Itzhak (2017)

Directed by: Alison Chernick | 82 minutes | documentary, music, biography | Starring: Itzhak Perlman, Toby Perlman, Alan Alda, Billy Joel, George Bush, George W. Bush, Zubin Mehta, Benjamin Netanyahu, Barack Obama, Luciano Pavarotti, Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Ed Sullivan,

Why do you want to play a certain instrument? Because you hear a sound in your head that you like, says violinist Itzhak Perlman, known for the soundtrack of ‘Schindler’s List’. Also for the big ones, they start small. And the really great recognize that this early beginnings of love for music is the same for everyone, talented or not. One has more perseverance, inspiration and/or motor skills than the other, but that does not matter.

Perlman has a physical disability: he is in a wheelchair due to polio. It cannot be heard in the melancholic sounds of his violin. In the documentary ‘Itzhak’, director Alison Chernick follows the Israeli-American violinist and his energetic wife Toby in their recent lives, filled with good mood. The Jewish Google should be called Joogle, Perlman says. And then he keeps talking about Joogle.

No elitist nonsense about art, but an intense sound from open, humorous minds. Perlman might as well play on Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” This documentary shows that Jewish culture left a strong mark on American post-World War II optimism. The Jewish diaspora found an acceptable haven on the American continent, even after the founding of the state of Israel.

Perlman, born in 1945, is not a man of homesickness, but you can hear it in his music. It’s a bittersweet pain. Pain that is best expressed lyrically, in poetry, music or even politics, he says. Pain to be shared with all, in this case by a man of practicality whose childhood was defined more by violin lessons and zest for life than by the Jewish cause, and that is his way. ‘C’est le ton qui fait la musique’, it doesn’t have to go any deeper.