two film takes on Orthodox Judaism
Nov. 1st, 2018 09:27 amDisobedience
Seeing the trailer for the film was a disorienting experience. The trailer looked so stunningly right, the costumes and sets we saw in brief snippets felt like a accurate representation of Orthodox Jewish life in a way you don't see in big budget movies starring Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz. And yet... my heart knew better than to trust it. Most of the creators of the film were not Jewish, the storyline beats suggested in the trailer didn't feel right... I decided I didn't need to see the movie in theaters, I could wait for it to come out on DVD.
My instincts were right, I think. The movie felt to me throughout like its creators deeply anxious that they would inadvertently do something culturally insensitive, and the result was a movie that looked incredibly perfect on the surface, but didn't really do anything Jewish underneath. And the tiny moments where they did slip up felt magnified because it was all surface. The goofs are mostly weird pronunciations of Hebrew words: a woman putting the emphasis on the second syllable of Rebbetzin instead of the first, Rachel McAdams's character putting the emphasis on the second syllable of Shabbos instead of the first... (Also, as![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ambyr noted, there are no small stones on the tops of the tombstones in the cemetery scenes.)
The mispronunciations don't really matter, other than to suggest that whoever had final cut on the movie was not attentive to these details. But what kept catching me was the stuff that was done accurately but not correctly, if you follow my distinction. There was a lot of Jewish liturgy in the film, and it was always sung well, to proper melodies, and with the name of God scrupulously euphemized every single time. And it was always the correct liturgical choice for the moment, from an accuracy standpoint. At Rav Krupka's gravesite, the yeshiva bokhurs recited Tehillim. At Shabbos dinner, they bentsched licht and then recited kiddush. At the memorial service, they recited El Malei Rachamim.
If you know the liturgy, you nod along, that was accurate for the moment. But knowing the liturgy never deepens any of these moments. The question they seem to have asked their Judaism consultant was: We are showing the memorial service. What song would they sing here? Which is fine as far as it goes, but it's not what you ask to tell a Jewish story. They could have asked their consultant: We are near the climax of the film, our heroes are struggling between the constraints of their religious obligations and their obligations to their community, against the constraints of their personal desires, and at the same time their thoughts are clouded with grief, what is the right Jewish text to play over that moment? That's how you craft a Jewish story. "El Malei Rachamim" is an exaltation of God whose themes lie orthogonal to the struggles with community and family the characters are confronting, so it only registers as Sad Memorial Song.
[In Rama Burshtein's "The Wedding Plan", the film ends with Michal's love interest singing "Eshet Chayil" to her as we roll into the credits. Not only is it a callback to earlier in the film, where Michal tells her shadchanit that she wants to be married because she wants a man to sing Eshet Chayil to her on Friday evening, but the words of the hymn, in praise of a strong woman, develop and deepen the movie's themes of anxiety about getting marriage in a Hasidic community and what a woman's value is outside of marriage. The song hits me as a viewer HARD, because it is the right song as well as being the accurate song. That never happens in Disobedience.]
And the movie is surfacey in other ways, too. Dovid keeps talking about Ronit's *friends back in New York*, this lure that means he knows she will never remain emotionally connected to the world of Hendon... but the movie never shows any of Ronit's interactions with her *friends back in New York*, so all of this significance is left to the actors to communicate in their expressions. We don't know if *friends back in New York* is a lie entirely to make it seem like she is happier than she actually is, that's a plausible read given Rachel Weisz's performance. The film represents such a small snapshot of the lives of its principals that the massive roiling changes that happen land in a vacuum. What is Dovid's next move after resigning his pulpit? What will happen to Esti? The movie doesn't even offer clues, because it doesn't offer the full lives of its characters to us to examine.
ambyr said, too, that it didn't seem to work for her as a gay movie, either, that the sexual chemistry between McAdams and Weisz was not there. I'm not really qualified to comment, but I think this criticism feels right, too. Ultimately, Disobedience felt to me more like a movie about grief than a movie about disobedience, or faith, or love. It didn't say anything profound to me about what it means to be gay in the Orthodox world, or what it means to love someone you can't be with, because the whole thing was drowned in grief. As a movie about coping with grief Disobedience is fine, I suppose, but it's not particularly colored deeply. As a movie about most of the other things it was supposed to be about, it's not really there at all.
The Women's Balcony
On the other hand, this movie felt profoundly Jewish to me. [Maybe too much so.lannamichaels wrote that it registered as horror for her, the horror of misogynist men persistently telling women what to do in synagogue. And from her background with respect to Jewish tradition, that's a response I can well understand.]
It's the story of an Orthodox synagogue in Jerusalem. I don't know the Israeli vocabulary to describe their religious tradition; If it were an American synagogue, we would label it "old-style Orthodox": It's not far different from my grandfather z"l's old shul on the Lower East Side in terms of religious practice and architecture. They have a separation between where the men and women daven, but women can see the men through the separation, by peering down the balcony. Women dress relatively modestly by society's standards, but they don't necessarily adhere to the Shulchan Aruch's rules for women's dress, and they don't generally cover their hair. They use Shabbos goys to perform melacha for them on Shabbos. They discuss eating kosher food in non-kosher restaurants while on vacations. They do mixed dancing! It is a community that is deeply observant, but proudly not machmir.
And then disaster strikes. The balcony falls during services, putting the Rebbetzin (properly pronounced every time) in the hospital in a coma and rendering the shul uninhabitable. The repairs are expensive- possible to fundraise for, but difficult. Then the community finds a savior in a young, ambitious Hasidic Rabbi who offers to help raise the money, but who insists on control over synagogue decisions in exchange. He undertakes to perform some of the repairs, re-opening the shul for daily prayers for the men, but will not rebuild the women's section until after they have purchased a new Torah, in accordance with an arcane provision of Medieval Jewish law usually more honored in the breach. The women are unhappy and they resist, standing up for their way of life.
And the movie resists with them. It is so lovely the way the film depicts its heroes, male and female, as living entirely Orthodox, devout lives in spite of their refusal to bow to needless stringency. The depictions of the marriages at the center of the film are so sweet even when husband and wife are in conflict. There is such a deep appreciation for love in all its maddening complexity driving this movie. And there is such a deep understanding of how faith works in adversity.
Also, did I mention it has mixed dancing? ;) Disobedience doesn't have any dancing at all. Well, except for a scene where they sort of bop along to the radio that I probably can't use in the vid sequel I am definitely not starting to plan.
Seeing the trailer for the film was a disorienting experience. The trailer looked so stunningly right, the costumes and sets we saw in brief snippets felt like a accurate representation of Orthodox Jewish life in a way you don't see in big budget movies starring Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz. And yet... my heart knew better than to trust it. Most of the creators of the film were not Jewish, the storyline beats suggested in the trailer didn't feel right... I decided I didn't need to see the movie in theaters, I could wait for it to come out on DVD.
My instincts were right, I think. The movie felt to me throughout like its creators deeply anxious that they would inadvertently do something culturally insensitive, and the result was a movie that looked incredibly perfect on the surface, but didn't really do anything Jewish underneath. And the tiny moments where they did slip up felt magnified because it was all surface. The goofs are mostly weird pronunciations of Hebrew words: a woman putting the emphasis on the second syllable of Rebbetzin instead of the first, Rachel McAdams's character putting the emphasis on the second syllable of Shabbos instead of the first... (Also, as
ambyr noted, there are no small stones on the tops of the tombstones in the cemetery scenes.)The mispronunciations don't really matter, other than to suggest that whoever had final cut on the movie was not attentive to these details. But what kept catching me was the stuff that was done accurately but not correctly, if you follow my distinction. There was a lot of Jewish liturgy in the film, and it was always sung well, to proper melodies, and with the name of God scrupulously euphemized every single time. And it was always the correct liturgical choice for the moment, from an accuracy standpoint. At Rav Krupka's gravesite, the yeshiva bokhurs recited Tehillim. At Shabbos dinner, they bentsched licht and then recited kiddush. At the memorial service, they recited El Malei Rachamim.
If you know the liturgy, you nod along, that was accurate for the moment. But knowing the liturgy never deepens any of these moments. The question they seem to have asked their Judaism consultant was: We are showing the memorial service. What song would they sing here? Which is fine as far as it goes, but it's not what you ask to tell a Jewish story. They could have asked their consultant: We are near the climax of the film, our heroes are struggling between the constraints of their religious obligations and their obligations to their community, against the constraints of their personal desires, and at the same time their thoughts are clouded with grief, what is the right Jewish text to play over that moment? That's how you craft a Jewish story. "El Malei Rachamim" is an exaltation of God whose themes lie orthogonal to the struggles with community and family the characters are confronting, so it only registers as Sad Memorial Song.
[In Rama Burshtein's "The Wedding Plan", the film ends with Michal's love interest singing "Eshet Chayil" to her as we roll into the credits. Not only is it a callback to earlier in the film, where Michal tells her shadchanit that she wants to be married because she wants a man to sing Eshet Chayil to her on Friday evening, but the words of the hymn, in praise of a strong woman, develop and deepen the movie's themes of anxiety about getting marriage in a Hasidic community and what a woman's value is outside of marriage. The song hits me as a viewer HARD, because it is the right song as well as being the accurate song. That never happens in Disobedience.]
And the movie is surfacey in other ways, too. Dovid keeps talking about Ronit's *friends back in New York*, this lure that means he knows she will never remain emotionally connected to the world of Hendon... but the movie never shows any of Ronit's interactions with her *friends back in New York*, so all of this significance is left to the actors to communicate in their expressions. We don't know if *friends back in New York* is a lie entirely to make it seem like she is happier than she actually is, that's a plausible read given Rachel Weisz's performance. The film represents such a small snapshot of the lives of its principals that the massive roiling changes that happen land in a vacuum. What is Dovid's next move after resigning his pulpit? What will happen to Esti? The movie doesn't even offer clues, because it doesn't offer the full lives of its characters to us to examine.
ambyr said, too, that it didn't seem to work for her as a gay movie, either, that the sexual chemistry between McAdams and Weisz was not there. I'm not really qualified to comment, but I think this criticism feels right, too. Ultimately, Disobedience felt to me more like a movie about grief than a movie about disobedience, or faith, or love. It didn't say anything profound to me about what it means to be gay in the Orthodox world, or what it means to love someone you can't be with, because the whole thing was drowned in grief. As a movie about coping with grief Disobedience is fine, I suppose, but it's not particularly colored deeply. As a movie about most of the other things it was supposed to be about, it's not really there at all.The Women's Balcony
On the other hand, this movie felt profoundly Jewish to me. [Maybe too much so.
lannamichaels wrote that it registered as horror for her, the horror of misogynist men persistently telling women what to do in synagogue. And from her background with respect to Jewish tradition, that's a response I can well understand.]It's the story of an Orthodox synagogue in Jerusalem. I don't know the Israeli vocabulary to describe their religious tradition; If it were an American synagogue, we would label it "old-style Orthodox": It's not far different from my grandfather z"l's old shul on the Lower East Side in terms of religious practice and architecture. They have a separation between where the men and women daven, but women can see the men through the separation, by peering down the balcony. Women dress relatively modestly by society's standards, but they don't necessarily adhere to the Shulchan Aruch's rules for women's dress, and they don't generally cover their hair. They use Shabbos goys to perform melacha for them on Shabbos. They discuss eating kosher food in non-kosher restaurants while on vacations. They do mixed dancing! It is a community that is deeply observant, but proudly not machmir.
And then disaster strikes. The balcony falls during services, putting the Rebbetzin (properly pronounced every time) in the hospital in a coma and rendering the shul uninhabitable. The repairs are expensive- possible to fundraise for, but difficult. Then the community finds a savior in a young, ambitious Hasidic Rabbi who offers to help raise the money, but who insists on control over synagogue decisions in exchange. He undertakes to perform some of the repairs, re-opening the shul for daily prayers for the men, but will not rebuild the women's section until after they have purchased a new Torah, in accordance with an arcane provision of Medieval Jewish law usually more honored in the breach. The women are unhappy and they resist, standing up for their way of life.
And the movie resists with them. It is so lovely the way the film depicts its heroes, male and female, as living entirely Orthodox, devout lives in spite of their refusal to bow to needless stringency. The depictions of the marriages at the center of the film are so sweet even when husband and wife are in conflict. There is such a deep appreciation for love in all its maddening complexity driving this movie. And there is such a deep understanding of how faith works in adversity.
Also, did I mention it has mixed dancing? ;) Disobedience doesn't have any dancing at all. Well, except for a scene where they sort of bop along to the radio that I probably can't use in the vid sequel I am definitely not starting to plan.