Jake Paltrow Explores Eichmann’s Execution and the Weight of Remembrance.
DIRECTED BY JAKE PALTROW/HEBREW/2024 (U.S. Theatrical Release)
June Zero opens with a death sentence. If that does not instantly establish the heavy subject matter of this film, then a quick look at the synopsis certainly hammers it in. The setting is 1960s Israel, and Adolf Eichmann has been put to death for his pivotal role in organizing the Holocaust. Writer and director Jake Paltrow frames his film with three braided storylines, all of which are somehow connected to Eichmann’s eventual execution. Through each distinctive narrative, June Zero navigates the complexity of memory and the evil of humanity.
The initial story focuses on David (Noam Ovadia), a thirteen-year-old Libyan immigrant with a penchant for trouble. In an effort to curb his rebellious temper, his father finds David a job at an industrial factory. HIs after-school work sees him play a significant role in Eichmann’s fate. His boss Shlomi Zebco (Tzahi Grad), a hardened former soldier, is commissioned by the government to build a crematorium that will burn Eichmann’s remains. Zebco takes the job to enact revenge while David seizes the opportunity to prove himself as a valuable asset. Through David’s naive eyes, we see the workers creeping dread as they realize the task at hand. There is a horrifying irony in Jewish factory workers utilizing the same specs as the Germans did for the camps.
David functions quite nicely as a main character to push the events of the film forward, but Paltrows other storylines are infinitely more thought-provoking. His involvement in Eichmann’s demise is tangential at best (a factor that becomes poignant by the films closing act). When Paltrow shifts to focus on Hayim (Yoav Levi), Eichmann’s guard during his trial, drips with a palpable tension. Hayim is nothing if not strictly meticulous in every interaction with Eichmann, whose face is left concealed from the audience. His main task is to ensure that any individual that interacts with Eichmann has no connection to the Holocaust. Every shot drips with Hayim’s increasing sense of paranoia, which Paltrow accentuates with eerie silence and blood-red lighting. There is a sick irony in understanding that Hayim must keep such a cruel evil alive and heathy so that he may meet a lawful death.
Micha (Tom Hagi) is the final piece to Paltrow’s film, and arguably the stand-out performance in June Zero. We are introduced to Micha through a hesitant but firm monologue delivered in English to an American crowd. They are on a delegation to Poland and have come to visit the ghetto where Micha once lived. The camera shifts over the crumbling buildings and weed-infested landscape as Micha describes the torture and humiliation he experiences from the Nazi soldiers. Tom Hagi commands the screen without even being present as he delivers such a soul-crushing monologues as easily as breathing. His powerhouse performance does not end here. When an agent from the Jewish Agency (Joy Reiger) confronts him with her frustrations that his trauma has moved past demoralization into tourism. Her anger is articulated as she asks, “Must ‘never forget’ to become ‘always remember’?”. Micha’s calm collected response is equally beautiful as it chilling as he recalls disbelief and rejection he initially faced when discussing his experience in the camps. To Micah, the challenge lies not in remembrance but in ensuring that world understands and, most importantly, believes the barbaric events that his people endured.
The characters that populate June Zero may be fictional but their stories anything but that. Each storyline is based on very real accounts. Certain narratives carry significantly more gravity and at moments feels like an educational exercise. That does not make it any less respectable, and Paltrow in unflinching in his pursuit to address such a heavy historical moment. He concludes June Zero with an odd scene of a much older David fighting for his inclusion in the Wikipedia page on Eichmann’s execution. Though initially strange and rather off-putting compared to the rest of the film, perhaps there is a subtle message to be deciphered here. Is it not a reflection upon history that Eichmann, a reviled criminal responsible for immeasurable cruelty, receives an established place in history while David, a Jewish man, has to fight to be included even as a footnote?
