Broken Wings ( 2002 ) is satisfyingly depressing

Blender Dumbass
August 11, 2025

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There is a feeling I'm chasing sometimes that only a few things can give me. A feeling of satisfying depression. Films like Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away give me that feeling to some extent in some of the sequences. But Nir Bergman's 2002 film Broken Wings gives it all throughout.

From the opening shot of the gritty film-stock footage of a cloudy / rainy scene with a train passing through the shot, I knew that this movie will at least be on the list of those other films I mentioned. But then, as it continued, with the simple dramatic story, of what seems to be a bunch of misunderstood people ( one of them is a borderline EMO girl, who's character actually works ), I was presently surprised that the movie goes all into that emotion, and sustains it all through the film.

This movie could have been so terrible. On paper it is one of those very bad concepts that a lot of Russian produced TV melodramas pomp out every god damned time. A broken family where a little kid is sick and therefor cry, damn it, cry! They always put the saddest possible, way too melodramatic music to go with it. And you sit there and cringe from how much they are trying to and failing to make you cry.

Somehow Nir Bergman's script and direction achieves it. You don't sit there and think how bad it is. You actually care about the characters. You actually somewhat understand them. And you actually cry.

This film holds on two very important things. One is Bergman's direction. He is doing this kind of very resourceful, very simple, yet very effective style. Kind of similar to the very beginning of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, before the Sci-fi stuff is introduced. The shots are mostly static, or if there is a camera move, the movement is simple. The film stock is grainy. The stuff in the shot is always cold-looking and depressing. A lot of rain. A lot of cloudiness. A lot of moodiness. The shots are not dark. It is not trying to be a horror film. It is trying to be a depression film. And it does it well.

And then the second thing that holds this movie together are the actors. They do an amazing job of not over-acting anything. Of letting there be something to grow into. If in the stupid Russian TV melodramas the kid is always sick and the adults are always crying, here people have range. And different characters have different ranges to them.

The EMO girl ( Maya Maron ) has this cognitive dissonance. She doesn't really know what she want's from her life. She is a singer, but the trauma in the family makes her be very broken and unable, pretty much, to pursue her singing. She is constantly in a conflict between being a singer, or being with the family.

Her brother ( Nitai Gvirtz ) is an interesting character. He is so depressed that he is already pass the depression and is back into feeling good about everything. He is this kind of good-person cynic. He feels that everything is lost already and that he is speck of dust that nobody cares about. Yet his depression manifests itself as this calming naivete. Not that he is naive, but that he just no longer cares. And therefor he can save, by just being there, a lot of other people from their demise.

The two kids both worry me and and make me hopeful about the project I'm about to embark on soon. ( I have a movie script which requires kick ass kids actors ). Eliana Magon who was apparently about 5 at the time of the filming, is playing this little girl character. And yet unlike any other stupid movie, she has a lot of agency. Nir Bergman is refusing to be an ageist with this film. Yes the other kid almost killed himself and yes, the characters blame the adults on not supervising the kids well enough. But the movie is not ageist.

When her brother ( Daniel Magon wait... is it her brother in real life too?) jumps from a high thing and hits the ground, almost killing himself, the little 5 year old girl has enough agency to actually do something about it. She tries to help him at first. When it doesn't work, she navigates through the town, on her own, under a pouring rain, though traffic, and finds people who have the ability to call the ambulance. She is a fucking hero. And in other places in the movie, like when she refuses to do things until she gets what she wants. Or when she observes the dynamics of other characters, she is fucking amazing. As an actor, she is very good. At 5.

Orly Silbersatz Banai as the mother is also terrific. Hell every single one of them are terrific.

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