Mickey Berkowitz's Secret is hard to watch. And not just because of the dementia
- Salon Associate
- Published in TimeOut
- No comments
Between the cynicism of Keshet 12 and the clichés that expect Mickey-King-of-Israel to score a victory basket against an incurable disease – there is an important film hidden. Raskin scrapes beauty out of tragedy, and forces Israelis to look straight at a painful fact: this time it is impossible to win, and that does not make "The Archbishop of Victory" any less of a winner.
Exactly one year ago today, someone who chose to tell me told me that Mickey Berkowitz suffers from what he called "advanced dementia." I did a brief check with a senior sports journalist who confirmed the sad story. I kept the story to myself. Almost. I chose to share it with one person: my father, the greatest Maccabi fan I knew, a die-hard fan who flew with Maccabi Tel Aviv to games abroad in the 70s and became friends with Mickey and Moti, who were his age. A few days later, my mother called me, upset: "Why did you have to tell your father about Mickey Berkowitz? "He hasn't slept in a week." My father didn't lose sleep over gossip. The legendary M.I.K.'s illness forced him to look at something much bigger and scarier. For an entire generation of Israelis, M.I.K. Berkowitz wasn't just a basketball player. He was youth, Thursday nights, a small country that defeated empires, and most of all, the promise that if you're talented, determined, and strong enough, you can overcome anything. If this can happen even to M.I.K., the King of Israel, what does that mean for all of us, the common people?
In the year that has passed since then, "Mickey's Secret" has become a fairly well-known secret. You can't really keep secrets in this country, certainly not when it comes to a famous person who suddenly disappears from the public eye. Precisely for this reason, the Berkowitz family's choice to reveal his illness in front of the cameras of the country's most watched channel is such a noble step - both towards the public that loves him so much, and towards Mickey himself. This is not a decision that was taken for granted. As Niv Raskin's film "Mickey Berkowitz's Secret" shows, Berkowitz is no longer in a position to give consent to participate in such a work. His family members were forced to make the decision on his behalf, just as they are now forced to make many other decisions on his behalf. This fact does not automatically make every disclosure legitimate. It requires the film to justify itself at almost every moment. For the most part, it succeeds in doing so.
Ultimately, this is a television review – and from a television perspective, the film had quite a few objective problems. First, the hostel. Keshet 12 did what it knows how to do with such materials, and wrapped them in lots of dramatic promos, and filled them with commercial breaks at exactly the least appropriate moment (which, in terms of commercial television, is the most appropriate moment). It's annoying when it comes to a scripted series, it's almost inhuman when they go out for commercials just as Moti Aerosti breaks down in tears. What a gap between this red-haired soul actor and the money machine of Israeli commercial television. But in this case, you have to separate the envelope from the film inside. The promos may have tried to sell a mystery about "Mickey's Secret," but Raskin's film sought to tell the truth. And within this terrible truth, Raskin even managed to scratch out beauty. Yes, even in the revelation of such a tragic story, you can find beauty. It is found, for example, in the way Raskin connects to the Berkowitz family through his father's struggle with Parkinson's disease. Not to make himself another hero in the story, but to make it clear that he knows firsthand the helplessness of a family that sees a loved one changing before their eyes.
The beauty of the film is also found in the honesty of Shelly Berkowitz, this strong woman, who refuses to offer viewers an optimistic scenario that doesn't exist. "Let's just say that today I understand the disease better, so there's not much to wish for," she says in a particularly difficult moment. "The only wishes are that it could be made to stop. That it may be very hard to say, but it's the most true." It's hard not to hear here a woman who is no longer asking for a miracle, but mainly for an end to suffering. How rare it is to hear such honesty in situations like this. There is no promise of a miracle, no motivational speech, and no attempt to convince Mickey or us that if he just fights hard enough, everything will still work out.
In the year that has passed since then, "Mickey's Secret" has become a fairly well-known secret. You can't really keep secrets in this country, certainly not when it comes to a famous person who suddenly disappears from the public eye. Precisely for this reason, the Berkowitz family's choice to reveal his illness in front of the cameras of the country's most watched channel is such a noble step - both towards the public that loves him so much, and towards Mickey himself. This is not a decision that was taken for granted. As Niv Raskin's film "Mickey Berkowitz's Secret" shows, Berkowitz is no longer in a position to give consent to participate in such a work. His family members were forced to make the decision on his behalf, just as they are now forced to make many other decisions on his behalf. This fact does not automatically make every disclosure legitimate. It requires the film to justify itself at almost every moment. For the most part, it succeeds in doing so.
And it is precisely here that one of the things the film does right stands out: it refuses to turn the disease into another story about "Mickey the Winner." How easy it was to fall into this cliché can be seen in the way they chose to cover the story on the i24NEWS website. The article, signed by Sharon Nissim and Shani Weizman, states that Berkowitz "is managing his personal battle away from the spotlight" (yes, he is in a treatment facility with dementia; it is truly surprising that he is not managing the battle on "Dancing with the Stars"). It goes on to say that "we can only hope that this great winner will also know how to win the private battle he is waging against the disease." So no. Mickey Berkowitz is perhaps the greatest winner ever in the State of Israel, not just in sports but in everything, as Brody said. But he will not win this private battle, because it is not a battle. This is an incurable disease. No amount of determination, winner's character, or scoring a winning goal with the buzzer will change this fact.
The metaphor of the struggle is not just a false cliché. There is also something cruel about it. It suggests that if the patient did not win, perhaps he did not fight hard enough. As if the disease had rules, as if both sides were on the same playing field, and as if willpower could decide the outcome. But dementia is not a sporting opponent, and its progression is not a loss for the person who suffers from it.
Berkowitz himself has said in the past that part of his success was down to luck. It wasn’t false modesty, but simply a recognition of the facts. In this case, luck betrayed him, and he contracted one of the most terrible diseases a person can contract. From the outside, the legendary No. 9 still looks amazing, almost as if he could take the floor tomorrow. All of this stands in heartbreaking contrast to what’s going on inside him. This contrast is so incomprehensible, so heartbreaking – and yes, so televised.
The film about Mickey Berkowitz doesn't ask us to believe that he will win again. That's exactly its beauty. My father lost a week of sleep because he immediately understood what this film asks us all to internalize: our idol has finally become flesh and blood. And precisely now, when it becomes clear that the "Archbishop of Victory" is also subject to the same laws of body and time as the rest of us, he is more human, vulnerable, and greater than ever.
If one of you or a family member suffers from dementia, Alzheimer's or similar diseases, you can contact the EMDA Association at *8889 or on the website