Baruch-back Mountain!
Brokeback Minyan!
Bar Mitzvah-back Moun-tallis!
Okay, all done now, back to the review: This movie is really boring. Look, I know there are a lot of ways to approach film criticism, and I understand that there are nuanced ways of expressing how a movie moves slowly and carefully, almost to a fault. I understand there are some subjects that can't be treated with a light hand. Things that are such hot button issues in a society that the very act of portraying them cinematically trivializes them. But sometimes, the best way to describe a film is to say that it bored you to tears.
Tabakman certainly gets intense, quiet performances out of his leading men. Zohar Shtrauss, portraying serious family man Aaron, is reminiscent of an Israeli Joseph Fiennes, with all the brooding brother-envy that implies. And Ran Danker, as the rogue homosexual so attractive no Jewish man has the power to resist him, is, well, attractive, moody, and frequently doused in water. He's religious beefcake all the way.
The director seems to think that gravitas and ponderousness are the same thing.To give the movie the heft he feels it needs, Tabakman hangs on his leading men for long, soulful glances, showing them angrily chopping meat in their butcher shop to suppress their taboo urges for minutes at a time. He revels in banalities, too, from a quiet dinner at home filled with food passing business, to a drive up to a cleansing spring that feels like it happens in real time. Each moment is meant to be fraught with tension and meaning, but it comes off as a young director telling his actors, 'Act natural, and this moment will be fraught with tension and meaning.'
Look, I'm sure he means well, and I know that homosexuality in Orthodox communities is something that deserves to be talked about. But perhaps it needs eyes that aren't quite as close to the subject - or possibly too far away from it.
And as a final note, I'd like to point out that the lead actress, playing Shtrauss' wife, is in real life named Tinkerbell. No last name. This is not a joke. Thank you, and good night.
Aka Einaym Pkuhot.
Don't mess with the Zohar.
