"Disobedience" would have had a better title in "Secrets and Lies." It was wasn't that the characters Ronit Krushka (Rachel Weisz) and Esti Kuperman (Rachel McAdams) were disobeying their God in their lesbian relationship. Rather, all the evidence points to their repressed community that resulted in their stultifying and tortured lives.
If there is any character who is central to the lives of Ronit, Esti, and the kindly young rabbi Dovid Kuperman, it is the elderly Rav Shlomo Krushka, who hovers over them all, even after his death. At one critical point in the past, the Rav had caught Ronit and Esti in flagrante dilecto, resulting in Ronit fleeing to New York and Esti trying to "straighten up and flight right" by marrying Dovid.
The film has a symmetry in the final words of Rav speaking to his synagogue about Hashem creating the angels, beasts, and the humans after six days of hard labor that are finally analyzed at the end of the film by Dovid. The gist of the argument is that the angels and beasts are naturally disposed to obedience, while human beings have free will. We never learn the Rav's feelings about what it means to have free will. Rather, it takes two hours of this laboriously paced movie for Dovid to finally understand the "tangled life" of the love triangle in which he lives.
This was a muddied film with good intentions, but poor execution. The symbols were much overused, such as the wig denoting Esti's straight-jacketed existence, the teaching of the "Othello" love triangle of Othello-Desdemona-Iago by Esti to her young students, the smoking of cigarettes to denote rebelliousness, and the euphemism "May you live a long life" as a brush-off line were all overused and heavy-handed.
Above all, there were far too many false endings, including a prospective suicide attempt, a trip to the airport that ends in a turnaround after check-in, and a smarmy embrace of the threesome that denotes forgiveness. The bottom drops out of this film around the midpoint, and it never recovers.
If there is any character who is central to the lives of Ronit, Esti, and the kindly young rabbi Dovid Kuperman, it is the elderly Rav Shlomo Krushka, who hovers over them all, even after his death. At one critical point in the past, the Rav had caught Ronit and Esti in flagrante dilecto, resulting in Ronit fleeing to New York and Esti trying to "straighten up and flight right" by marrying Dovid.
The film has a symmetry in the final words of Rav speaking to his synagogue about Hashem creating the angels, beasts, and the humans after six days of hard labor that are finally analyzed at the end of the film by Dovid. The gist of the argument is that the angels and beasts are naturally disposed to obedience, while human beings have free will. We never learn the Rav's feelings about what it means to have free will. Rather, it takes two hours of this laboriously paced movie for Dovid to finally understand the "tangled life" of the love triangle in which he lives.
This was a muddied film with good intentions, but poor execution. The symbols were much overused, such as the wig denoting Esti's straight-jacketed existence, the teaching of the "Othello" love triangle of Othello-Desdemona-Iago by Esti to her young students, the smoking of cigarettes to denote rebelliousness, and the euphemism "May you live a long life" as a brush-off line were all overused and heavy-handed.
Above all, there were far too many false endings, including a prospective suicide attempt, a trip to the airport that ends in a turnaround after check-in, and a smarmy embrace of the threesome that denotes forgiveness. The bottom drops out of this film around the midpoint, and it never recovers.