The Tree of Life

By all accounts, "The Tree of Life" had the makings of a fascinating genealogical foraging, as L.A.-based electronics engineer Hava Volterra -- the daughter of an Italian-Jewish physicist who immigrated to Israel as a young man and never looked back -- seeks to understand her late father through the family heritage he kept mum about. Traveling to Italy to visit the places he grew up with her feisty, camera-wielding octogenarian aunt, and interviewing various scholars, she discovers a storied lineage going back to the 13th century that includes prominent Medici-era bankers, a controversial Kabalistic scholar, the first Jewish prime minister of a Western country, and a noted mathematician who stood up to Mussolini's fascism. »