{"id":25418,"date":"2017-08-18T03:51:31","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T10:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=25418"},"modified":"2017-08-16T21:48:48","modified_gmt":"2017-08-17T04:48:48","slug":"difficult-to-be-a-good-father","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/08\/18\/difficult-to-be-a-good-father\/","title":{"rendered":"Difficult to be a good father"},"content":{"rendered":"

Menashe Lustig (Menashe), director Joshua Z. Weinstein and Ruben Niborski (Rieven). (photo by Federica Valabrega courtesy of Mongrel Media)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

On a sidewalk crowded with people moving at the pace of a typical New York City day, nobody stands out. Eventually, a man appears in the back of the frame who gradually attracts our attention. There\u2019s nothing extraordinary about him except he\u2019s a bulky man, and he\u2019s labouring more than anyone else in the summer heat. He\u2019s wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black vest and tzitzit, and our initial impression is of an overgrown child. It\u2019s the perfect introduction to Menashe, and Menashe<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We have the sense that writer-director Joshua Z. Weinstein\u2019s camera could have followed any face in the crowd. That\u2019s an unusual feeling to have in a fiction film, but there are more than eight million stories in the naked city, after all. The effect, though, is to imbue Menashe<\/em>, from the outset, with the requisite naturalism for a riveting, Yiddish-language character study of a working-class Chassid on the margins of both his religious community and society at large.<\/p>\n

The motor of the film is Menashe\u2019s ham-fisted determination to raise his adolescent son, Rieven, by himself in the months following his wife\u2019s premature death. His tenacity is understandable, for the boy and Jewish songs and scripture are Menashe\u2019s only interests.<\/p>\n

The religious leader, the ruv<\/em>, while not unsympathetic, maintains that Rieven be raised in a \u201cproper home\u201d with a father and a mother. Given the unhappiness of his first, arranged marriage, Menashe (beautifully played by Menashe Lustig) is in no hurry to remarry. So, the boy lives with Menashe\u2019s annoyingly self-assured brother-in-law, Eizik (the excellent Yoel Weisshaus), and his family in a nice home instead of at Menashe\u2019s no-frills walk-up apartment. Rieven doesn\u2019t mind, but it\u2019s a continuing affront to Menashe\u2019s self-respect and sense of responsibility.<\/p>\n

Menashe<\/em> is an exception among the many films about Orthodox Jews in that it does not involve a tug-of-war between tradition and the modern world, or the conflict between secularism and faith. The central dynamic in Menashe<\/em> is class, which gives the viewer an unusual angle from which to view the ultra-Orthodox community. This film scarcely visits a yeshivah and the Chassidim with the long coats like Eizik, which are so familiar to us, are supporting characters \u2013 although it is plain that they are at the centre of community life.<\/p>\n

Menashe, for his part, can\u2019t get no respect. He works in a grocery market, a job with no status (regardless of how exceedingly moral he is) and low pay. There\u2019s a picaresque scene where he\u2019s enticed into having a 40-ouncer of cheap beer in the back of the store with a couple of Hispanic co-workers. Though the language barrier prevents Menashe from bonding with them past a certain point, he seems more comfortable in his own skin in their company than with the Jews in his circle and their judgments and expectations.<\/p>\n

Our sympathies are with Menashe, of course, as they\u2019d be with any single parent struggling to make ends meet and get a little ahead. But he\u2019s far from perfect, and that smart move by Weinstein is what elevates the picture to the level of pathos.<\/p>\n

Menashe is short-tempered, stubborn, perpetually late, fond of the occasional drink(s) and always playing catch-up. He\u2019s the last to recognize that his character flaws, along with his circumstances, make him the biggest obstacle to establishing a stable life with Rieven.<\/p>\n

Menashe<\/em> is rife with the small truths of life \u2013 every father disappoints his son at some point, and vice versa \u2013 and the amusing, unexpected moments that occur every day. It\u2019s a warm, generous film that doesn\u2019t shy from sentimentality but doesn\u2019t insult its audience, either. Ultimately, it introduces us to a memorable character whose resilience is, in its way, inspiring. Menashe<\/em> is a small film, but it\u2019s a special one.<\/p>\n

Menashe<\/em> opened Aug. 11 at Fifth Avenue in Vancouver. It is rated PG for thematic elements, and is in Yiddish with subtitles.<\/p>\n

Michael Fox<\/strong> is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Menashe Lustig (Menashe), director Joshua Z. Weinstein and Ruben Niborski (Rieven). (photo by Federica Valabrega courtesy of Mongrel Media) On a sidewalk crowded with people moving at the pace of a typical New York City day, nobody stands out. Eventually, a man appears in the back of the frame who gradually attracts our attention. There\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[7304,5005,3466],"class_list":["post-25418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-joshua-z-weinstein","tag-new-york","tag-ultra-orthodox"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}