1.
Disobedience
2017, Sebastian Lelio

He's nothing if not courageous, this film-maker...

Fresh from depictions of a 50-something woman and  a transgender woman, Lelio's next project set out to portray a lesbian relationship in the context of a strictly Orthodox Jewish community in Hendon, north London... Given that he's male, straight, not Jewish, and not British, this is a bold move, with loads of potential for upsetting people right and left. Plus, it's his first film in English...

He is adamant, however, that no subject-matter should be off-limits to anyone:  "Cinema is a bridge -- it should never be a wall. It is where I cross into the unknown, learn and expand the limits of empathy in others and myself... You're told you've no right to make a film about lesbians unless you're gay. You're told you cannot make a film about a transgender woman without being transgender. I say: what are you talking about? For this is precisely what empathy is: reaching out to what you are not. Denying the legitimacy of a film-maker who explores a world that does not belong to him has the smell of fascism about it and when artistic freedom is menaced, it's a serious alarm, a sign society is headed in the wrong direction."

Hmmm, well, I understand where he's coming from. But that's a bit disingenuous, frankly. There's a long history, after all, of white males blithely taking it upon themselves to speak for any group their gaze happens to fall upon. You can understand why minority communities particularly resent this objectivization, and get a bit uppity about the identity of those who seek to speak for them and represent them.

But what is beyond doubt is that Lelio is respectful and self-aware, and Disobedience has quite strong Jewish credentials. It is based on the eponymous novel by Naomi Alderman, who was herself once part of the Hendon community, but changed her beliefs partly as a result of hearing the stories of gay and lesbian Jews in post-9/11 New York: "It turned out that when I was done with the book, I was also done with the frum."

The film rights were held by Rachel Weisz (the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors), and it was she who introduced Lelio to the work, and suggested he take it on. It was co-scripted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. And Lelio was, in his words, "obsessed" with getting the details of the community right. He talked at length with Alderman, spent time in the community, and drafted in a large number of consultants at all stages. 


The photos in this post reference star-crossed lovers in Asia. First, The Ramayana. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2018



Before getting into the issue of whether that effort translated into something believably Jewish for people in the know, let's just briefly sketch the story. Rav Krushka suddenly dies. His estranged daughter, Ronit, who lives a secular lifestyle in New York, returns for the funeral. She has been away for a long time, and we eventually learn that her absence is due to a youthful liaison with Esti, now married to Dovid (the rabbi's protege, pseudo-son, and designated successor). Predictably, the attraction between Ronit and Esti now reignites. It is spotted by some no doubt well-meaning member of the community, and duly denounced. Esti (who now also knows she's pregnant) expresses a desire to leave Dovid (who now feels obliged to step away from the leadership role that he had been expected to fulfil).

There's never going to be a painless resolution to all this, but the film leaves the ending more open than the book. As Ronit heads off back to her old life, she asks Esti to keep in touch. According to Lelio: "I wanted to give all of them the chance to be in front of an open space. A space that is pure potential."

Not everyone appreciates this lack of clarity. For David Sims, "Disobedience is framed as a tale of escape from a monotonous society, but its characters spend the whole time standing in the threshold, wondering whether to flee... [It] finishes on an annoyingly vague note, almost as if Lelio and Lenkiewicz had stumbled on a more interesting, expansive narrative in the final act but didn't quite know how to pursue it." But I think this assessment entirely underestimates the pull of religious belief, and the difficulty of turning away from or revising it. These characters are conflicted. They're caught in a dilemma. For Esti simply to return to her husband, and pretend nothing is wrong, would be impossible. But for her to abandon everything, and rush off to New York (even assuming she could), would be a revolutionary step that she would probably regret. You end up feeling sorry for all three of them. They're all faced with a huge "what now?" conundrum.

As Lelio explains in another interview: "Disobedience is as much about the tensions implicit in religious life -- between belonging and freedom, desire and fidelity, tradition and modernity -- as it is a love story. The subtext of the film explores the standards required for membership in the group and the costs of leaving." By the end of the film, the characters still hadn't figured out where they stood in those equations, and that seems very believable to me.

That same interview also articulates, though, an ambivalence in Lelio's view of strict Orthodoxy. He expresses appreciation that he and his actors were given the "opportunity to be in such a private world", and yet he admits that the community still remained enigmatic to them:  "It’s very secretive in a way, and I guess that’s what was really appealing for me -- the possibility of creating these portraits that were taking place in an unknown world with such a precise system of beliefs, rules, rituals, aesthetics, traditions and music."

So on the one hand we have a colour palette that is all grey and black and beige; on the other we have the richness of ritual and music. We have conviviality; but we have segregation. We have an awful lot of judgement (it spreads like a mould as soon as Ronit reappears); but we also genuinely have warmth and community support. The characters of Esti (educated, professional, articulate) and Dovid (kind, sincere, genuinely attempting to understand) are highly sympathetic; but the scenario in which Ronit is so thoroughly written out of her father's life that she doesn't even feature in his obituary is horrifying. 

The interpretation very much lies with the beholder. For Sheila O'Malley, the culture is depicted as close, with many social benefits that Ronit has missed out on. "The best scene," she argues, "may very well be a group scene early on, when Ronit joins Dovid and Esti's Shabbat, attended by a small group of Ronit's relatives. The 'mood' at the table is far from friendly or warm, but it's also not toxic. This is a family. Ronit is a lost lamb, but there is still space for her in the fold."

Don't know... Personally, I found that scene rather more sinister. It seemed a little predatory to me, and I wouldn't have wanted to be taking part in it as Ronit.


Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2011



So when Lelio says that the problem isn't religion, you can't help feel there's a bit of sophistry at work: "What I tried to do is not make the community the antagonistic force, but to make [each character] an antagonist. They are their own main obstacles."

Except they're not, are they? The main obstacle to Ronit and Esti's love is that it is considered out of bounds. Of course, if Esti had fallen in love with another man, that would also have been problematic. Regardless of religion, triangles are awkward and hurtful. But the fact that she has fallen in love with (or never fallen out of love with) another woman puts the whole thing in the much-too-hard-basket. In an ideal world, Esti never would have felt the need to marry Dovid in the first place, and Ronit would never have had to decamp. 

The actual individuals and the community they form -- and this applies to any group in any strict version of any religion -- may be warm and fuzzy, but the institution they are a part of is not... Strict versions of religion just do not allow individuals much scope to make their own decisions. 

"One of the main ideas of the film," Lelio continues, "is that there’s nothing more spiritual than the power to disobey. There is something pure in that. Sometimes we have to disobey in order to transcend, in order to survive. And there is violence, and there is beauty in that. And I think the film tries to embrace both aspects -- the light and shadows of the price they have to pay."

Hmmm, try telling that to any strictly religious group in the world, and see how far you get...



I'll come back to this in a minute when I get to some of the LGBT critique. But how, first, did this go down in the Jewish community?

Elazar Fine sniffs "fakeness", and accuses Lelio of a "transparently superficial" interest in the Jewish community. But (in an admittedly unscientific search) I came up with more that was approving than disapproving. Shevy Baskin provides a very detailed analysis of clothes, language, music, customs, and practices, and concludes: "In the end, I was impressed by how much the film got right. In truth, the things they missed or fudged stood out precisely because they managed to depict so much correctly -- which is not an easy thing to do." (Interestingly, both Baskin and Fine home in on that early encounter between Ronit and Dovid -- where Ronit moves to embrace him, and then stops herself, remembering the non-touching convention. Both critics feel that however lapsed people might be, if they have EVER been part of a strictly Orthodox community, avoidance of contact would be so much part of their consciousness that they would NEVER forget it.)

One of the most interesting critiques is that by Ariel Sobel. A key point here is that no distinction is made between Orthodox and "ultra-Orthodox" in the marketing surrounding the film. My explorations as a result of reading/watching The Marrying of Chani Kaufman and The Other Story certainly bear out that this is important, and even more so in the context of LGBT issues (modern Orthodox Jews are often much more open to diversity).

But the real reason there is so much "hairsplitting" over the film, according to Sobel (who self-identifies as "a Jewish bisexual writer"), is the desire to avoid facing challenges about homophobia: "As long as we can unqualify the movie for bringing up the issue, we don't have the conversations about the mistreatment of LGBT people in Judaism. It's important to respectfully portray ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. As the most visible Jewish people, they face the most anti-Semitism. But the issue is, some of the most vulnerable communities are some of our most homophobic... Disobedience delivers a hopeful message about a community that hasn't offered many steps towards tolerance. It does not vilify Orthodox Jews, but it will not justify homophobia. Because that is unjustifiable."

The results of an equally unscientific search on the reactions of the LGBT community more generally were also largely positive (samples here and here). And a review that is less than sympathetic about the "forbidden love" story still credits Lelio for the authenticity of the much-discussed sex scene.   

For me, Disobedience, for all its intrinsic interest, was a less riveting movie than either Gloria or A Fantastic Woman, and I think the reason is that I was conflicted about the religious background. I don't want a black-and-white story where religion is black and liberalism white. But I'm not sure Lelio's attempt to be all things to all people totally came off.


The story of Mahsuri, Langkawi, Malaysia, 2010

2.
The Reports on Sarah and Saleem
2018, Muayad Alayan

This time the affair is between a man and a woman. They're both still married (Sarah to David, Saleem to Bisan); they're both parents.

But otherwise, they're very different people. Sarah is privileged; she runs her own coffee shop; she has a nice home. Saleem is a van driver, who delivers bread to Sarah's cafe; his home is very ordinary, and he is struggling for money.

But we haven't yet got to the really crucial gulf between them. At one point Sarah tells her cafe colleague that she's having an affair. "That happens," responds the woman, philosophically. But when Sarah goes on to explain that it's with a Palestinian, the reaction is very different... Sarah lives in West Jerusalem, and her husband is rapidly making his way up the career ladder in the Israeli army, while Saleem's job involves crossing the checkpoint every day from East Jerusalem, and occasionally delivering goods to Bethlehem as a favour for his brother-in-law.

On one of the Bethlehem trips he suggests Sarah come too. Once he's done his drop, he invites her to a bar ("just pretend you're a foreigner..."). This turns out to be a bold and bad idea. When Saleem gets into a row with an obnoxious guy who is hitting on Sarah, he ends up setting in motion an unwanted chain of reactions that turns something personal into something geopolitical. Obnoxious guy gets Saleem investigated by the Palestinian security forces, who accuse him of smuggling Israeli prostitutes into the West Bank. To get him off the hook, a bigger Palestinian protector concocts a story about his having "recruited" Sarah as a spy. When the bigger protector is raided by the Israeli army, the (totally false) story gets into more dangerous hands.


The legend of Pulau Kemaro, Palembang, Sumatra, Indonesia, 2017



Saleem is arrested by the Israelis (this is the scene we see right at the beginning), but refuses to implicate Sarah. He is helped along in that decision, perhaps, by David: "You never met her and you never met me. We never spoke. Otherwise you're dead."

But when Sarah's role is uncovered anyway, she doesn't return the favour -- or at least not initially -- and again it's David who's pulling the strings: "You'd better not tell the investigating officer any of this bullshit. When he asks [about Saleem], you say you stopped sleeping with him when he started asking about my work... You will be cleared, but not him. If you can't do that, we'll go our separate ways. The child will stay with me. They wouldn't let her live with a traitor anyway."

Unfortunately for David, while the whole recruitment story is a concoction, there is one little bit of reality: a phone record where Sarah warns Saleem not to make any deliveries to Bethlehem that night, because the army's launching an operation... That breach is enough to strip David of his security clearance.

It's hard to sympathize with him, though. Yes, he was wronged, but his violence (not only towards Saleem, but also towards Sarah and Bisan) makes him very unlikeable.

Bisan, on the other hand, is someone to look up to. She's not prepared to forgive Saleem, and wants a divorce. But what she also wants is the truth. She tears down posters that portray him as a hero when she knows the story is so much more sordid. And when she learns from Saleem's lawyer that as things stand, he will be handed a 10-year sentence, while his lover gets off scot free, she embarks on a campaign to persuade Sarah to testify on his behalf. In this she is eventually successful -- although how much the change of heart is due to Sarah's resentment of David's bullying and how much to her decision to undo this egregious injustice is difficult to determine.

But the end is pretty horrible for everyone. Sarah is vilified by her community for changing her testimony. We see her daughter going off with David, while Sarah can only smile bravely. Saleem is now unlikely to get 10 years, but he'll still probably have to do three. Bisan still wants a divorce.

In the final scene, we see both Sarah and Bisan at the court (along with Bisan's new-born baby). Saleem is led past them, shackled at wrists and ankles. The two women exchange a tentative half-smile, very warily, very briefly. And that's the end. The two of them sitting there, outside the courtroom.



Throughout the story, we're acutely conscious of the power disparities in the relationships. The gender of Sarah and Bisan instantly puts them at a disadvantage with regard to their husbands. David is violent, nice while things are going his way, but not otherwise. His career has always taken precedence over anything Sarah wanted to achieve. Bisan, meanwhile, has to ask Saleem to initiate divorce proceedings, as her marriage contract stipulates that she cannot do it herself.

But the political gaps yawn even more widely. Sarah's ethnic and social privilege gives her a status that Saleem cannot hope to match. (The classic lack of proportion in the broader conflict is illustrated in a scene where David follows Sarah to Bisan's home in East Jerusalem. As the couple emerge onto the street, anger still crackling between them, people in a nearby building start throwing stones. David immediately responds with gunfire.)

The story is inspired by incidents involving people Alayan knew. He grew up in the eastern part of Jerusalem, but his first job was in the western sector: "Like the majority of young Palestinians from east Jerusalem, this was my first encounter with the Israeli society beyond the soldiers and police that we are used to encountering in the east side of the city. It was there that I witnessed these relationships between Palestinian and Israeli colleagues of mine that were happening in the dark and away from the eyes of the people of the community on both sides of the city... We all knew that the stakes for Palestinians were much higher in these relationships because in view of the segregation in the city and the security-paranoid police, it’s never just about sex or affairs. I can share that at least three of my friends from that era who dated Israeli women ended up having to explain themselves to the police."

He continues: "To me the political, military and social authorities form the first opposition against the people in my world and in the story worlds of my films. I’m interested in reflecting on the repressive conditions imposed on people and the choices that people make when confronted with pressure from all systems of authority. This is how life is around here. One’s life can turn upside down in a split second... The film at its core is about power and privilege and how the crushing socio-political systems push people to act selfishly and hurtfully towards one another in order to survive and keep the privileges they are afforded, be they political, social, legal or economic."

All of which has a relevance far beyond Jerusalem, of course.