‘Jew in the Lotus’: A True Tale of Awakening

The Grande 4-Plex’s “Documentary Days,” composed of three films each screening one week, begins today with Laurel Chiten’s beautiful and moving “The Jew in the Lotus.” The film takes its title from a book written by Rodger Kamenetz on the spiritual rebirth he experienced when he accompanied a group of rabbis for a historical meeting with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India. When Dr. Marc Lieberman, a Buddhist convert, organized the meeting, he invited Kamenetz to come along.

Not only had Kamenetz and his wife lost a baby days after its birth but also the book Kamenetz wrote about the loss was rejected. Kamenetz, who subsequently realized the book he had written in excruciating pain had lacked perspective, joined the group with his wife’s blessing.

Just as the Dalai Lama and the rabbis attempted to find common spiritual and human ground--both peoples have experienced exile from their homelands--Kamenetz discovered a sense of renewed inner life as a Jew, learning from Buddhism a way of dealing with his pain of loss. As a result, Kamenetz has since strived to involve the Jewish religious community in the Tibetan cause. Chiten has told Kamenetz’s story with the utmost sensitivity, grace, humor and considerable style in a mere hour. “The Jew in the Lotus” is sure to find many receptive venues long after it completes its run at the Grande 4-Plex, located in the lower level of the Marriott Hotel, 345 S. Figueroa St., downtown Los Angeles. (213) 617-0268.

Adzine Melliti Fazai’s autobiographical “Le Magique” (Sunset 5, Saturday, Sunday and Monday at 10 a.m.; Monica 4-Plex, Sept. 12-13 at 11 a.m.) is a stunning tale of survival, alternately harsh and tender. It focuses on a young Tunisian boy, Deanie (Ahmed Chebil), as one of five brothers who is left behind to fend for himself in his rural village while the rest of his desperately poor family is forced to emigrate to France to survive; the plan is that this 10-year-old is to serve as caretaker of his home until it’ssold by a relative. The vulnerable yet resilient boy’s life is transformed when he hikes to Tunis and discovers the magic of movies. Sunset 5: (213) 848-3500; Monica 4-Plex: (310) 394-9741.

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Toshiharu Ikeda’s “Evil Dead Trap,” a sicko blood-bath of a movie, is as morbid as it is stupid. Miyuki Ono stars as a TV late-show personality who encourages viewers to send in home videos for airing. One day she receives a real shocker, a most convincing torture-snuff tape, including a slow and graphic eye-stabbing, that has come complete with establishing shots of what looks to be an isolated, abandoned industrial complex.

In no time Ono and her female team, plus one young man, are off to the place to poke around, a little nervous to be sure, but oblivious to the obvious and probable great danger in which they’re placing themselves. Not until it’s too late does anyone think of calling the cops, clearly what they should have done had any one of them had a brain in her--or his--head. The Japanese have made a large proportion of the greatest films ever made, but their cinema history is also strewn with pictures devoted to depicting extreme violence toward women--not, one hastens to add, that they are alone in this tradition. “Evil Dead Trap” plays Tuesday through Sept. 10 at the Nuart, where it continues Fridays at midnights on Sept. 11. (310) 478-6379.

On Jan. 15, 1960, Michelangelo Antonioni completed shooting what is arguably his finest film: “L’Avventura,” which remains timeless in its impact; not even the clothes, hairstyles or cars look dated. “L’Avventura,” which screens tonight at the New Beverly Cinema, 7165 Beverly Blvd., along with the later “Red Desert,” is the ultimate nothing-much-happens/everything-happens movie.

A group of chic, sophisticated people take a yacht to a small, rocky Sicilian island, where one of the women (Lea Massari) disappears. Her best friend (Monica Vitti) replaces the woman in the affections of her fiance (Gabriele Ferzetti) while they are ostensibly on a search for Massari--so much for plot. For Antonioni, the mystery here is not so much the fate of Massari but that of the heart and soul of the individual in an alienating, disaffected society.

Direct, forthright, honest and concerned, Vitti represents what we should all strive to be, whereas Ferzetti stands for all the pitfalls of contemporary life: compromise, indifference and self-indulgence.

“L’Avventura” remains one of the great examples of using the full resources of the camera to express meaning. As critic Gene Youngblood has aptly remarked, “The physical and mental landscape become one.” Three landmark moments stand out: Ferzetti being confronted with the mediocrity of his career when he comes upon the glorious, ancient facades of the town of Noto; his subsequent, deliberate spilling of ink upon a student’s architectural sketch of a niche on a Noto building; and finally, Vitti’s hesitating but real gesture of forgiveness that concludes the film. “L’Avventura” is the most modern of masterpieces. (323) 938-4038.

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LACMA’s “Written and Directed by Preston Sturges” series concludes Saturday with one of the greatest screwball comedies ever, “The Palm Beach Story” (1942), which Sturges wrote for Claudette Colbert at her request and which also stars Joel McCrea, Rudy Vallee and Mary Astor, all four in peak form. Colbert and McCrea play a stylish but penniless Park Avenue couple--and no wonder, for architect McCrea is trying to launch a steel mesh airplane runway suspended over midtown Manhattan. Sturges, of course, makes no comment on how harebrained this scheme is. Instead, he proceeds to send off Colbert to Florida in pursuit of a richer spouse, with McCrea soon in hot pursuit.

The upshot is that Colbert, chic, gorgeous, charming and witty, catches the eye of one of the world’s richest--and primmest--men (Vallee, sweetly hilarious), while his much-married, pleasure-seeking sister (Astor) zeros in on McCrea, who Colbert swiftly passes off as her brother when he catches up with her. Romantic comedies don’t get much more sophisticated than this, and Sturges reveals his mastery of playing genuine emotion off fantasy.

“The Palm Beach Story” pretty much marked the end of the great screwball comedy cycle, in which the shenanigans of society types proved to be popular escapism from grim Depression realities.

It will be followed by another gem, the less-familiar “Easy Living” (1937), in which Jean Arthur is riding on the upper deck of a Fifth Avenue bus when she’s suddenly enveloped in a luxe fur coat that has been thrown from the roof of a stately mansion. It changes her life, costing her her job (as an underling at the Boys’ Constant Companion Magazine), mistakenly identifying her as a financier’s mistress, and even causing a panic on Wall Street. (Edward Arnold is the apoplectic financier and Ray Milland is his playboy son.) “Easy Living” is widely regarded as one of the greatest of the ‘30s comedies, and no wonder: It is as sophisticated as it is humane in its wit, and its dialogue has a timeless glitter. We may be able to see a happy ending clearly enough, but writer Sturges, working from a Vera Caspary story, and director Mitchell Leisen make the getting there hilarious.

(323) 857-6010.