Scaffolding (2017)

Drama /
6.8/10
69/100

Scaffolding Storyline

17-year-old ASHER has always been the impulsive troublemaker at school. While his strict father sees him as a natural successor to his scaffolding business, Asher forges a special connection with his literature teacher Rami and begins to see new possibilities for himself.

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Scaffolding Movie Reviews

Angry teen torn between brutish business life and idealistic teacher’s ideas

There are two kinds of scaffolding – i.e., the framework one constructs to enable the making -or remaking – of a more permanent construction. But what building will you dedicate yourself to do? The literal construction of some worldly thing, some edifice, or that more rarefied project – building a deeper, more human and responsible self? For Milo Lax, the only scaffolding that counts is his business, the construction sites that he runs and wants his son Asher to take over from him. He has that Edifice Complex that today drives so much industry, politics and most dangerously, education.. Milo is an ex-con who still barely checks his anger and violent impulses. His growth in life inhered in his managing to maintain something of a relationship with his 17-year-old son Asher after his wife left him. And build a successful scaffolding business. But of course, he’s only in on the beginning. Lax just puts up the scaffolding, in preparation for the construction crews to come do the major work. Literal construction is all that Milo can see in his son’s future too. “When will you ever read a poem, see a play, read a book?” he rhetorically asks him. He insists Asher cover for him at work instead of studying for his matriculation exams. “Don’t go too high,” he orders, on the scaffolding as in life. Asher is tempted to accept the limitations his father sets. He too has a short fuse, violent impulses, and has serious learning disabilities to boot. But he also shows signs of curiosity, however minor and illicit. He searches idly through a client’s house, stealing a Russian doll, then his teacher’s, where he stumbles upon a forbidden secret. Here Asher intuits the appeal of entering someone else’s world, which we non-construction types do through literature. His English teacher Rami offers him a glimpse of the other scaffolding, the world of literature, morality, questions, thinking, debate. He engages the boy in discussion. He tries to amend his brutishness. When Asher overhears Rami assigning another class to record questions they would ask of someone, Asher takes on the assignment. He submits the questions he could never ask Milo. While Rami teaches his class Greek tragedy he lives out his own. Unable to deal with his own existential doubts he kills himself, leaving his unnerved students and a bereft pregnant widow. The film ends with Milo and Asher grabbing a fast breakfast wrap in the truck, en route to the school. There Asher is to be questioned by police and perhaps arrested for breaking into Rami’s flat and finding, then airing, his suicide note. Finally Rami’s teaching gets through. Asher asks Milo the questions he couldn’t before: Why were you so strong in my life? Why did you and mom have me and then break up? Why didn’t you ever read me any stories? How do loving and beating go together? Those questions clearly define that family’s unquestioning, brutish dynamic. Asher asks those questions of a man who was never interested in the earnest questions of life, just the scaffolding. We don’t know if he’ll answer or deepen his distance from his son with yet another evasion. But those questions are the significant scaffolding Rami unwittingly left Asher with. Can Asher finish the job with the real construction? He can’t count on his dad, who does only the other scaffolding. His scaffolding is Lax. Whatever happens at school or with his father, Asher is on his own. But at least he has been introduced to literature, to ideas, to questioning – the important questions, not the knee-jerk belligerence of the Israeli teen. Who knows? Maybe Asher will make a movie.

Lacks nothing, except a little breadth

Like Arlo Guthrie in Alice’s Restaurant, Asher Lax plays a character based somewhat on himself. A fellow who works for his father in the scaffolding business. There’s cinematic potential there, and I wouldn’t have minded coming out of the movie knowing a little about scaffolding, but that aspect is nowhere near thoroughly exploited. Nor is there a firm sense of place inside Israel. It seems that if a particular municipality isn’t helping to fund the film, Israeli filmmakers are unaware of the advantage of making the location specific anyway. What we do get is the story of a young man with conflicting loyalties to two father figures– the one he’s intended to inherit the business from, who considers book learning superfluous to their lives, and his high-school English teacher, who wants to give him and his fellow low-scoring students a chance at intellectual development.

Asher’s real-life teacher wrote and directed the movie, and maybe that’s the reason it strays so little from the main characters into their surroundings or into the lives and personalities of supporting characters. In a TV interview, the teacher/writer/director pointed out that the teacher character is another person, like the Asher character, whose potential is unfulfilled and even unnoticed.

The Asher character is an unlikely protagonist, impatient and impulsive. It takes a while to wake up to the idea that this really is the fellow who’s supposed to deserve the full measure of our attention, and even longer to warm to the idea. But the Asher actor performs at award level (one win, one major nomination) and he’s supported by a top professional actor in the role of his father. The teacher is also played well, but the demands of the script make him an iceberg– something that’s mostly below the surface.

I imagine we haven’t seen the last of Asher Lax the actor. Unlike his father in the movie, his real-life father says that if Asher wants to leave the scaffolding business, that’s okay.

Unexpected disappointment… viewer beware!

“Scaffolding” (2017 release from Israel) brings the story of Ashed Lax (played by… the real-life Asher Lax–more on that later), depicted in the movie as a high school kid who also works in his dad’s scaffolding business on various construction sites. Asher gets into trouble at school due to his short temperament or pent-up anger, we’re not sure. One of Asher’s HS teachers, a guy named Remi, takes an interest in Asher and his misfit classmates. At this point we’re not even 15 min. into the movie but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you’ll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: at the recent screening where I saw this, the movie was introduced by Galit Roichman, an Israeli film expert (and member of the Israeli Academy). She informed us that the movie’s director Matan Yair used to be a HS teacher, and the script was inspired in part by his real-life student Asher Lax. When looking to cast the movie version of Asher Lax, Yair ended up casting the real life Asher Lax, even though he is now clearly much older. Roichman provided a ton of other interesting tidbits and I couldn’t wait to see the film. And then… nothing. I kept waiting for a spark to ignite the movie, but it just didn’t happen. There was no rhyme or reason for Asher’s attitude and lashing out, and I never connected emotionally with any of the story or the characters. What a major disappointment this movie turned out to be!

I saw the movie recently as part of the 2018 Jewish & Israeli Film Festival here in Cincinnati. Apparently “Scaffolding” picked up a bunch of awards in Israel (and perhaps elsewhere), and it baffles me. I did not enjoy the movie, sadly. Viewer beware.

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