MURDER IN JERUSALEM

Gur probes the Byzantine world of Israeli broadcasting in this posthumous tale of sex, lies and murder.

Though cost overruns can’t halt Benny Meyuhas’s film adaptation of S.Y. Agnon’s Iddo and Eynam, a prestige production bankrolled by an unnamed American, it’s threatened by the death of set-designer Tirzah Rubin, crushed beneath a marble-pillar prop. Tirzah was not only loved by the whole Israel Television staff, from director Shimshon Zadik on down, she was both Benny’s live-in companion and the wife of womanizing investigative reporter Arye Rubin. As Zadik’s secretary, Aviva, pouts and the newsroom secretary—and Rubin’s former lover—scowls, Inspector Eli Bachar questions staffers about what he regards as Tirzah’s accidental death until Matty Cohen, head of production, suffers a fatal heart attack while being questioned at Jerusalem police headquarters. This second death brings Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon (Bethlehem Road Murder, 2004, etc.) to Israel Television’s studio. While veteran reporter Danny Benizri covers the kidnapping of the minister of social affairs by striking workers at the Hulit factory and an up-and-comer named Natasha ends her affair with news director Hefetz and begins looking into Chief Rabbi Elharizi’s strange trips to Canada, Ohayon explores the dark side of an organization dedicated to bringing the truth to light.

Gur’s swan song is overwrought and overplotted, but it gives a uniquely Israeli take on the paradox of the sacred and profane in the Holy Land.