"Hatufim" and the Journey to "Homeland"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Features

Published on Thursday, 09 August 2012 15:18

Written by Laura Blum

Not since Steve McQueen rode his motorcycle out of Stalag Luft III in the 1963 wartime epic The Great Escape has the fate of POWs so intoxicated the senses.

Now that Hulu is streaming the hit Israeli TV drama Hatufim -- about soldiers who return to their native Israel after being held hostage in Lebanon and Syria for 17 years -- American viewers are discovering the addictive properties of the series on which Showtime's Golden Globes winner Homeland is drawn.

The show, which is translated as Prisoners of War, has created willing prisoners of TV. Largely to blame for this helpless devotion is Israeli television writer and producer Gideon Raff.

The 39-year-old Jerusalem native began his entertainment career in film. His studies at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles led to a stint as director Doug Liman’s assistant on Branjolina starrer Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Next he made two feature-length films, The Killing Floor and the Thora Birch-topped screamer Train. After nine years in the US, he yearned for Zion -- and a chance to make a TV show bloom. His concept of following the traumas of released POWs was not only unprecedented for Israeli television, it was all but taboo.

Insofar as the topic had surfaced in books or the news, the angle tended to be the horrors of captivity or the public fixation on securing the POWs' release. Prior to Hatufim, what greeted the roughly 1,500 Israeli prisoners of war who actually made it back home was relegated to the privacy of the smoted home. (Currently some 400 former war captives live in Israel.)

Hatufim opens as three Israeli soldiers — PTSD-afflicted Uri and Nimrod, Amiel in a coffin — are set to fly to Ben Gurion airport following a long-awaited negotiation of a prisoner swap. Their POW ordeal had begun with their botched attempt to kill a leading guerrilla operative in Lebanon. And now their civilian woes begin, as they and their loved ones face the heart-crushing challenges of reacclimation. As a welcome home, they are interrogated by a military official in order to rule out any concern that they are operating on behalf of their former captors.

The show's timing seemed suggestive. Though Raff insists that the deal to free Gilad Shalit after five years being held by Hamas did not factor into his creative process, the media coverage of his return -- and of the public hue and cry over the 1,027 Palestinian prisoners freed in exchange -- may as well have been part of the fictionalized series.

In one Hatufim episode, Uri and Nimrod encounter demonstrations protesting their release due to the prohibitive price, which aired around the same time as Shalit’s October 18, 2011 return.

Hatufim's timing in entertainment history was less controversial. The HBO hit In Treatment advanced Israel as a fertile land for creating original TV formats. Based on the smash hit B'Tipul, In Treatment earned five Golden Globes nominations, including best drama series, with lead actor Gabriel Byrne taking home a best actor trophy. US networks are now busy snatching up Israeli formats with the same gusto as the British formats that have long found their way into domestic living rooms.

Israeli programs currently being developed on American soil include the musical/time-travel soap Danny Hollywood, now called Joey Dakota (CW), the game show Who’s Still Standing and drama series Timrot Ashan/Pillars of Smoke (NBC); and such dramas as The Naked Truth (HBO), the comedies Tall and Greenbaum and Life Isn’t Everything (CBS) and reality series 3 (CBS), Connected (MTV) and The Frame (CW).

Hatufim is arguably Israel's most successful television export to the US. The concept first came to the attention of Homeland producer Howard Gordon through Raff's Hollywood-based agent, Rick Rosen. At the time, Gordon was executive producing 24, about a counter terrorist operative. Gordon soon collared his 24 colleague Alex Gansa for what would become Homeland duty. In the interim, another Rick Rosen client, Keshet Broadcasting, picked up 10 episodes of Hatufim, debuting in 2010. Keshet had already scored big with BiTipul.

Both Homeland and Hatufim were renewed for a second season. Each series probes issues and anxieties that hound its respective country of origin. In Homeland, Claire Danes plays a maverick CIA agent with bipolar disorder who suspects that returning POW Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) was recruited as a terrorist during his service in Afghanistan. The Showtime sensation entertains such questions as, After Osama bin Laden, do we still need to be afraid? and, What are the risks of conducting espionage for the "homeland"?

Hatufim is far more concerned with the plight of the returning POWs as they struggle to rejoin their families and reintegrate into society, whereas Homeland focuses on the suspense-packed tensions between Brody and his CIA investigator. Now and then the two series cross paths; in May 2012 Danes and co-star Mandy Patinkin shot scenes in Israel for Homeland's next season, which premieres on September 30. Gracing the set was Raff, who produces both American and Israeli versions.

If Homeland bears his DNA, Hatufim was made from his rib. To research the latter, Riff delved headlong into the issue of POWs, devouring Zahava Stroud’s seminal Ph.D. dissertation from Tel Aviv University, interviewing returning POWs and parsing post-traumatic stress disorder. While the show has its detractors, it has won hosannas from former hostages and hooked audiences alike. Those in favor tout Raff's courage in airing a previously off-limits topic while those opposed allege that the show exploits painful reality. Raff has sharply rebuffed allegations that he based the narrative on any individual case.

To be sure, bringing the boys back is a perennial issue in Israel, one that Hatufim scrutinizes with a degree of nuance, intelligence and respect that turns viewers into consenting captives.

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