Printed in FILMINT. By Elias Savada

It’s fitting that this refreshing documentary starts out with the world renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman performing a rousing rendition of The Star Spangled Banner at Citi Field in Queens, New York. He may have been born in Tel Aviv 70-plus years ago, but he’s a die-hard Mets fan and tried-and-true New Yorker. And he plays a mean fiddle.

Whether informally practicing with equally gifted musicians Evgeny Kissin and Mischa Maisky – breaking for light chatter about Yascha Heifitz over take-out Chinese food – the film’s tone is as light as the violinist’s fingers are with his instrument. Perlman is a consummate jokester and schmoozer, even if life has caused his health to suffer after contracting polio during his early childhood. His legs may not hold up, but his spirit flies and his sense of humor soars as captured in this lovely film by Alison Chernick, a producer-director who has crafted a divinely inspiring third feature. After a decade making occasional long form films, including 2006’s Matthew Barney: No Restraint, Chernick was known for her featurettes examining the work of a wide array of contemporary personalities (James Franco, Julian Schnabel, Pedro Almodóvar, Francis Ford Coppola, etc.) and the films or works in which they were involved.

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Enjoy Simon Abrams’ wonderful review of the ‘Itzhak’ documentary for the Village Voice:

The makers of the irresistible character-study doc Itzhak capture Itzhak Perlman’s characteristic warmth and bravado through short, anecdote-centric scenes that make the Israeli American violinist sound like a big-hearted raconteur who’s just dying to tell you everything about himself.

Director Alison Chernick wisely suggests that it’s something in Perlman’s bubbly, imperious personality — rather than some singular biographical event, like the musician’s childhood struggles with polio — behind his rise to becoming the rock star of the classical music world. She lets him talk: Come for the soulful musical clips, stay for the great dad jokes about “Jewish Google” and “garbage pail soup.” And she employs pre-existing video and audio footage of Perlman performing to illustrate his abstract, even rambling theories about how he has grown as an artist by answering his Juilliard School students’ questions, or of what one admirer truly means when he compliments Perlman for “praying with the violin.”

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The mythology surrounding the Stradivarius and the quality of the sound it produces is legendary. Itzhak Perlman plays a ‘Soil’ Stradivarius, from 1714, formerly owned by Yehudi Menuhin and considered to be one of the finest violins from the Stradivari family’s “Golden Period.” He also plays a Guarneri del Gesu 1743 ‘Sauret’ and the Carlo Bergonzi 1740 ‘ex-Kreisler.’

‘ITZHAK’ is hitting the big screen in this week. GET TICKETS