DISOBEDIENCE – Review

(L to R) Rachel Weisz as Ronit Krushka, Rachel McAdams as Esti Kuperman and Alessandro Nivola as Dovid Kuperman in Sebastián Lelio’s DISOBEDIENCE, a Bleecker Street release. Credit: Bleecker Street

In DISOBEDIENCE, Rachel Weisz stars as a woman who returns to her Orthodox Jewish community in London for the funeral of her father, a revered rabbi. Years earlier, Ronit (Weisz) had left the community she had grown up in, forced out over a sexual attraction to another girl, Esti (Rachel McAdams), while the other girl chose to remain and submitting to obeying the rules of the community. The consequences of those different choices, for their and others lives in the community, and the very concept of free will are the themes of director Sebastian Lelio’s thoughtful, nuanced English-language drama DISOBEDIENCE.

DISOBEDIENCE offers the gifted Rachel Weisz a role worthy of her talents and Weisz gives an outstanding performance as Ronit. This excellent English-language drama is directed by Sebastian Lelio, the Chilean director of the Oscar-winning A FANTASTIC WOMAN. Lelio co-wrote this script with Rebecca Lenkiewicz, based on a novel by Naomi Alderman. In A FANTASTIC WOMAN, the director addressed the challenges faced by a transgender woman. Lelio brings the same thought-provoking and deeply human approach to another subject, this time addressing the attitudes towards homosexuality in Orthodox Jewish communities.

The film opens in a synagogue in London’s Hendon neighborhood, as Rabbi Rav Krushka (Anton Lesser) is giving a sermon. The elderly rabbi notes that God created creatures without free will, the angels and beasts, before he created mankind. Did the creation of people, beings with free-will, last mean they were an afterthought?, he asks. Just after the rabbi poses this question but before he can answer it, he is struck down by a stroke. His question about man’s free-will remains a lingering thought throughout the film.

Ronit (Weisz) has built a life and career as a successful art photographer in New York but returns to the Orthodox Jewish neighborhood where she grew up upon learning of her father’s death. When she arrives, it is clear that no one in the community expected Ronit to return for her father’s funeral. Still, after the initial shock of seeing her, Dovid Kuperman (Alessandro Nivola), her father’s protegé and Ronit’s childhood friend, invites her into his house, where the mourners are gathered, and offers her a place to stay. The other community members, however, are not very welcoming and seem both puzzled and uncomfortable that she is there.

It is obvious that Weisz’s Ronit had no thought of returning to this traditional community, but the death of her father draws her back for the funeral. The return of her character disrupts the settled pattern of the community, which has erased her from its collective memory. It also stirs buried feelings of various kinds in Ronit herself. Her return particularly impacts the lives of the two remaining people she was closest to growing up, Esti and their best friend Dovid, who was Ronit’s almost brother and now Esti’s husband. Apart from Dovid and Esti, the only one who greets Ronit warmly is her Aunt Fruma (an excellent Bernice Stegers). On the other hand, Uncle Moshe (Allan Corduner), Fruma’s husband and the brother of Ronit’s late mother, seems the most displeased that Ronit has returned.

Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams and Alessandro Nivola form a triangle of friendship, conflict and desire that plays out brilliantly throughout this finely-crafted drama. All three principal actors are excellent, bringing out nuances of their characters’ inner wishes and clashes in their moving scenes together, as they explore the characters and the film’s larger themes.

Returning to the world where she grew up sparks complicated feelings for Ronit. She wavers between sarcastic comments and an impulse to bolt, and a kind of nostalgia, ordering a childhood treat from a neighborhood bakery and even donning a wig, the kind women in the community use to comply with the rule to cover their hair. Weisz delicately conveys Ronit’s feelings, including her resentment at the erasure of her existence as the only child of their beloved rabbi, her father, as the community grapples with how her reappearance undermines that communal fiction. Weisz also sensitively expresses Ronit’s feelings of resentment to strangers who revere her father but are reluctant to acknowledge her and wish to grieve in private, a feeling she might share with the children of other famous people.

Choice and free will, the theme of the rabbi’s last sermon, is a running theme discussed, and explored through the contrast between the two women’s choices, as well as the impact on those close to them and ultimately, the whole community. The film explores the very real issue of gay people in Orthodox Jewish communities but the director handles it in quiet way that suits this religious community while digging deep into the issue and the real human feelings in play. There is no screaming or melodramatic showdowns but the drama is taut and real. The community handles the uncomfortable question of homosexuality by pressuring individuals to conform and if that fails, quiet shunning, but the violence to human feelings is the same.

DISOBEDIENCE opens in St. Louis on Friday, May 11, at the Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 5 out of 5 stars