Review: ‘Synonyms’ Explores the Struggle of National Identity
To be an immigrant often means to exist with two identities: the one you adopt in your new home and the one you bring with you. In Synonyms —a comedy/tragedy getting released this week in Seattle at SIFF — this split identity becomes the core conflict. Having walked away from Berlin with the Golden Bear, Nadav Lapid’s latest has a quiet release here in the States, but it carries with it an audible message of genuine heft when it comes to discussing what it means to grapple with national identity.
Yoav is an Israeli jew immigrating to France. With nothing to his name, he arrives with optimism despite living in a squalid conditions, eating the same meal everyday, and struggling to get by. Yoav receives French culture with open arms, adamant on denouncing his former nationality and donning the one he has long admired. But as he does so, his internal and external identities clash and he must reconcile who he is and why.
Assimilating to a new culture is presented with tantalizing promise for Yoav. French fashion, lifestyle, and atmosphere draw him in. So much so that he swears off ever speaking Hebrew again, stops talking to his family, and cuts off any ideological ties with Israel, all with the hope of distancing himself from the culture, politics, and environment he grew up in. All of these facets of nationality set up a battle ground for conflict between the two competing identities.
Lapid — having lived through this via personal experience and who is now depicting it through a semi-autobiographical lens — tells Synonyms with both humor and tragedy. On one hand, it’s somewhat humorous to see a man carry a French dictionary and memorize it by reciting words fervently up and down the street. But on the other hand, it’s also depicting someone utterly desperate to flee himself. This kind of battle is picked apart time and again as Yoav’s image becomes more and more tragic, and as it does so, we engage further with the idea of national identity.
Are we to abandon where we came from? What happens if our new home rejects us? Can we exist with two identities? Lapid imbues Yoav with sentimental answers to these questions. Trials and tribulation are met with moments of joy, only to return back to conflict and then flip again. The pleasantries of Yoav’s new life is met with accompanying negatives that shows that all that glitters isn’t in fact gold, culminating in a complicated notion, and one that tears at the very core of who we are. But if the ending is any indication, no matter how hard we try to be insiders, we may always be outsiders and must accept that which we know to be true.
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