Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane star as a cantor and a teacher looking for a belated bat mitzvah in Nathan Silver’s dramedy. Here’s our Between The Temples review.
A crisis of faith has long been a common theme in cinema. It was used to great effect in films like The Exorcist and Silence, but director Nathan Silver uses it as a source of both comedy and anxiety in his film Between The Temples.
Jason Schwartzman plays Ben Gottlieb, a cantor, who’s grieving the death of his wife. Ben has lost his singing voice as well as his appetite for life; at one point, he lies down in front of a truck and tells it to just keep going.
Ben’s mundane daily life is interrupted by Carla (a wonderful Carol Kane), his old music teacher who’s keen to have the bat mitzvah that she never had as a kid. Ben and Carla bond and find solace in each other over the course of their studies.
The above makes the film sound like a romance, but Between The Temples refuses to put such a simple label on the connection between Ben and Carla. Their relationship is about two people needing each other in this specific moment in time when they’re both feeling a little lost. Between The Temples is at its best when it focuses on this connection between the two, even when it feels a little borrowed from Hal Ashby’s Harold & Maude.
Filmed on grainy 16mm, Silver and his cinematographer Sean Price Williams are particularly interested in people’s faces. The camera is often almost uncomfortably close to the characters, observing the most minute changes in expression and trying to find something profound in the subtle wrinkles and curves.
The film’s first act is captivating and often funny, but the humour here is dry. I doubt anyone will walk into their screening of Between The Temples expecting Superbad or Anchorman, but I struggled to find something to grasp in the film. At nearly two hours, Between The Temples often felt like a slog to get through, the equivalent of having to empty the dishwasher after a long day at work because you have no clean plates to eat your dinner from.
I liked Between The Temples in theory – its themes are right up my alley – but the execution failed to capture me. Silver attempts to bring Ben’s everyday anxieties onto the screen, but the effort feels surface-level compared to something like Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid which made you feel the anxiety in your bones. Between The Temples is a gentler film by design, but there’s a strange distance between us and the film and its characters.
Ben’s grief, the driving force of the narrative in many ways, is never explored enough, even though it colours every moment of Ben’s life. Instead, Ben often comes across as melodramatic and frustratingly indecisive. Carol Kane, however, is the film’s undeniable highlight. Her screen presence is enough to light up any room or auditorium, but Carla, like Ben, feels short-served by the unfocused script.
I think it’s still important to point out that the film’s portrayal of Jewish faith, customs and culture is profoundly important. There’s a charming warmth and humour in how Judaism is portrayed, something that feels all too rare in cinema. There’s also much to be admired about Silver’s wholly unique approach to a crowded genre. It’s just a shame it doesn’t quite come together.
Between The Temples is in cinemas 23rd August.
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