Tevye and Tradition: “Between the Temples”

These days cultural blending seems to be the thing among romantic couples. Certainly, I have no objection to true love in whatever form it takes. But I’m a bit weary of movies about Nice Jewish Boys who seem all too eager to cast off their family traditions in order to wed someone from an entirely different background. (Nice Jewish Girls, though, seem to be left high and dry—and then get to be the subject of snide jokes.) “Jewish nebbish falls for pretty blonde shiksa” is of course the premise of the very popular Meet the Parents, which came out in 2000. Twenty-three years later, we had You People, which begins with Jonah Hill’s character, surrounded by family, celebrating the ritual of Rosh Hashanah, then quickly segues into his falling for a handsome African-American woman whose parents (one is Eddie Murphy) are devotees of the Nation of Islam. I didn’t stick around to watch how love conquers all, but the cultural stereotyping on both sides didn’t strike me as all that amusing.

 I’m glad that the new Between the Temples doesn’t depend on the same old tropes. Yes, it’s about an unlikely relationship, but one that deeply respects Jewish tradition, though certainly in an unconventional way. I’ve heard this Sundance favorite described in terms of the age disparity in Harold and Maude, but the imbalance between the two leading players in Between the Temples, Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, isn’t nearly so large. Still, she was his elementary school music teacher ‘way back when. They reunite purely by happenstance. He’s now the cantor at Temple Sinai, where the congregation is remarkably supportive of his inability to sing ever since his wife (described as a novelist and an alcoholic) died in a tragic sidewalk accident. As Cantor Ben mourns and mopes, Carla O’Connor (née Kessler) appears in his classroom and insists she be accepted as a bat mitzvah student. (As a “red diaper baby,” born to parents proud of their atheism, she loved attending her classmates’ bar  mitzvah ceremonies, but never was allowed to pursue a similar coming-of-age ritual for herself.)

 The relationship between Ben and Carla is an increasingly odd one, but I like the fact that it’s based on their mutual enthusiasm for Jewish ritual, though it can be argued that Carla (for one) is more caught up in the beauty of traditional cantorial music than in actual faith. Faith, in fact, seems a complex matter for everyone in the story. I was struck by the fact that all the families portrayed in the film defy stereotype. Perhaps the character who most stubbornly clings to tradition is Ben’s mother’s longtime romantic partner, a woman whom he considers a second mom. She’s a Manila-born convert to Judaism who chairs major synagogue events, professes that Jerusalem is her true home, and is quick to condemn anything she feels violates the minutiae of the religious ritual. (She’s played with ferocity by Dolly de Leon, so memorable in 2022’s darkly comic Triangle of Sadness.)

 I don’t want to suggest that Between the Temples works perfectly. Cantor Ben’s behavior at a key family shabbat dinner is so out of kilter that I just can’t buy it as a set-up for the film’s sweet but highly eccentric ending. But Jason Schwartzman is effectively screwed up as Ben, and it’s a delight to watch a leading screen performance by Carol Kane, whom I’ve loved ever since her Oscar-nominated role in Hester Street back in 1975. I’m not sure what Tevye would have thought of this unorthodox paean to “tradition,” but I’m glad I checked it out. 

 

“48 Hrs.” and “Taxi Driver”: The Buddies and the Loner

July appears to be my month for violent movies. Within the past week I’ve watched both 48 Hrs. (1982) and Taxi Driver (1976). I was impressed by them both, but the first strikes me as a guilty pleasure. And the second, alas, seems like a wake-up call.

 The success of 48 Hrs. at the box office helped kick off the whole buddy cop genre (see, for instance, the Lethal Weapon franchise). The pairing of big, burly, taciturn Nick Nolte and small, slim, gabby Eddie Murphy (in his very first movie role) also showed how the unlikely pairing of a white man and a Black one in Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones could evolve into the kind of spiky but eventually comedic relationship epitomized by action romps featuring Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. But 48 Hrs. is no comedy. And Murphy’s character, Reggie, is not actually a cop. Instead, he’s a convict, a career thief released from prison for (yes!) 48 hours in order to help track down a vicious former associate who’s done him dirt.

  It's an unlikely premise, but one that plays exceedingly well, as Reggie butts up against Nolte’s my-way-or-the-highway Jack. Wearing a spiffy Armani suit and (after three celibate years in prison) endlessly on the hunt for willing females, Reggie eventually reveals that he’s deft enough and brave enough to help face down a killer. In this he wins the respect of Jack, a rumpled mass of a man who’s got his own female troubles and not much support from his superiors. Respect between Reggie and Jack grows slowly, though the early interactions between the two are laced with nasty jibes and racial epithets that are hard to enjoy. We know, of course, that all will be right in the end, though they still enjoy jerking one another’s chain up until the final fadeout. (Yes, the relationship survives in a 1990 sequel.) 

 Director Walter Hill is best known for action, and the film’s opening – a bold escape from a penal work camp, accompanied by James Horner’s thrilling music -- may be its most viscerally effective part. It’s rivaled by the lethal wrap-up in a misty San Francisco Chinatown haunt. But the centerpiece, of course is two mismatched men who find themselves becoming pals.

 Which brings me to Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese’s deeply disturbing look at a military veteran adrift in the urban jungles of New York City. Unable to sleep, Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle takes a job as an all-night cab driver, cruising through Manhattan’s meanest, dirtiest, most crime-ridden streets. His is a solitary life. When a social relationship with a pretty blonde working on a political campaign (Cybill Shepherd) fizzles, he becomes obsessed with rescuing a child prostitute (Jodie Foster) from her sordid line of work. It’s easy enough for him to assemble an arsenal of weapons, and to transform himself into a muscle-bound mohawk-wearing killing machine with hair-trigger reflexes and a grudge against pretty much everyone. By the end of the film he is a lethal weapon, though a bizarre twist turns him into someone’s idea of a public hero.

 Bickle’s soul-crushing loneliness, combined with obvious PTSD from his Marine Corps days, makes him all too ripe to see himself as a potential toxic avenger. The ready availability of military-style fire power is what inspires him to take into his own hands the idea of cleaning up the world. Sadly, there are too many others out there today whose minds work in the same deadly fashion. If only our nation weren’t so ready to sell them the tools to fuel their obsessions. 

 

Defending (Not Defunding) the Police in “Beverly Hills Cop”

We’ve just passed the one-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd. Floyd’s murder under the knee of a Minneapolis cop has rightly led to impassioned public discourse about the role of policing in African-American communities. It’s no accident, at this particular moment in history, that so many of our major recent films – like Judas and the Black Messiah – have had something to say about the fraught connection between law enforcement and America’s Black citizenry. On television, such powerful shows as 2019’s When They See Us miniseries have zeroed in on the police role in demonizing innocent people of color.

 But on the anniversary of Floyd’s death I yearned to watch something a bit lighter. Which is how I happened to queue up my TV to an oldie, 1984’s Beverly Hills Cop. The film has everything to do with the outrageous charms of Eddie Murphy, in the leading role of Axel Foley. But this was not a case (like Coming to America) of the film being a Murphy product from the start. It began as an action thriller that at one time was supposed to star Mickey Rourke. When Sylvester Stallone came aboard, the blood quotient was ramped up, and so was the budget. But then producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer made a major pivot to Eddie Murphy, who’d done well with comedies like 48 Hours and Trading Places. Suddenly the script’s renegade cop was not only a brilliant but independent-minded detective but also a major wise-ass, with a foul-mouthed quip for every occasion. The end result is an undercover police officer from a grungy Detroit precinct who shows up in Beverly Hills, supposedly on vacation but really to search (over the objections of his superiors) for the man behind the killing of a childhood buddy.

 Beverly Hills plays itself, in all of its SoCal patrician glory. As someone who grew up in neighboring West L.A., just over the city line, I can attest to the authenticity of the Spanish-inflected civic buildings, the swanky boutiques, and the hordes of well-tanned sidewalk strollers, all of them dressed to impress. (It’s amusing, though, to see Foley enter the Beverly Wilshire Hotel—a distinguished hostelry in the heart of Beverly Hills—and then cross the lobby of Downtown L.A.’s equally historic Biltmore, where he cons a desk clerk into giving him a suite for the price of a single room.)

 Critics as well as audiences loved Murphy’s live-wire performance. In Time magazine, critic Richard Schickel wrote that Murphy “exuded the kind of cheeky, cocky charm that has been missing from the screen since [Jimmy] Cagney was a pup, snarling his way out of the ghetto."  Cagney, of course, scored big in the 1930s as an overgrown dead-end kid, one whose bravado exceeded even his talent for larceny. Murphy may be on the right side of the law, but he violates local rules and mores at every turn. In the oh-so-polite Beverly Hills police station, he pummels codes of conduct non-stop. As Schickel notes, he’s “ghetto” in his sassy rejection of the status quo . . . but there’s absolutely no overt racism to be seen in the way he’s approached either by fellow cops or civilians. Some of them may not like him much, but no one says (or even THINKS) the “N word.” And by the ending, of course, everyone but the bad guys is thoroughly on his side. Welcome to Neverneverland!

 A word in passing on Eddy Donno, whose spectacular driving in the film won him a Stuntman Award. Well-deserved, and a big step up from his Roger Corman days.