Eric Steel’s Minyan is a rarity among recent big-screen depictions of Judaism. The film focuses not so much on the easily-stereotyped Hasidic enclaves in places like Borough Park or Monsey or Tel Aviv, but rather on the harder-to-pin-down American variety of non-Orthodox, practicing Jews. Such Jews see tradition as something to be both cherished and struggled against; they ask questions and challenge and eat bacon, but they also study Mishna and know the Mourner’s Kaddish by heart. Unlike the Coen Brothers’ 2009 film A Serious Man, Steel does not treat this community of Jewish characters with ironic detachment, but rather with a level of serious consideration that’s refreshing to see. However, the religious thread is only one of many that runs through this ultimately heartfelt but overly diffuse film. Its many themes struggle to cohere within a rambling structure, greatly hampered by lackluster direction and wildly-divergent levels of performance.
Adapted from the short story by David Bezmozgis, the script by Steel and Daniel Pearle is elliptical to the point of near-abstraction. Minyan nominally follows the trials and travails of young David, ably depicted by Samuel H. Levine, who’s too old for the part of a high-schooler but has soulful eyes that carry a surplus of emotional weight.
Throughout the film, David comes to terms with and begins to inhabit and explore his homosexual identity during the height of the AIDS epidemic in late ‘80s New York. But the film is also about David’s grandfather Josef’s (Ron Rifkin, TV’s Alias) as he struggles to find a place to live after the death of his wife and ultimately finagles his way into a housing project for elderly Jews run by a shady Rabbi Zalman (Richard Topol) in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. And it’s also about Josef’s neighbors, Itzik (Mark Margolis of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Darren Aronofsky’s stock company) and Herschel (Christopher McCann), a pair of closeted roommates/lovers and their struggles with mortality and with the legacy of their post-Holocaust diasporic existence. And it’s also about the prose of James Baldwin, the poetry of Wallace Stevens and artistic expression in general. And it’s also about the Torah and Halakha, about the continuity of Jewish existence in 20th century American culture and about how all of this is caught up in the symbolism of the minyan, that quorum of 10 Jewish men over the age of 13 necessary for the sanctification of most communal ritual acts.
A plot that can’t be summed up in one or two pithy sentences isn’t necessarily a deal-breaker. But it’s hard to express just how frustrating Minyan is, with its clunky episodic format and its seemingly intentionally vague and fragmented dialogue; and with its lack of narrative stakes and direction and with its bizarrely head-scratching editing choices. Steel could have comfortably cut out at least a half hour from the running time and the movie would have been all the better for it.
And yet all of this would have been perfectly acceptable if only Steel’s direction had been better handled. In fact, it could perhaps be argued that the indirect nature of Minyan’s structure was meant to parallel the series of furtive looks, vague innuendos and ambiguous gestures that accompany David’s entrée into the world of cruising. However, that generous reading would only hold water if not for the god-awful jazzy klezmer score by David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg, the flat and uninspired cinematography by Ole Bratt Birkeland and the aforementioned huge gaps in believability between the various actors, ranging from the quite accomplished (McCann and Margolis are particular highlights) to the clearly amateur (most everyone else).
Steel’s 2006 film The Bridge was a harrowing and controversial documentary that discussed and depicted suicides who leaped from the Golden Gate Bridge. As unforgettable as that film was, this fiction feature falls well short. Still, there’s clearly a much better movie hiding within Minyan’s many flaws. Its themes and ideas are worthy of further elaboration, especially in the conflict between religious belief and sexual identity and expression. However, with Steel’s decision (whether intentional or not) to obfuscate rather than clarify, any nuggets of good performance and resonant ideas get lost.
Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing
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