June Zero has enough poignant and insightful moments to carry it past its lapses. Director Jake Paltrow tells three intertwined Israeli stories that take place during the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, followed by his hanging in 1962. June Zero isn't a reenactment along the lines of The Man in the Glass Booth, an Eichmann-centered play that became a movie in 1975. Paltrow, who wrote the movie's screenplay with Tom Shoval, offers a speculative footnote about Eichmann that leads to considerations about the weight of Holocaust history and the value of memory. Three characters carry the story's burden. David (Noam Ovadia) is a 13-year-old Libyan Jewish immigrant who works in a factory run by the gruff but caring Zebco (Tzahi Grad). Haim (Yoav Levi) is a Moroccan Jewish prison guard assigned to watch Eichmann in his cell. Tom Hagi portrays a Holocaust survivor who becomes a focal point for issues involving the importance of giving testimony. Paltrow and Shoval anchor their story in historical truth. Once Eichmann was hanged, the Israelis faced a challenge: What to do with his body? It was decided that Eichmann would be cremated. His ashes would then be dumped in the ocean, a preventive measure against the establishment of any shrine that might encourage neo-Nazi veneration. The problem: Cremation was not allowed under Jewish law, so Israel had no crematoriums. The screenplay contrives to have Zeboc's factory build a single-body crematorium based on a German blueprint for ovens that were used in Auschwitz. The shift to Hagi's story can be disorienting, and a brief epilogue adds little. Overall, though, Paltrow's movie unsettles, never shrinking from complexity as it details how a major trial impacted the lives of ordinary Israelis.
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