Fill the Void (2012): Surprising, Wonderful

Fill the Void is an award winning Israeli movie slated for limited US release. I got to see it at the SF Int’l Film Fest last week, and thought it was remarkable on many levels. It offers us an intimate, fascinating glimpse into an elaborate, but insular culture very, very different from our own; and through tragedy and drama entices us into the hearts of one family, and, in particular the moral and emotional coming of age experience of one young woman.

The story unfolds within, and on one level is about, the ultra-orthodox Hassidic community of Tel Aviv.  This is a male dominated world, but that’s not the whole truth. The domestic life of the Hassidic family at the core of Fill the Void is very much a female domain, and, as the film plays out it appears that the women are every bit as important to, and revered by, the male rabbis and scholars as are their sacred Talmud, Torah and tradition. Ultimately, Fill the Void is a closely observed story about this complicated universe, about the intersection between faith and family, and between duty to your family and duty to your own heart.  

The picture opens as 18-year old Shira Mendelman (played by the terrific young actress, Hadas Yaron)

and her mother Rivka (Irit Sheleg) are in a supermarket in order to get a pre-arranged, giddy glimpse of the young man a matchmaker has set up as Shira’s prospective fiancée - assuming she finds him acceptable, that is. Next, we’re a fly on the wall watching Shira and her family celebrating a Purim feast – the women at one end of the room watching, listening; the men – religious scholars all, with their sidelocks, beards, dark, exotic hats, long coats, etc., – drinking, praying and enthusiastically singing at the elaborate, candle-lit dining table.

Before the evening ends, however, Shira’s beautiful older sister, Esther dies in childbirth, plunging the family into crushing grief. The baby survives, becoming a source of joy and consolation, and certainly for reflection. Shira and her mother devote themselves to caring for the infant when his father, the scholar Yochay (a soulful Yiftach Klein) is not around. It is acknowledged that Yochay will need a new wife, to care for the child among other things. When Yochay announces that he is considering an offer of matrimony to a woman in Belgium, which would mean moving there with his son, Rivka is beside herself with renewed grief.  First, Esther was taken from her, and now her grandson? “Tell me, how will I survive this?” she asks.

Eventually she devises a possible solution: that Shira could marry Yochay, keeping the family intact. Yochay has his doubts. Shira can’t believe it. Marry her brother in law? A man ten years older than she? For her mother and her family? What about her own life, her own dreams? She must do what’s right, but how can she know what that is?

Writer/director Rama Burshtein explores this drama with sensitivity and finesse.  Burshtein herself is a member of Tel Aviv’s Hassidic community, by choice.  Born in New York and raised in Israel, she attended film school in Jerusalem and as an adult, was drawn to and joined the Hassidim. “My privilege,” she has said, “is that I know both worlds.” Fill the Void benefits from this. It is not an  exposé, but an exploration, intended for a secular audience. The film does not proselytize, but it does humanize a life and an experience seemingly so different from our own, and yet, in many ways not.

 

For me, this motion picture started as an interesting look at that world, but soon drew me into the drama and emotion of the very human story. There are no villains, only real, flesh and blood characters facing difficult circumstances and dilemmas. Most surprising is the respect shown for Shira’s individuality and for the understanding that her decision is both important and personal. Rivka, although she clearly asserts her own wishes, insists that her daughter must decide for herself; as does Shira’s father and as does, in a lovely moment, the senior Rabbi. 

Also striking, given my initial stereotyped assumptions about this culture, is the sensitive portrayal of the intimate, developing relationship between Yochay and Shira as both struggle with the choices they face; and indeed, in the little glimpses we get of the domestic interactions between Rivka and her husband and between the Rabbi and his wife, we see a rich and balanced relationship between the men and women. The Hassidic world may not be a feminist’s ideal, but it seems, in Burshtein’s representation, to be a world in which respect and understanding can co-exist with traditional, conservative gender roles.

Ultimately, Fill the Void is a tender, emotional, beautifully rendered domestic drama. This is not a genre I’m normally drawn to, but this is one of the best movies I have seen in some time. It opens in the US on May 24^th.  Seek it out.