Eyes Wide Open (Saturday, February 20, 2010) (16)

Aaron, and Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem, walks to the door of his butcher shop. On it he removes a sign announcing his father's death. He goes into the shop, takes out the old meat in the freezers and begins to clean up and get back to work. He's a sad man, but it's not clear if this is because of the loss of his father, his sad life with a loving, but nagging wife and a bunch of kids who don't listen to him or some sort of midlife crisis.

After a few minutes a young man walks to the door and asks to use his phone. This is Ezri and he says he's studying at a Yeshiva nearby (Aaron tells him he thinks that particular one closed a year earlier). It seems Ezri has secrets and has come to this neighborhood to hide or get away from his past.

Aaron soon hires Ezri and puts him to work, showing him how to be a kosher butcher. Soon, young men from a Yeshiva come to tell Aaron that he has to fire Ezri because he's "unholy" and a "sinner". It seems that he was kicked out of his school for being gay and having sex. Over a period of time, the two men become very close and ultimately they have sex. For Aaron this is a revelation and brings untold amounts of joy into his life. The problem, of course, is that the Orthodox community he lives in (not to mention Aaron's wife) does not want Ezri around and Aaron is loathe to kick out his lover.

Like many recent Israeli films I've seen recently (My Father My Lord, Lebanon, Beaufort), this film is wonderfully simple and straightforward. Director Haim Tabakman does a beautiful job making very efficient and tight movies with some very powerful imagery. Here the story is very small and quiet. The story is not about the butcher coming out as a big flaming queen, but slowly falling in love with this interesting young man. The sex scenes between them are very short and gentle, but convey the point in a short time span (whereas most Western directors would probably hover over them in bed and make the scene more dirty).

I really like the use of color – or use of no color here. Clearly we associate Orthodox Jews with black and white, but the butcher shop is totally stark white and there’s a washed-out quality to everything we see. It makes you appreciate later when Aaron confesses to his rabbi that Ezri brought him back to life. There’s clearly a visual significance to this.

I think the script, by Merav Doster, has some problems in it, most notably how Ezri shows up out of nowhere and ultimately recedes back into nothingness rather all of a sudden (well, after he's beat up, but he seems to not fight back in a lame way). It was a bit too random and a bit too writerly for me. I like the humanity and naturalness of the story, but these parts felt a bit forced. I guess Aaron and Ezri were living an amazing dream and when physical violence came into their lives, they knew it was time to end it.

I'm very interested in how the Orthodox characters here are seen as very close-minded, clinical and unloving. There's a sense that Ezri is a rather "free spirit" and that he can be a good Jew and be gay. The community doesn't really know that anything has transpired between the two men, but just don't like Ezri because he's gay and seen as a sexual threat. In many ways these Orthodox people could stand in for any conservative religious group on the planet. Maybe this is a bit sweet and precious, but it works nicely here, I think.

Stars: 3 of 4