In commenting on the influence had on him by the miraculous denouement of C. Th. Dreyer’s "Ordet" (1955), Mexican filmmaker Carlos Reygadas once remarked that this was the only case he knows of a “miracle filmed,” and of a miracle in which he can believe. Why is it so hard to believe in cinematic miracles? Is it because of the Janus-faced nature of the miraculous, which mirrors that of the cinematic medium, both too real and too unreal, enchanting us with the impossible while reducing it to a seen possibility? For filmmakers and thinkers who located a place for spirituality within Western Art Cinema conventions, filmed miracles flirted with danger in overly materializing that which is immaterial, tailoring it to the coercive realism of classic narrative form. These were not true miracles, they argued, but rather spectacles that elicited (false) belief.
In this, Judaic-themed Israeli cinema has by no means been an exception, actively avoiding any unequivocal representation of miracles, and thereby distancing itself from the theophanic expressions of biblical tradition. This paper would discuss what exactly is at stake with this avoidance by focusing on a recent film that actually features wonderous imagery in a Judaic context—Avishai Sivan’s "Tikkun" (2015). Through a detailed analysis of the film’s display of spectacular wonders, I will show how Sivan does not aim to affirm belief through a “miracle filmed”, but rather wishes to evoke skepticism vis-à-vis the miraculous—and by extension, its theological underpinnings.