The Orthodox faith within the Jewish religion is one that has been featured numerous times on the big screen – from The Jazz Singer, Fiddler on the Roof to The Chosen, A Price Above Rubles and A Stranger Among Us. Each had varying levels of success, critically and commercially. What each shared was its ability to portray the community in a way that exposed a mass audience to the normally secretive people and use that religious sentiment and all it stands for to frame a story that is truthfully about so much more.
With the arrival of Disobedience, starring Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz as in the closet lovers, the film doesn’t use the religious sect as a means of painting their affair as forbidden… which is a stroke of genius. It is merely a means of establishing the world that our tale is being told within. Sure, Orthodoxy has firm rules about homosexuality, but that is never brought up in this film. The conflict arises more out of the fact that McAdams’ Esti Kuperman is married to Rabbi Dovid Kuperman (Alessandro Nivola), who is on the verge of being anointed the head of the London synagogue where he trained under Weisz’s father, Rav Krushka (Anton Lesser).
We never truly discover exactly why Weisz’s Ronit Krushka was “cast out” of the community, or even why she chose to leave and move from London to New York. But it doesn’t take long to figure out that it has to do with Esti. Their attraction is palpable from the moment the two share a scene together when Krushka arrives at the Kuperman home to the surprise of all who are there. Her father has passed away and everyone is sitting Shiva. Regardless of how Krushka left it with her father, who could blame her for wanting to be there to share in the collective mourning?
There are rich layers to this story that go beyond forbidden love and life choices that were made, and since regretted. This is also about tradition and a faith that could not be more tied to rituals that date back millennia. What is so fascinating is that Disobedience also manages to transcend faith and treads deeply into the themes of love, homosexuality and discovering who one is in the face of a larger society that gets in the way, complicates coming to any sort of solid answer to those types of questions and finding one’s true self.
The only issue with the film is that as the third act winds its way towards a conclusion, it seems like the powerful drama meanders a bit, thus causing the resonance of the story resolution to be diluted just a wee bit.
The performances from the big three are astounding. Weisz and McAdams sizzle in terms of their sensuality, sure, but also in how they navigate this intricate web that has been decades in the making. That is an astonishing feat, especially since there is no exposition or backstory given to the viewer. It is all achieved through their performances and their uncanny ability to deliver the prose given to them from a powerful script penned by Sebastián Lelio and Rebecca Lenkiewicz, adapted from the novel by Naomi Alderman.
Nivola is a revelation as the Rabbi caught between expectations of him professionally, personally and most difficultly, as a human being who is trained to encourage the souls under his charge pursue a life of happiness that simultaneously stays true to the message of God. We feel his pain in a manner that is simply stunning. The actor says more with his face and body than he does delivering his lines. He clearly is a man conflicted. We learn early on that the three of them, Ronit, Esti and Dovid, are lifelong friends. There is a certain amount of caring for one another that is inherent to that kind of lengthy friendship. With the arrival of Ronit, everything Dovid and Esti thought was set in stone in terms of their life path together, is thrown completely out the window. For the Rabbi trained to counsel others in terms of love, life, faith and right and wrong, finding himself in the crosshairs of a life challenge is a cinematic miracle to watch in the hands of Nivola.
Disobedience finds Lelio (who also serves as director) coming off his big Oscar win with A Fantastic Woman for Best Foreign Language. With this English language tale, it finds a helmer working at the top of his abilities. His touches are subtle, sentimental, sexy and yes emotionally scorching.
Grade: A-