Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem (2015) Review

Directed by
Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elkabetz

Like Luis Bunuel’s surrealist masterpiece The Exterminating Angel (1962), the entirety of Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz’s Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem takes place within the confines of a single physical space.  In the case of Bunuel, that space was a lavish dining room where the aristocratic dinner guests could not bring themselves to ever depart; in Gett, that space is an Israeli courtroom where a divorce proceeding is taking place.  In both films, the narrative and characters are restricted to those enclosed spaces for absurd reasons – for Bunuel, it was the self-imposed alienation of the entitled social classes while in Gett, it is the absurdity of the inefficient Israeli judicial system, governed by the archaic and misogynistic laws of the Talmud more than the modern, progressive, “enlightened” conceptions of justice and equality.

But the comparisons to The Exterminating Angel are perhaps most resonant in both films’ cumulative effects on viewers: Both films are exercises in dullness, repetition, and extreme frustration.  They do not contain character development, dramatic tension, or narrative climaxes – at least not in any traditional senses.  They are rooted in the political task of placing viewers in the same social, emotional, and intellectual positioning as its characters, even if that necessitates that the events of the film become monotonous and a chore to watch.  Just as we ask with Bunuel, Why can’t these people just leave the dining room already?, the Elkabetz’s film forces us to ask, Why can’t these people just be granted a divorce already?  The answer, of course, has less to do with the people involved (and even their reasons for divorce) and everything to do with the individuals and institutions given the unimpeded power to grant divorces.

Gett (the Hebrew term for “divorce”) begins with Viviane Amsalem (Ronit Elkabetz) and her lawyer, Carmel Ben Tovim (Menasche Noy), bringing their case before a trio of Rabbi judges.  For over 30 years, Viviane has been unhappily married to Elisha (Simon Abkarian) but under Jewish law, divorces can only be granted by husbands.  Viviane pleads her case to the Rabbis that Elisha should be forced into absolving their marriage, but her initial arguments are unconvincing; by all accounts, Elisha is a pious, loyal husband who does not physically abuse her, has remained monogamous, and supports her financially.  Viviane simply does not love him anymore – an attitude which confounds the Rabbis, who see love and affection as frivolous byproducts of wayward, inferior femininity (the Talmud crucially does not contain the words “irreconcilable differences.”)  Instead of Elisha’s character being questioned by the Rabbis, it is Viviane’s; they reprimand her for speaking out of turn, attack her for inappropriate wardrobe, and take little sympathy on her, even when Elisha fails to show up on several different occasions.  The subtitle of the film, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem, is absolutely correct and ironic in conveying that for an Orthodox Jewish woman to be granted a divorce, her morality and her actions -- rather than her husband's -- must be inordinately chaste and unblemished. 

Gradually, we learn more about the marriage through witnesses and testimony.  Viviane runs a beauty parlor, but because Jewish custom demands that she have a joint bank account with her husband, she has little financial autonomy.  Elisha, who does not appear to have a job, lacks a driver’s license and does not have credit cards.  He claims that Viviane does not sufficiently observe the Torah and treats him badly.  The two barely look at one another, and have not cohabitated in the same house for three years.  This raises the key question: So why doesn’t he grant her the divorce?  None of the Rabbis or lawyers ask this question, which may reflect how no one in the courtroom is eager to rewrite gett policy or ask straightforward questions; rather, the Rabbis only seem interested in secondhand gossip or unsubstantiated but juicy hearsay (such as when they ask Viviane’s unmarried sister whether she or Viviane attend mixes for singles).

But Gett is not only about the ways in which Orthodox law constrains women’s abilities to have independence.  It is also about the bureaucratic stagnation, repetition, and obstruction of the gett process and its utter lack of resolution.  As the film opens, Viviane has already spent a year and a half in court hoping to have her marriage officially dissolved; by the end of the film, that number has swelled to five years.  Each sequence in the film is separated by 2-4 months, with titlecards serving as a sobering reminder of the total amount of time that has elapsed from the first time Viviane requested her divorce.  In limiting the narrative to only the days spent in court, the effect is unusual; we never really get to know Viviane and Elisha outside of the testimony offered by their family, friends, and neighbors, and this is not surprisingly littered with half-truths, false accusations, and misinterpretations (one witness for Elisha accuses Viviane of cheating when he once spotted her having lunch with another man; this man is deduced to be only Carmel, her lawyer).  But viewed in another light, this deliberate framing device conceals key events, characters, and exchanges from their daily lives, and as a result, strips the characters of their humanity, which is what the film argues that the Israeli judicial system is systematically guilty of doing.  Viviane, Elisha and their marriage become clinical, emotionless, and even immaterial.  The only thing that matters is that courtroom decorum and reverence toward the Rabbis and rabbinic law is upheld and unchallenged at all costs. 

The Trial of Viviane Amsalem is a frustrating and challenging film, not just because the inert actions of the Rabbis and the courtroom testimony become often quite dull and repetitive for the viewer (which is the intended effect), but because the whole judicial process is a waste of time for everyone – particularly when it is the husband, not the Rabbis, who has the final say on whether the divorce will be granted or not.  Elisha’s attitude is quite clear throughout.  So why does Viviane continue to pursue legal channels to challenge gett policy when the system of law is so patriarchal, unmoved and sedentary?  (A second, more nitpicky question would be how she could continue to retain the cost of Carmel, who we are told comes from a lineage of prestigious litigators, for the entirety of the five-year legal process.)  A divorce is more than simply symbolic, since it would liberate Viviane from financial dependence on her husband, although as a result of the dramatic action being removed from their daily environments outside the courtroom, both Viviane’s and Elisha’s financial statuses remain underdeveloped and vague – to the detriment of the film.  American audiences may wonder why Viviane doesn’t simply opt to leave Israel forever, and may read Elisha as a stubborn, one-dimensional zealous tyrant.  But I think the filmmakers intended to demonstrate how the reality of Viviane's plight is more complicated and inconvenient, and the film especially illustrates how Orthodox Judaism, embodied by the trio of aloof Rabbis, is rigidly unable to adapt to changing times and cultural attitudes.

Actually, let me correct that: A couple of things do change during the course of the film.  When Viviane is introduced at the beginning, she is draped in a long, black robe.  By the end, she has gradually morphed into donning a shorter white gown, revealing sandals, and has even let her hair down.  She now smokes and swears.  At first the Rabbis reprimand her, but eventually they stop caring.  Because after five years, wouldn’t you?

            (Note: Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem was Israel’s official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 87^th Academy Awards.)

Rating: 3 Stars

What Maisie Knew (2013) Review

 

            What Maisie Knew illustrates why plot synopses rarely do movies justice.  On the surface, this is a movie with a 6-year-old girl as a protagonist who is forced to endure a cruel custody battle between her selfish parents.  The story is told from her point of view, meaning the specific details of the adult characters’ lives are largely obscured, and instead we get scenes of little Maisie coloring pictures with crayons, playing with baby turtles and singing songs at school.

            And yet somehow at the same time, What Maisie Knew is most decidedly not a children’s movie.  It is full of sadness, and not just because we see a little girl get used as a pawn in the erosion of a marriage between two adults.  It’s sad because it shows the worst kind of cynicism in the adult world, which was of course the modus opporandi of the 1897 Henry James novella from which the movie is based.  Maisie (played by big-eyed Onata Aprile) is constantly sifted through various parents, stepparents and babysitters because no one has time to watch her and worse yet, maybe they don’t really care about her.

            But here’s a provocative question: Are Maisie’s parents supposed to care?  I don’t necessarily want to take the side of Maisie’s irresponsible parents, but stay with me for a moment.  Everyone wants to believe that children should be the primary interests of the parents that choose to have them.  But society teaches us that for the first 25-40 years of our life, we need to put ourselves first – our careers, our motivations, our own lives and responsibilities.  This is a contradiction.  Is it morally reprehensible to ask how adults who have found a great deal of success in their work are supposed to balance the demands of their job with the demands of home life?  It’s like that saying about people who are either married to their spouse or to their job.  Recent studies have shown that having children is the biggest cause of marital dissatisfaction and eventual separation – more than jobs, money or sex.  Then again, we don’t really need scientific research to show this when movies like Revolutionary Road, Blue Valentine, and even The Place Beyond the Pines illustrate it so vividly.

One theory suggests that children also tend to reflect the worst qualities of the caregivers that take care of them.  Adults who find daily success in their jobs aren’t used to dealing with such blunt and overt criticism from their child or spouse when they come home.  In little Maisie’s case, it is fortunate that she has only retained her parents’ best qualities (or, perhaps put another way, hasn’t yet picked up their worst features).  It is also clear that her bickering parents (Steve Coogan and Julianne Moore) are people who, despite their success in “the real world,” should have never had children.

I guess my sympathy with them goes as far as to suggest that they couldn’t have possibly known the depths of the misery that having a child would cause.  Then again, maybe their occupations suggested their incompatibility with family life: Moore’s character, Susanna, is rock ‘n’ roll musician who frequently goes on tour, while Coogan’s character, Beale, is an art dealer with clients in Europe.  Both are successful, wealthy individuals who are well-accustomed to the riches of life in posh Manhattan.  They are likely surrounded by other people whose jobs it is to give them words of affirmation.  A simple movie would have been content to show them as vapid, self-absorbed charlatans who only show affection for Maisie when it might benefit their divorce settlement. 

And this is what we think in the first half hour of the film.  But because What Maisie Knew limits the scope of what we know about Susanna and Beale to what Maisie is able to observe, we only see her parents’ best intentions.  We only want to project the best version of ourselves on to our loved ones, right?  Susanna and Beale may be self-centered, and their actions rarely appear to back up their loving words to Maisie, but beneath it all, we see two characters who are as disgusted with their ex-spouses as they are with themselves.

Two other prominent characters emerge.  One is the Scottish-born Margo (Joanna Vanderham), who was once hired to be a nanny to Maisie, but is also shown to be Beale’s lover and new wife.  Perhaps she is one of the causes for Beale and Susanna’s split.  Perhaps she is marrying Beale only for his money.  Or maybe Beale and Susanna are too invested in their daily routines to really give a shit.  In a refreshing deviation from “bitchy stepmother” caricature, Margo seems to genuinely care about Maisie, and spends time caring for and playing with her . . . but on the other hand, if she truly cared about the little girl, why would she ever allow herself to be put in such an awkward position between Beale and Susanna, knowing how much her presence would exacerbate an already toxic divorce? 

The same can be said about Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgard), who shows up one night at one of Susanna's parties and seemingly the next minute, becomes Maisie's new stepfather.  Susanna tells Maisie that she married him "for her" but we are not sure what this means or if we should believe her. Like Margo, Lincoln is quite a few steps below Susanna financially (he works as a bartender), but also seems to care deeply for Maisie, recognizing if he doesn't show her affection, there may be nowhere else in Susanna's life where Maisie can find it.

            At the heart of this movie isn’t Maisie or even Maisie’s parents, but Lincoln and Margo.  These are two complex, fascinating characters.  The fact that they both move into marriages so abruptly suggests deep-seeded emotional pain or fear of abandonment.  The fact that at a crucial moment in the film they recognize a sexual attraction to one another suggests as much vulnerability as instability.  Do they really think a relationship between them could work when their only shared interest is Maisie’s well-being?  Relationships, like jobs, demand a high degree of tunnel vision for them to work.  Throughout the film, Maisie becomes caught at the outside of this tunnel – first with her parents, and then, perhaps inevitably, with Lincoln and Margo.

            What Maisie Knew was directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel, whose previous films (The Deep End, Bee Season, Uncertainty) dealt with families in crisis.  This is a film with a more leisurely pace, episodic at times, reminding us that for young children, sometimes life’s most significant moments occur during ordinary days.  What I admire the film is how it manages to sidestep the sentimentality of the custody battle and instead become a mature character study about adults with good intentions who fall victim to their own personal shortcomings.  Just like Dustin Hoffman knew in Kramer vs. Kramer, kids bring out the best and worst in their parents.  Then again, audiences may not have that degree of sympathy for four adult characters so self-absorbed that a six-year-old girl spends a night with a complete stranger because they each assume someone else is looking after her.  But in a way, that’s what I like about the film: Like Maisie, we are forced to choose our role models from only among the imperfect adults we know.

   

Rating: 3.5 stars