SODA sounds like a sparkling entertainment experience, but the title belies the bitterness that bubbles away in this story of blighted relationships and the hangover from the Holocaust.
The film opens with a group of Polish partisans executing a Nazi officer in a wintry forest. Flash forward a decade to a working class village in Israel where Shalom Gottlieb, a former partisan leader and current factory foreman of a soda making facility, still looked upon as a leader in labour issues and civic affairs.
His wife, Gita, suffers poor health and is fixated on the repatriation of families torn apart by Holocaust, while their daughter, Esti, conceived in the dying days of the war, tends to both parents, keeping the fragile domestic situation together.
A new arrival to the village, Eva, a beautiful seamstress, along with her daughter, throws the proverbial cat among the pigeons. Vivacious in vivid contrast to his moribund wife, Shalom falls for Eva, who offers him a chance at happiness and a life filled with beauty and laughter.
But rumours of Eva’s past as a Kapo during the Holocaust shake the community. A mob mentality fuelled by the trauma of the Nazi regime gathers murderous momentum and Shalom’s loyalties are put to tumultuous test.
So many in this community are stuck in the past with old enmities curtailing new beginnings, survivor guilt manifesting in jealousies souring fresh starts.
Trauma is toxic, germinating in one generation, its tendrils taking root in the following. SODA reminds us of that fact. If only that message could be received by those governments and regimes that currently create new torrents of trauma in our should know better world.
SODA is a highlight of the Jewish Film Festival that plays Ritz Cinemas, Randwick – Mon 20 Oct – Wed 26 Nov and Roseville Cinemas, Roseville – Thu 30 Oct – Wed 12 Nov
Tickets are now on sale at www.jiff.com.au.
