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 Instead, she considers "A Tale of Love and Darkness", her
screen adaptation of Israeli novelist Amos Oz's grimy, erotic
and bitter-sweet work, a meditation on the shortfalls of
national ideals in a land riven by the Palestinians' rival
claims.
Asked during the drama's commercial premiere in Jerusalem on
Thursday if the project was meant to be pro-Israeli, Portman
told Reuters: "Absolutely not ... I actually find it surprising
to hear it described as a patriotic film because, for me, much
of it has to do with the disappointment of the dream."
She said she sought to convey, as the dovish Oz argued, that
Israel's early self-image as "utopia for a land of orphans who
came out of the Holocaust (was) maybe blind to some of the
realities on the ground - and here we are this many decades
later".
The Hebrew-language film, in which Portman also stars as Oz's
suicidal mother, focuses on Jewish hardship in a Jerusalem
besieged by Arab forces in the 1948 war of Israel's founding. It
also touches on the resulting dispossession of Palestinians.
Though Portman waived payment, the film's slim $4.2 million
budget drew on support from the rightist Israeli government,
which is keen to promote the country's locations for foreign
productions and push back against pro-Palestinian boycott calls.
Portman took these into account in planning the shoots - which,
she said, were all on Israeli land and avoided West Bank and
East Jerusalem territory occupied in the 1967 war, where world
powers would like to see a Palestinian state set up.
Critical reception for "A Tale of Love and Darkness" has been
mixed, suggesting limited international reach. Trade publication
Variety called it a "drearily empathetic" film that would rely
on Portman's star power to market. Britain's Guardian called it
"a serious, well-made adaptation" of Oz's book.
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In May, the Hollywood Reporter quoted Portman as saying she was
"very much against" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He
had been re-elected two months earlier after rallying his
constituents by warning of the left-wing clout of the country's Arab
voters - remarks she condemned as "horrific".
On Thursday, Portman, who was born in Jerusalem and moved to the
United States at age three, was more guarded on Israeli affairs.
"I do obviously love this country and I am also quite critical of
it, as I think every engaged citizen should be," she said. "I
believe in this country and I believe in the people - that it can be
the best version of itself."
Portman, now 34, said "A Tale of Love and Darkness" had offered her
a form of completion, in requiring that she reclaim her forgotten
Hebrew.
"It was very meaningful for me," she said. "It's weird when your
first language, and maybe the language of your emotions, of your
childhood, is sort of missing."
(Writing by Dan Williams, editing by Larry King)
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