SUBJECTS — World/Israel, Germany, WWII/Germany/Holocaust;
SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING — Sexual Orientation; Breaking Out;
MORAL-ETHICAL EMPHASIS — Caring.
AGE: 14+; MPAA Rating — R for some language including sexual references, and for brief nudity;
Drama; 2004, 103 minutes; Color. Available from Amazon.com.
This fascinating study of grief, guilt, and emotional growth is useful in history and ELA classes. It has a gay man in a positive leading role.
TWM offers the following movie worksheets to keep students’ minds on the film and to focus their attention on the lessons to be learned from the movie.
Film Study Worksheet for ELA Classes;
Worksheet for Cinematic and Theatrical Elements and Their Effects.
Teachers can modify the movie worksheets to fit the needs of each class. See also TWM’s Historical Fiction in Film Cross-Curricular Homework Project and Movies as Literature Homework Project.
Additional ideas for lesson plans for this movie can be found at TWM’s guide to Lesson Plans Using Film Adaptations of Novels, Short Stories or Plays.
Eyal is a Mossad assassin trying to recover emotionally from the suicide of his wife. He is assigned to pose as a tour guide keeping watch over Axel, a young German whose grandfather evaded responsibility for murdering thousands during the Holocaust. Axel is gay. He is in Israel to encourage his sister, now living on a Kibbutz, to return to Germany for their father’s 70th birthday party. Neither knows that their grandfather is alive and will attend the celebration returning to Germany from his hiding place in South America. As the story progresses Eyal and Axel become friends despite Eyal’s homophobia and each discovers something new about himself.
Selected Awards: 2004 Israeli Film Academy Awards: Won: Best Music and Best Sound; Nominated: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor (Lior Ashkenazi), Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing.
Featured Actors: Lior Ashkenazi as Eyal; Knut Berger as Axel Himmelman; Caroline Peters as Pia Himmelman; Gideon Shemer as Menachem (as Gidon Shemer); Carola Regnier as Axel’s Mother; Hanns Zischler as Axel’s Father; Ernest Lenart as Alfred Himmelman; Yousef ‘Joe’ Sweid as Rafik.
Director: Eytan Fox
Walk on Water presents a story of interest to students learning about the Holocaust and to anyone living in countries resisting terrorism, especially the U.S., Israel, and the nations of Western Europe. The movie will be of special interest to Germans in its exploration of the reaction of young generations to the Holocaust. The story has engaging universal themes and provides an opportunity to analyze the literary devices of character development and irony.
Students will gain perspective about the costs of assassination as a tool in the war on terror. They will work through an interesting psychological study of grief and guilt while also experiencing a story with a homosexual man in a leading role and a straight man who sheds his homophobia. Students will sharpen their discussion and research skills while analyzing the literary elements of the story.
Minor. There is discussion about gay sex and circumcision. The conversation is appropriate for the story and has humor value.
Watch the movie with your child and discuss the issues raised in the discussion questions.
Students watching this film should generally be aware of the Holocaust, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and the question of how Germans of today react to the genocide perpetrated by their grandparents and great-grandparents.
Before showing the movie make sure that the following facts are fresh in the minds of students. This can be done by asking the class for this information using the questions set out below, having students research the questions, or by direct instruction telling students the substance of the suggested answers.
Question #1: What happened to gays in Germany during WWII? Suggested Response: They were put in the concentration camps and many died. [Teachers may want to also point out or elicit from the class the information that during the Holocaust the Nazis didn’t just kill approximately 6,000,000 Jews. They also murdered another 5,000,000 other “undesirables” such as Poles, the Roma, the disabled, homosexuals, political opponents (democrats, socialists, and communists), and the religious (of all denominations).]
Question #2: What are skinheads and what do they represent? Skinheads are thugs who revere Hitler and want to implement the policies of the Nazis. They often terrorize and beat minorities and homosexuals.
Question #3: What is a kibbutz? A kibbutz is a communal farm. The kibbutzim (plural for kibbutz) were instrumental in the founding of the state of Israel because they provided a framework for people from different places to work together in agricultural enterprises. In this film, there is a character who works and lives on a kibbutz.
Before showing the film, give the following introduction to the class or hand out and have students read the ELA Handout.
This movie takes place in Israel and Germany in modern times. The two main characters in the film are Eyal, an undercover agent for the Israeli intelligence service, and Axel, a young man from Germany who has come to Israel as a tourist. Eyal’s mother barely escaped from Nazi Germany during the Holocaust and many of her family members and friends were killed. Eyal was brought up to hate everything, German.
The title of the movie, “Walk on Water” is taken from the following scene. Eyal is assigned to pose as a tour guide and escort Axel to various sites around the country. He takes Axel to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Axel walks out into the sea on a submerged rock or piece of concrete that is just below the water level. It looks as if he is walking on water. Then he falls in and gets wet. Eyal is watching from the shore and they have this exchange:
Eyal: [sarcastically] Bravo. You did it!
Axel: You don’t understand. You can’t just come to the Sea of Galilee and start walking on water. If you could, everybody would be doing it. You need to prepare yourself.
Eyal: And how would you do that? Please enlighten me.
Axel: Well, you need to completely purify yourself. Your heart needs to be like it’s clean from the inside: no negativity, no bad thoughts.
Eyal: And then?
Axel: And then you can walk on water. I’m sure of it.
In the alternative, stop the film at this scene and replay it for students, telling them that this is the scene that gives the movie its title and provides important clues to its central theme.
There are several scenes in the film in which a Palestinian character is an important figure. A discussion about the origins of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and the contributions of other countries, including Germany, to that conflict, will be a helpful introduction to the movie. Discussion prompts and suggested points that should be covered are set out below.
The question for discussion is: “What were the contributions of Continental Europe, Russia, Islamic countries in the Middle East, the Israelis, and the Palestinians to the creation of the current conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians?”
Teachers should make sure that the points set out below are covered in the discussion. If necessary, supply the information.
Note that all well-reasoned responses are acceptable.
For Social Studies Classes: Questions 1 – 3 & 5 below, as well as questions 6 – 11 in the Supplemental Materials are appropriate for Social Studies Classes. These discussion questions provide opportunities for cross-curricular instruction.
1. The title and the following dialog provide assistance in deriving one of the themes of the film. This exchange occurs when Axel falls into the Sea of Galilee after telling Eyal that he was going to walk on water.
Eyal: [sarcastically] Bravo. You did it!
Axel: You don’t understand. You can’t just come to the Sea of Galilee and start walking on water. If you could, everybody would be doing it. You need to prepare yourself.
Eyal: And how would you do that? Please enlighten me.
Axel: Well, you need to completely purify yourself. Your heart needs to be like it’s clean from the inside: no negativity, no bad thoughts.
Eyal: And then?
Axel: And then you can walk on water. I’m sure of it.
Describe how this dialog relates to an important theme of the movie.
Suggested Response:
Purity (being clean from the inside with no negativity or bad thoughts), in the sense used in this film, is to live in a right relation with the world. Axel cannot be pure and allow his grandfather to live because that would implicate him in the Holocaust. He cannot be pure and allow his friend Eyal to take on the guilt of having killed another person. Eyal cannot live a clean life with no negativity or bad thoughts and continue to kill nor can he continue with his homophobia having come to know Axel as a person. Pia, like Axel, must disassociate herself from her family’s Nazi past. She leaves Germany and goes to live in Israel for this purpose. Once an individual lives cleanly with no negativity or bad thoughts, that is, once an individual achieves a right relation with the world, life is a miracle and, metaphorically, he or she can then “walk on water”.
2. Identify some other themes of the film.
Suggested Response:
These include: (1) An assassin even for a good cause has no peace of mind. The assassin runs the risk, in the last words of Eyal’s wife, of killing everything he touches. While Axel at the end of the film assassinates his grandfather, he does not lose his peace of mind. This is because his grandfather is not only a criminal (as were the people killed by Eyal), his grandfather was also a member of Axel’s family which tried to implicate Axel in grandfather’s crimes. If Axel had not taken action against the old man, Axel would have been implicated in the Holocaust and unable to free himself from the taint of his family. (Actually, instead of killing the war criminal, Axel should have informed the German authorities and let them handle the situation. Axel’s father and mother might have been prosecuted for concealing a criminal, but they were guilty of that crime and should have paid the price.) (2) Homosexuals are human and coming to know a homosexual demonstrates the absurdity of homophobia. (3) Family loyalty has limits and crimes of family members cannot be condoned or excused. Encourage students to come up with more themes from the film.
3. What was the purpose for including the Palestinian character, Rafik.
Suggested Response:
Generally, the scenes with Rafik advance the plot by showing Axel’s homosexuality and Eyal’s homophobia. The incident with the coat shows the hypocrisy of those Israelis who object to anti-Semitism but allow themselves to hate Palestinians. It also shows how the Germans are willing to forgive a Palestinian merchant for his petty cheat, which is reasonable given the central role that Germany played in convincing the surviving European Jews that they were not safe in Europe, thus indirectly causing the displacement of many Palestinians.
4. How did the characters of Axel and Eyal change over the course of the story and what caused those changes?
Suggested Response:
Eyal: The factors which motivated Eyal to change were the suicide of his wife, the emotional toll that the life of an assassin took on him, coming to know Axel, and being confronted with an assault by skinheads on Axel’s gay and transvestite friends. Sick of a life devoid of meaning, except to kill, and no longer able to deny his feelings, Eyal realized that he couldn’t kill again and had an emotional breakdown. He needed to completely reorganize his emotional life, which he did by marrying Pia. In the extended metaphor of the film, by refusing to kill any more and by becoming a nurturing father, Eyal has brought himself into a right relation with the world and can now live the miracle of life, i.e., “walk on water”.
Axel: This gentle gay man who teaches little children and loves female voices starts to change when Pia tells him that their parents were complicit in hiding their grandfather, a Nazi war criminal. His anger starts to show as he participates in the fight with the skinheads who have attacked his friends. Axel then confronts his family by suggesting the Israeli folk dance at his father’s birthday party. He then discovers that Eyal is an Israeli intelligence agent assigned to kill his grandfather. The climax of the movie occurs when Axel realizes that he must decide whose side he is on: that of the Nazis or of well-meaning people. He decides and kills his grandfather. By that time in the world of this film, he is an avenging angel, capable of murder. In being able to kill the war criminal and in rejecting the Nazi (and anti-gay as well as anti-Jewish) past of his family, Axel has brought himself into a right relation with the world without negativity and bad thoughts; he can now live the miracle of life and, like Eyal and Pia, “walk on water”.
5. Identify some of the ironies in this story.
Suggested Response:
Here are some. There may be more.
A. At the beginning of the film, Eyal and Axel appear to be completely different. One is a gay German who teaches little children and loves female singers; he is hardly a killer. The other is a hardened assassin who kills fathers in front of their young children without apparent regret. However, Eyal and Axel have at least one very important thing in common: homosexuals, as well as Jews, were killed in Hitler’s concentration camps. Both ethnicity and sexual orientation are not choices individuals make and both are subject to prejudice.
B. At the beginning of the film, Eyal is presented as a man of steel, who can kill fathers in front of their young children and then celebrate with Champagne. Axel is just the opposite: a man of softness, caring, and emotion. But in fact, it is Axel who is emotionally stronger. When asked to kill the old man, Eyal realizes that the way he has structured his life in the past will no longer work and that he cannot kill anymore. It is Axel who turns off his grandfather’s oxygen and who comforts his new friend, Eyal, who is overcome by the realization of all that he has lost. In short, at the end of the film, it is the formerly gentle gay man who kills and retains his composure and the trained assassin who refuses to kill and needs comforting.
C. Traditionally, Germans have been thought of as prejudiced and Jews the victims of that prejudice, However, in this film, it is Eyal who is prejudiced against Palestinians and gays.
D. The skinheads think that they have easy prey when they assault Axel’s friends in the subway tunnel; however, the fight didn’t turn out as they expected.
E. Eyal the hardened killer cannot emotionally deal with the death of his wife.
6. Do you live in a right relation with the world? Describe the reasons for your answer and if you do not live in a right relation with the world, describe what you need to do to be able to “walk on water”.
7. Why did Axel kill his grandfather before the old war criminal died of natural causes? After all, the grandfather didn’t have much time left.
Suggested Response:
There are several possible and overlapping motivations: to establish Axel’s independence from the dark past of his family; to erase a barrier between himself and other well-meaning people in the world; to help Eyal by killing the old man so that Eyal didn’t have to do it; and to stand up against the people who would have murdered him and other homosexuals had they been in power. In the metaphorical system of this film, Axel killed his war criminal grandfather to keep himself pure so that he could live in a right relation with the world so that his life would be a miracle and he could “walk on water”.
8. When confronted with his grandfather’s presence in his parents’ home, there was something that Axel could have done, that he probably should have done, instead of killing the old man. What was it and what are the arguments suggesting that it might have been a better resolution for Axel? Suggested Response: Axel could have informed the German authorities and let them handle the situation. The modern-day German police will prosecute war criminals. This would have been better a better result on two levels. First, revenge is not for individuals, it is for the state. See Learning Guide to Hamlet. Second, it would have been a more complete rejection of his family’s Nazi past because Axel’s father and mother might have been prosecuted for concealing a criminal. It’s not easy to see one’s own family members punished for their crimes, but the mother and father had aligned themselves with the Nazi past. They were guilty and should have paid the price. 9. Axel can also be seen as a symbol for the youth of Germany. What is the message of that symbolism?
Suggested Response:
That the way to live down the history of the Holocaust is to separate themselves from it and reject it.
10. What may explain Pia’s reason for leaving Germany, abandoning her family, and living on a kibbutz in Israel?
Suggested Response:
It seems clear that Pia cannot live with her family’s connection to Hitler’s policies in World War II. Some may suggest that it is her way to rebel. Others may suggest that it is her way to atone. If she was looking just to distance herself from her family, she could have gone to many places other than Israel. In the extended metaphor of the film, she was purifying herself so that she could be in a right relation with the world and live the miracle of life, i.e., “walk on water”.
11. Why was it important for Eyal’s supervisor, Menachem, to have Axel’s grandfather killed before the old Nazi died of natural causes?
Suggested Response:
There are several possible and probably overlapping motivations, including revenge and a need to see justice done.
12. What is the importance of the scene in which Eyal defends Axel and his gay and transvestite friends.
Suggested Response:
It is a turning point in the development of Eyal’s character; he has abandoned his old homophobic position which he could not maintain in the face of his feelings of friendship for Axel. Eyal now sees Axel as another human being rather than just a homosexual. This incident shows that having come to know Axel, Eyal could no longer deny the humanity of Axel and his rather strange friends.
13. It is only after Menachem gives Eyal the poison to kill Axel’s grandfather that Eyal learns that Menachem has sent him on a rogue operation to kill the old Nazi as a matter of personal revenge. Did Menachem have a right to take revenge on the man who had murdered many people, including members of Menachem’s family? Explain your position.
Suggested Response:
Menachem should have reported the presence of the war criminal to the German authorities who would have tried him or, as Eyal suggested, Menachem should have taken the war criminal back to Israel for trial. While it is understandable that Menachem would want the satisfaction of killing the man, in civilized societies revenge is for the state. See Learning Guide to Hamlet.
14. When Pia told Axel that she had discovered that their parents were helping to shelter their grandfather, a war criminal, what was Axel’s reaction and how did that differ from Pia’s reaction.
Suggested Response:
Axel’s reaction was to confront his family, which he did through bringing an Israeli to the birthday party, having the guests and his father perform an Israeli folk dance, and then killing the old man. Pia’s reaction was to leave Germany and live in Israel.
See Discussion Questions for Use With any Film that is a Work of Fiction.
1. What role did the fact that Axel was gay play in the plot of the film? Would the movie have worked better if he had been straight?
Suggested Response:
Being gay gave the character of Axel a vulnerability so that the audience could readily understand why he could have turned against his family’s association with Nazism. A strong argument could be made that as a movie about German/Israeli reconciliation, the film would have worked better if Axel had been straight, because Axel’s homosexuality distracts from that theme. Any child of Axel’s family should have turned against its association with Nazism; which is exactly what Pia did. However, Axel’s homosexuality was a key to another important theme of the movie (acceptance of homosexuals) and one of the central ironies of the film (Axel the gay teacher of young children was emotionally stronger than Eyal the hardened Mossad assassin). Axel being gay was also helpful setting up both the interaction with the Palestinian and the subway tunnel incident both of which advanced plot and character development.
2. What, if anything, does this movie have to say about homosexuality?
Suggested Response:
It shows that homosexuals are not “the other”. They are people with the full range of human interests and passions; they are not defined only by their homosexuality. Axel’s way of living in a right relation with the world dealt with more than the fact of his sexual orientation, it required him to completely sever all ties with his family’s Nazi past by killing his war-criminal grandfather. It required him to help his friend Eyal who was suffering an emotional breakdown.
3. Both Eyal and Axel broke out of the lifestyle that they had grown up with and lived for years. Describe what they broke out of and how they did it.
Suggested Response:
Eyal broke out of the role of hardened assassin. He stopped killing and started feeling. Axel broke away from the Nazi associations of his family and broke with his mother and father by killing his grandfather.
(Be kind; Be compassionate and show you care; Express gratitude; Forgive others; Help people in need)
1. What did Axel do for his friend Eyal?
Suggested Response:
He relieved Eyal from the duty of killing the old Nazi and comforted Eyal when the Mossad agent was able to feel his losses and broke down crying.
See also Discussion Questions which Explore Ethical Issues Raised by Any Film.
Any of the discussion questions can serve as an essay prompt. Additional assignments include:
For all Subject Areas:
1. Using Internet research, find information about the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Create a timeline of events that have occurred since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.
When you reach the current date, speculate as to what may happen next. Continue the timeline to an imagined resolution that to you seems likely. Write a one-page essay stating the reasons for the likelihood of the resolution that you have imagined, citing events in your timeline.
2. Imagine that it has been three years since Axel killed his grandfather. Write a letter from Axel to his father in which Axel reveals that he has killed the old war criminal and explains why that action was necessary in order for Axel to live in a right relation with the world. It is in this letter that Axel will come out and tell his father he is gay. Describe whether or not Axel has any regrets for what he has done. In your letter, use the central insight of the film, i.e., to fully experience the miracle of life (to “walk on water”) you must “purify yourself. Your heart needs to be like it’s clean from the inside: no negativity, no bad thoughts.”
3. Write a letter from Pia to her son on his tenth birthday in which she reveals to him that his great-grandfather was a war criminal and that Axel killed him. Explain why Pia has severed her ties with her parents and chosen to live in Israel with Eyal. Describe whether or not Pia has regrets about what she has done and her perspective on what Axel did when he killed the old war criminal. In the letter, use the central insight of the film, i.e., to fully experience the miracle of life (to “walk on water”) you must “purify yourself. Your heart needs to be like it’s clean from the inside: no negativity, no bad thoughts.”
4. Write a formal analytic essay on the growth of character experienced by Eyal and Axel. Seek to determine what may be responsible for each change and conclude your essay with an opinion about how their lives have been enriched or diminished by these changes.
See also Additional Assignments for Use With any Film that is a Work of Fiction.
Multimedia: Anchor Standard #7 for Reading (for both ELA classes and for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Classes). (The three Anchor Standards read: “Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media, including visually and quantitatively as well as in words.”) CCSS pp. 35 & 60. See also Anchor Standard # 2 for ELA Speaking and Listening, CCSS pg. 48.
Reading: Anchor Standards #s 1, 2, 7 and 8 for Reading and related standards (for both ELA classes and for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Classes). CCSS pp. 35 & 60.
Writing: Anchor Standards #s 1 – 5 and 7- 10 for Writing and related standards (for both ELA classes and for History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Classes). CCSS pp. 41 & 63.
Speaking and Listening: Anchor Standards #s 1 – 3 (for ELA classes). CCSS pg. 48.
Not all assignments reach all Anchor Standards. Teachers are encouraged to review the specific standards to make sure that over the term all standards are met.
This Learning Guide was written by James Frieden and Mary RedClay and was published on December 31, 2013.