Pecado da Carne

What happens if you're a married man with children in an ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem and you fall in love and lust with a beautiful young man? Couples counseling? A divorce and a move to San Francisco with your lover? No. Something much more dire, as we learn from this simple, powerful first film in Hebrew by Haim Tabakman.

You get a brief period of happiness. Aaron (Zohar Shtrauss) in fact tells his rabbi that he was dead before, and now he feels alive. A beautiful 22-year-old orthodox man named Ezri, (Israeli hearthrob Ran Danker) turns up during a heavy rainstorm at Aaron's butcher shop just after he's reopened it following his father's death. Aaron probably realizes the minute he sees Ezri that he is a temptation. But he subscribes to the belief that the man who lives successfully close to temptation earns greater favor with God. He's come to see life as testing, not joy.

Without much pushing, Aaron takes in Ezri, who's from somewhere else and seems to be a Yeshiva student in search of a Yeshiva, appears (to the viewer, anyway) to have arrived to look up a former boyfriend -- does Ezri represent fresh blood in the ultra-orthodox world? -- and needs a job and a place to stay. Ezri smiles; Aaron never does. Aaron's scenes with his wife Rivvka (Tinkerbell) are dutiful, affectionate, and incredibly dull. He pushes Ezri away at first, but as Ezri becomes a part of his life, learning how to do the work of a butcher, his attraction becomes stronger. After a number of physical contacts and a trip to the country to immerse themselves together in a lake, it's Aaron who comes after Ezri, wordlessly, after they've loaded a big animal carcass into the cooler. Tabakman and the writer Merav Doster create a world in which you know exactly what people are thinking when they only stare at each other. The values and the desire to override them are equally clear.

The way Aaron's community deals with misbehavior is illustrated by a women who works nearby, who continues seeing a man she loves even though her father has promised her to someone else. Aaron is called upon to go with a group to threaten the man and the woman. Aaron warns them that if the matter fell into the hands of the "purity police" they'd be roughed up and the flat would be turned upside down.

The beauty and the melancholy of Eyes Wide Open is that it doesn't glorify either gay experience or orthodox Jewish life and yet it coolly shows the beauties of both. You can see the closeness and security of the life, the simple joys of celebratory meals (at Aaron's house, where Ezri is invited for them), of joining hands and singing there or in Talmud class, where the men chant and bang on the table. Aaron's physical pleasures with Ezri are equally simple, and intense, with a passion lacking in his ritual under-the-sheets couplings with Rivvka.

Soon Aaron is missing appointments at home -- and not caring; closing the shop for no reason. There are no secrets in this community, and someone knows where Ezri comes from. He's a bad man, someone reports. "He was sent away from his Yeshiva. He did too many mitzvahs." Someone sees something. Threatening voices in the alleyway and the pashkavils (orthodox posters used as mass communication) begin declaring "there is a bad man in our community."

The film, with its simplicity, its drab realistic settings and its leisurely, Rossellini-like pace, achieves a kind of quiet perfection and memorableness despite subtitles that are occasionally out of sync and an obtrusively ominous electronic sound track. The material is explosive, and the filmmakers and the actors have known well enough not to mess with it too much.

The film, whose Hebrew title is 'Einaym Pkuhot,' premiered in May 2009 at the Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard series. Screened at Cinema Village in NYC February 16, 2010, where it opened February 5.

I attended the North American Premiere of "Eyes Wide Open" at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. This is a somewhat provocative yet understated examination of what it's like to be gay in the Orthodox Jewish world. In his first feature, director Haim Tabakman, working from a Merav Doster script, introduces us to Aaron (Zohar Shtrauss) and Ezri (Ran Danker). Aaron runs a Kosher butcher shop that's been in the family for generations. Ezri is an outsider, already under suspicion for questionable behavior, who enters Aaron's world with possible intentions beyond purchasing a hunk of meat. There's a joke there but I'll resist. The cultural constraints placed upon gays, or anyone who is different, are painfully drawn out as the neighbors decide what actions to take. The Orthodox Jewish community sends in its own goons (enforcers of God?).

This character-driven film is haunting and poignant. Like many foreign films, natural lighting is predominant. The cinema verité style, without regard to shadows, is much more powerful than images in traditional Hollywood movies -- provided the images aren't too dark -- a problem I've seen here with some films. The score is used sparsely, only to punctuate the more emotional moments. The pace is slow and deliberate, while long takes with little dialogue allow the actors to speak with their eyes, facial movements, and body language.

The collision of religion and sexuality is a common theme at every film festival. What is the meaning of restraint? Are we really being true to God if we destroy ourselves in the process?

"Eyes Wide Open" has a wonderful sense of sincerity to it. It's a small, unpretentious film which manages to plunge to emotional depths without being showy or sensational. This restraint imbues the film with much power and conviction in telling the story of a family man whose inner world is torn apart when he falls in love with a young man. What makes this scenario unique is that the milieu in which this is played out, is that of the ultra Orthodox Jewish society in Jerusalem. As with all extreme religions there is of course no place for deviants from the norm.

Aharon, the protagonist, is a deeply religious man searching for truths who has to face the truth of his own heart. In perhaps the most poignant scene of the film, he confesses to his horrified spiritual mentor that he feels he's truly come alive for the first time.

"Eyes Wide Open" is the debut feature film of director Haim Tabakman. It is unusual for a first time director to demonstrate such assurance of style and tone. What would make or break a film of this nature is the quality of the performances. All the secondary parts are well played, but it is Zohar Strauss utterly convincing lead performance which makes the film work. There is not one false moment. This makes the inherent tragic situation an extremely moving one to behold. Highly recommended.

I know nothing about jews or Israel, actually i'm an arab man and here we know no thing about the israeli movies at first i love the story and deep drama and great script, actors were good and i really dont know what i say ! this movie is one of my best

I just saw this at the Minneapolis-St. Paul film festival. A powerful, relentless film that seems to imply, if I can trust my instincts, that "falling in love" is a spiritual phenomenon devoid of gender considerations. Now, I may disagree with this personally, but the director makes such a powerful case for it that it is entertaining to watch.

Also implied is the message that repression produces the opposite effect in the long run...

In the film, a super-fundamentalist butcher in an ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhood meets and falls for another man, despite the social and even physical danger. The scene in which the two meet is shot in such a way that even we heterosexuals in the audience can understand. The young apprentice enters from a pouring rain with a cherubic, earnest look on his face and, for just a second, what the director is trying to say echoes in everyone watching.

The scenes between the butcher and his plain yet somehow beautiful and patient wife become more tense and more poignant, even as they become more and more muted.

Overall, this was an excellent film. I gave it four out of five on my ballot.

Things to watch for: Pool of Siloam, frank but not disgusting sex scenes. A-