moonspinner55 Review of Fiddler on the Roof

Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

"One season following another/Laden with happiness and tears..."

[7/10 · 9 November 2009]

Russian Jews in a small Ukrainian farming village in the early 1900s are unaware of the political tensions brewing in the city...and how the new Czarist regime will eventually sweep all of them up into an exodus of change. Popular musical entertainment via Broadway, with heartfelt characters and a universal theme--Old World tradition versus the new ideals--resulting in a production which is alternately robust and bittersweet. The confines of the material (as conceptualized on the stage, where this show ran for nearly eight years) occasionally burdens the narrative, though director Norman Jewison keeps a pretty lively pace. The editing is weak and does the filmmaker no favors, and the camera never seems to be in the right place, however most of the performers are intensely in-tune with this story and bring out the jubilant soul of the piece. Topol stars as simple milkman Tevye, watching as three of his five daughters drift away into the arms of romantic suitors; he consults with God on matters of money and the heart, weighing each circumstance with even reasoning, and compares the attempt at living a common yet balanced life to that of a fiddler on a rooftop. The film would hardly be much more than an old-fashioned, sentimental exercise were it not for Topol, who sings and dances and jiggles across the screen like a circus bear. In Topol, Jewison has found an appropriate way to capture this theatrical happening on film--and actually make it mean something. Several sequences feel lumpen, and too often there's no exaltation at the climax of the musical numbers, but it still works a fiery-eyed kind of magic. *** from ****