About a gifted high school student in Israel with a special computation talent. A nice Israeli movie, a good story.
Some good comedy also, especially the grandfather who has some nice tricks and wisdom
in his sleeves. At the end one only wonders, where Shlomi found the time to cook all these
wonderful meals and bake all these amazing cakes. The movie has a happy ending in Haifa.
There is an other movie Shakuntala which exaggerates
the ability to do numerical computations. These are Hollywood movies which do not give hints
on how to be able to pull off such stunts. I myself am convinced that such abilities are not inate but obtained
by practice and techniques. The movie Queen's gambit (which of course is Hollywood type too
and based on a fiction novel) does a better job in bringing across that knowing to do something well needs to spend
enormous time and practice (in the Queen's gambit, Beth essentially practices day and night as she manages to
get to the point, where she can play without a board). With such mechanisms at hand, one can explain
the ability of Shlomo to do computation. He would be able to practice the arithmetic while baking cakes
for example.
MOV, OggWebm.
IMDb link
English translation: Shlomi Bardayan, do you know why I asked you here? You're kicking me
out of school? Why do you say that? They say that since you're new,
you're kicking out all the rejects. Is there any reason I should kick
you out? I'm flunking out. Can you tell me what this is? I swear I
didn't cheat. I know, you'd have handed it in if you cheated, but your
teacher says you didn't, right? So relax, nobody's going to kill you.
My mom's gonna kill me. Why? If you kick me out. No one's kicking
you out, Shlomi. Relax. So what's this piece of paper all about?
It's just scrap. -Why didn't you write the answers? I didn't know them.
But all the answers are correct, why didn't you write them down? Sshh,
Begin. Take it easy. Shlomi, I'm willing to let you take the test over.
Begin will ask you a question and you answer it, OK? -Now?
Why not? -I won't do well. -Why? It takes me too long
to write the steps and I don't know them. Forget the steps, just give
me the answer. But you always ask for the steps. We'll overlook them
this time, won't we, Begin? No steps? No steps. X equals 1.5 and Y
equals 5. Is that right? Very good. But that was an easy question.
I want to ask you a few questions, but answer straight away, OK?
How much is 83 times 37? 3071. How much is 1466 times 724? 1,061,384.
Divided by four? 265,346. Mind if I smoke? Me? Of course not, my dad
smokes too. How do you do it, Shlomi? Do what? You aren't kicking
me out? This is what we'll do. Before I decide, I'll ask you a few
more questions, so go back to class and come see me after school, OK?
I can't. My mom's coming back late from the hospital and I have to take
care of my grandpa and cook. Then come first thing tomorrow morning,
instead of first period.
Second clip: So it's a boarding school? No, it's a house, I told you, no more than
10 kids. How much does it cost? -Don't worry about the money, Shlomi,
that's your parents' problem, not yours. They don't have any money.
-First do these tests, then we'll take care of the rest. -What do
they study there? Eldad develops thinking abilities, stuff like that,
but basically, every one studies what they want. What'll I study?
-Whatever you want. Shlomi, we've been waiting for you. Welcome.
Yehoshua Eldad, nice to meet you. My wife, Miriam, is making beans.
I can't stand the smell, so I came out to do some gardening. Come.
I heard you're a fabulous cook. Me too, I make great fava beans.
Egyptian-style. This computer is connected to his. This way I can keep
track of his pace. What do you think? -Never seen anything like it.
Tell me, how is it possible--how did this boy reach the age of 16 with
the whole world thinking he's semi-retarded?
