BEFORE: With three extended chains every year - romance, horror and documentary - I do what I can to maintain one BIG list for everything, but also smaller lists on those three topics. Generally speaking, I try to not let things cross over between those topics, because they're far apart on the calendar now that I try to watch documentaries somewhere in the summer months. Now, anyone can turn up in documentaries, but if there's an actor who's appeared in both romances and horror films, I tend to just ignore those connections, they're of no use to me. Other than that, I'm free to work a romance or a horror film back into the main chain, it doesn't HAVE to appear in the specialty months of February or October, especially if I need to make certain links to keep the chain alive. So I'm going to re-purpose a couple of the romance films - because there sure are a lot of them - to make my connections here, and I just have to hope that I haven't removed a critical link that I'll need in February. The genre is so large that I can probably remove a couple films and putting a month-plus together next year SHOULD still be possible. I have to believe the chain knows what it's doing.
Rachel McAdams carries over from "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret."
THE PLOT: A woman returns to her Orthodox Jewish community that shunned her for her attraction to a female childhood friend. Once back, their passions reignite as they explore the boundaries of faith and sexuality.
AFTER: It's kind of funny how this all worked out, because I didn't know this was a school-based film, but one of he main characters teaches at a Hebrew school, so it fits right in with September programming as a "back to shul" film. Really, this ties together a few themes from the past week, namely the school angle ("Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken"), questions about the nature of religion, specifically Judaism ("Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.") and also lesbians ("Drive-Away Dolls"). Sure, it's not a complete amalgam of the previous three movies, but it is great when there are recurring themes, it makes me feel like I'm on the right track or something.
This film depicts a world I know very little about, a community of Orthodox Jews that's in London. We have a similar community in WIlliamsburg, Brooklyn, sometimes I ride a bus through there on the way to a beer festival at the Navy Yard - I remember during COVID there were some controversies about the Brooklyn Hasidim because they did not want to share any information about COVID cases or infection rates in their community, I think they also refused to stop meeting in groups when the pandemic first hit, which was a violation of COVID rules, and I get it, their religious meetings are very important to them, but not getting sick and not spreading the coronavirus are also important things to consider. Instead there were orthodox Jews who were gathering together to protest COVID restrictions in NYC, and one of those restrictions was, umm, against people gathering together. As a result, this Jewish community in Brooklyn was one of the groups most affected by the pandemic, it's almost like their disregard for the rules, which were put in place for a reason, caused more people to get sick - and then when the city tried to enforce the rules, they claimed anti-Semitism, which wasn't really the case, because NYC was trying to get ALL groups to comply with the COVID protocols, not just Jewish people.
In other words, the Orthodox community did NOT practice social distancing, they continued to hold large-scale weddings and funerals during the pandemic years, and these then became super-spreader events, which then led to MORE cases and one assumes more funerals, and so on. The Hasidim also tended to have larger families and extended families living together in dense neighborhoods, and that was another thing that put them at risk in the COVID years. In addition to THAT, the community viewed the government's imposing of lockdowns and restrictions as an assault on their religion, but come on, the government was just trying to keep as many people safe as possible. Perhaps when a society has faced religious oppression of different kinds for so long, they perceive it more often, even when it's not really there.
Anyway, "Disobedience" is about Ronit, a successful photographer in New York, who gets a phone call informing her that her father, the head rabbi in this London community of Orthodox Jews, has died. So she returns home for the funeral, despite being banned from the community, years before, and she reunites with her ex-boyfriend Dovid, who was also her father's protegé, and learns that he is now married to their mutual childhood friend, Esti. We sort of start to realize at this point why Ronit was banned from the community, possibly because she was attracted to Esti. And this tracks, because when you see your ex after a long period of time, you're likely to find out that either they're with someone exactly like you, or they're with someone who is your polar opposite. In this case I think it's the former. The three were all chldhood friends together, and it seems Esti married Dovid simply because Ronit disappeared.
After learning that her father has left all his possessions to the synagogue, Ronit is staying over at the house of Dovid and Esti, and soon starts to feel attracted to Esti all over again. Esti also confesses that it was she who called to tell Ronit about her father's death, because she hoped to see Ronit again and has been questioning her life choices, which were made based on the advice of Ront's father. Before long Ronit and Esti are kissing each other, then doing a lot more than that. Esti is called into the school headmistress's office because someone saw her kissing Ronit in a park, and then things come to a head when Dovid is nominated to take over the deceased Rabbi's place as head of the congregation. It all becomes a very confusing situation, will Esti choose to stay married to Dovid and deny her attraction to Ronit, or will she ask for the equivalent of a divorce and try to run away with Ronit?
Look, I'm not going to say I've LIVED this situation before, because I'm not Jewish and not even religious, but I was married once before and my first wife did come out, she was attracted to a female friend of hers, and ultimately we broke up over this. I can confirm that once this sort of thing comes about, it's very very difficult to go back to the way things were before, it's inevitable that this marriage will be changed forever. It's just a question of where everything's going to land - the odds are really against the marriage staying together, I'd bet. Here it kind of seems like a shame that they couldn't arrange some kind of thrupple situation, I mean everyone seems to get along with someone else, but their religion probably has some rule against letting your wife have a girlfriend on the side. Again questions are raised about what it means to be born into a religion, and what happens when the rules of that religion conflict with the way we want to live our lives. Modern life can be a lot more complicated than the Torah said it would be, really.
Also starring Rachel Weisz (last seen in "Black Widow"), Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "Amsterdam"), Anton Lesser (last seen in "The Courier"), Bernice Stegers (last seen in 'The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"), Allan Corduner (last seen in "Tár"), Nicholas Woodeson (last seen in "Conspiracy"), Liza Sadovy (last seen in "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"), Clara Francis, Mark Stobbart, Caroline Gruber (last seen in "Einstein and Eddington"), Alexis Zegerman (last seen in "Happy-Go-Lucky"), David Fleeshman, Steve Furst, Trevor Allan Davies (last seen in "Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga"), Sophia Brown (last seen in "Genius"), Lia Cohen, Cara Horgan (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Benjamin Tuttlebee, Rose Walker, Adam Lazarus, Bernardo Santos, Jonathan Schey, David Stoller (last seen in "Papillon" (2017))
RATING: 6 out of 10 Shabbat dinners
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