Review of ZOHAN

ZOHAN
STORY: An Israeli terrorist feigns death so he can come to America to pursue his dream to be a top hairstylist.
MESSAGE: Love and affinity (between the opposite sexes or between Mankind) transcends nationality, even nations at war. True love and respect is not inhibited by things such as a person's size or age by one who can see beauty in all women. Peace means taking a chance, making the move to get along, regarding those on the other side as friends. The desire for promiscuity fizzles when one discovers one's true love. Competence, persistence towards a goal, unrelenting attack against blocks to a goal, shedding those who counter one's approach to a goal, joining those who help reach a goal, study, passion for a goal, and helping others to reach their goals wins the day. In America, there is freedom to pursue one's goal, and peace between all people living and working together. Love and friendship succeed over hate and war.
WIN: The lead character showed magnificent intention and persistence towards his goal, which is consistent with enthusiam and cheerfulness and action. He solved problems well. His arch enemy showed cowardly traits, such as arrogance, gloating and ill will, those traits which lead to failure. The hero loved his enemy despite what his enemy did to him, a sign of greatness. He was big-hearted in general. Extreme competence gives us real heros.
LOSE: There is a tendency in movies (such as James Bond) to couple promiscuity with bravery, when, in truth, promiscuity is a mix of fear and hidden hostility. This picture those engaging in promiscuity as being happy, when, in real life, promiscuous people are unhappy. Freud's false information is promoted that life's motivation can be boiled down to sex. The extreme exaggeration of fighting and sexual prowess, meant to take the edge off of a serious situation, meant to be humorous, instead irritates audience sensibilities to the point of rejection of the positive messages. The movie also shoots itself in the foot by exaggerting passion for a legitimate goal (like being a hairdresser or shoe salesman.) Part of the satire depends for its humor upon generalities, such as "All middle eastern people sell cheap electronics," and "Israelis value aggressiveness," and "All older women miss their attractiveness," etc. These generalities chaff people (both those included in the generality and those who don't like to see others chaffed.)
EFFECT ON ME: It had a mixed effect. I like the bravery of a film to come out against popular belief and say that peace is possible, but I felt disrepected as an audience. (In other words, in this day and age, there are those who get others to think that to be cool, audiences have to like perversion and grossness, so they ladle it on, despite the fact that such perversion and distortion of truth is spiritually and morally injurious to the audience.) There is a taboo in our society (partly political correctness, partly fear of actual threat, partly destruction of religion, partly bad market research, partly evil agenda of the few) against forthright support of positive things and against saying some things are bad and wrong. Satire and exaggeration enables a moviemaker to get around the taboos, but, it can become so dominant as to overshadow the message, at which point I became insulted. The movie is being played to an audience and that movie says, "I know you, you're a spiritual being who values love and peace, but you're also in a body, and you have hang-ups, so I'm going to communicate the message to you via your hang-ups. Pardon me while I step on your toes, indicate things about you that aren't so, insult your intelligence and treat you as though you are merely a higher form of animal." Too much satire is force, and audiences need a balance of force and intelligence. It's like being slapped, then being handed the birthday gift you always wanted. Or, it's like, "Let's beat them up until they decide that world peace is a good thing." If "it's all in the execution," let's not execute the audience.
Sincerely,
Becky Mate
Script Consultant
www.virtueinthearts.com