaster are not quite natural, one would "wander" in the jungle, not "wonder," and the contraction for "you are" is "you're," not "your." Of course, given the gradual erosion of correctness in the United States, the errors may argue for the filmmaker's even greater familiarity with American culture!

-Tom Friedmann