Although Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British actor who passed away on Thursday, was best known for his roles in the Star Trek and the X-Men movie franchises and his theatrical career, he also had an Israeli movie on his long list of credits: Reshef Levi’s 2013 Hunting Elephants.
The movie, which was the opening-night film of the Jerusalem Film Festival, was a caper comedy set in Jerusalem that featured Stewart alongside an all-star cast of Israeli actors. Stewart played the great-uncle of a young boy (Gil Blank) who spends time with his grandfather (Sasson Gabbai) and his grandfather’s friend (Moni Moshonov) at their assisted-living facility, who are former bank robbers. After the sudden death of his father, a bank guard (Zvika Hadar), the bank refuses to pay out the father’s pension over a technicality. Stewart comes to Israel to help the grandfather and his buddy rob the bank to get the money that is due to the boy’s family.
The movie explains Stewart's connection to the family by saying that the boy’s grandmother, who is now comatose, is British. In my review when the movie when it was first released, I praised Stewart as the best thing about Hunting Elephants: “[Stewart] injects the film with life and flamboyance. His role is a series of comic bits, one of the best of which is a flashback to him in England performing in a Star Wars-themed version of Hamlet… He plays a lord and failed actor who is broke and has even sold his title to pay the bills. Between the two old Israelis’ criminal background, Stewart’s talent for making an impression and deceiving people, and the boy’s knowledge of the bank’s security system, which his father was kind enough to explain to him in detail just before he died, it’s the perfect set-up for a caper movie.” One of the highlights of the movie was a music-hall performance by Stewart at the old people’s home.
'Every other character in the film, but Michael, my character, speaks Hebrew'
In a press conference to promote the movie in Tel Aviv before filming started, Stewart said, “This movie is unlike anything else I’ve ever done, because every other character in the film, but Michael, my character, speaks Hebrew.” It turned out that he was a last-minute substitute for John Cleese, who was originally cast in the role but became ill before filming started. Stewart said he had visited Israel for the first time a year before making the movie, as a tourist, before performing in a stage production of The Merchant of Venice, a role which he had played five times. “In all the decades that had gone by, the one place I should have visited, to give this role verisimilitude, was Israel,” he said. On the earlier visit, he had had spent “four extraordinary days” in Israel and had not wanted to leave.
A few months later, he said, “I open a package and there is a script of an Israeli film and it’s set in Jerusalem. I couldn’t have been happier. And then I read the script and found out it was very funny and it had some very distinguished actors in it. So, I am delighted to be back, not as a tourist but as part of an Israeli film production.”
'If you’re outdoors and everybody is running and you’re standing still, pay attention'
In a reflection of how things have changed in the 14 years since Stewart made the movie, he spoke at the press conference of being a lifelong Labor Party Member who was always engaged in politics, and said that he thought that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be his priority if he were a world leader. But he emphasized that he believed that the best way to figure out how to do that was to spend time in the region and said he looked forward to having a “clearer mind about the issues” after spending a month filming in Israel.
But some things never seem to change, and he said, “Two Jewish friends of mine said: ‘One piece of advice. If you’re outdoors and everybody is running and you’re standing still, pay attention.’”