Kadosh
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Movie Reviews of Kadosh
Movie Review: The perfect world `s utopia !
Summary: 5 Stars
At this moment Amos Gitai remains as the most lucid conscious of his country. He is a sharp filmmaker, immensely worried by the controversies generated by the tradition against the modern exigencies of an untiring world that does not believe in tears. This movie is deeply revealing around an untouchable issue years ago. The treatment of the women in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. Two sisters in search of their happiness and bliss in a system that seems to confine and marginalize them, limiting and reducing her gifts. Although each one of them is married, one of them is rejected due her marriage is childless. The other one is advised and seriously pressured by a rabbi into a marrying a cruel and despotic husband.
A cry of anguish and despair.
Movie Review: Kadosh
Summary: 5 Stars
A beautifully realized and sensitive drama, Amos Gitai's controversial "Kadosh" observes a little-seen religious community where women's roles are severely restricted to child-bearing and strict obedience to their husbands. Love is both triumphant and tragic in Gitai's story, the ultimate cause of dark disruptions. Abecassis and Hattab inhabit their roles with deep feeling, making us believe in their mutual respect and reverence for tradition. Barda is also wonderful as the younger woman whose need for escape materializes when her new husband proves incapable of warmth or tenderness. Somber yet hopeful, "Kadosh" is a marvelous Israeli gem.Movie Review: The most touching film ever
Summary: 5 Stars
I don't know how accurately this movie pictures Orthodox life but I do know that the theme of the movie is love and not tradition! I am not one that cries easily but when I saw Kaddosh I was so deeply touched that I cried through the second part of the movie without even realizing it. The characters are torn between two choices that are equally important for them in their hearts, yet either way they lose the other half of their hearts...The movie is so good I almost fear to watch it again because of the overwhelming feelings it brings onto surface in me.Movie Review: What Is Truly Sacred? Let the Viewer Decide ...
Summary: 4 Stars
Amos Gitai sheds light on how stifling and confining it may be for some women living within a Hasidic religious community. It looks nearly impossible for them to live fulfilling and joyous lives. The film has a universal message which can apply to any religion or community which influences and advises its members in personal life matters that are, in this viewer's opinion, best left to be determined for one's self. In this film, two sisters lose their self-determination and are sadly compelled to follow the norms of the community ... just because they are women ... whose roles are proscribed. They are to obey the man and be dependent rather than self-determining individuals. The community is run by men who define behavioral norms based on passages from the Torah. The rabbi interprets how these passages are to be understood in modern life. The community influences the lives of its members to a degree most viewers would find highly objectionable and down right intrusive. Whether or not this is a truthful depiction of the Hasidic way of life is unclear to this viewer but the point which is crystal clear by the director is that some areas of life are *indeed* *sacred* and are no one's business but one's own. This is a totally compelling and fascinating film in how it unravels, unbalances and destroys the lives of an apparently happily married couple who are childless after 10 years of marriage. Both Meir, the husband, and Rivka, the wife, are heart-broken after the rabbi at the Yeshiva compels Meir to consider divorcing Rivka in favor of an arranged marriage ... to produce offspring ... evidently his "sacred" duty to G-d. It is not at all clear why *only* Rivka is blamed for this flaw ...
The klezmer music at the beginning and throughout much of the film proclaims the joys of life and its meandering mournful paths as well ... the sadder tunes reveal the future anguish of Meir and Rivka as they sort out their problems within the expectations of their religion. Sadly, Malka who is Rivka's sister is not looking forward to an arranged marriage to Yosef because Malka has a boyfriend Yakov who had left the Yeshiva and religious community to pursue a secular life. He sang a haunting tune in a nightclub about how love can not be fulfilled in this world but instead he will meet his lover in the next one ... Malka obeys her parents and marries Yosef but her marriage life is a sham despite going to ritual baths to become spiritually more clean and praying as required. She follows her heart and breaks her sacred marriage bond by secretly meeting with Yakov for a tryst. The film shows Yosef to be an unthinking and insensitive man which is not entirely his fault but he is also brutish which again, he may not be able to change. He entered into a marriage for the wrong reasons - just as Malka became an obedient daughter rather than showing courage and breaking with tradition to do what is in her own best interests to follow her heart and mind ... even if it meant being banished from the Hasidic community. This film does indeed film less than joyful moments in the lives of its characters, the clothes and colors worn by the women, the older brick buildings and narrow passageways in the streets ... all are symbolic of a lifestyle which makes the insides of its members crumble and breakdown ... Who should decide in the final analysis of what is important in life? Erika Borsos (pepper flower)
Movie Review: Individuals vs. community
Summary: 4 Stars
At the beginning of this Israeli film, one of the main characters, Meir, an Orthodox Jewish scholar, thanks in his morning prayer that God has not created him a woman. We soon learn the painful personal "truth" behind this bit of humor, as Meir and his wife Rivka get lost between love and the demands of the strictly religious community they live in.
Kadosh ("sacred") depicts the sacrifice of individualism in the name of the common good, and the kind of resistance a human being feels in a world of "suffocation." Rivka and her younger sister Malka are like victims in a society where individuals have no personal space or even persona but are supposed to act and think alike. I don't think this is only about the oppression of women -- although the film does seem to emphasize that alleged part of Orthodox Judaism a lot, fairly or not -- but it applies to the men as well. Meir, the scholar, is a victim of his fellow scholars' behind-the-back gossip. Yakov is a victim of being ostracism after he became secularized. Even the religious fanatic, Youssef, is a kind of victim, too, that of a rigid system which permits no individualistic thinking or behavior. When he, on the wedding night, tells Malka that he likes the way she walks, he sounds like an embarrassed boy who doesn't know how to act in front of a girl. But, in a masterful stroke, the film then shows he clumsily but forcefully consummates the marriage, in a scene that's both funny and shocking.
The film flows in a slow pace and in an almost monotonous way, which is the impression most outsiders have of the orthodox Jewish way of life. The use of many indoor scenes further darkens one's perception of this "other world," a world so unfamiliar to most of us living in the West. There's almost a constant sense of frustration the audience might feel as the film progresses. We feel for Rivka and Malka, and we also feel their hopelessness at times. They are almost like two typical teenagers raised in a strict family: both want to rebel, but the older feels she must save the honor of the family, while the younger feels she must break free. Again, it's not just the women: when Meir tries to resist the rabbi's urging to divorce his wife, and when he gets drunk one night and breaks into Rivka's room, he's showing a rebellious side, too.