Filling in the Blanks

Culture influences how we see a film. I know this basic tenet and yet I have been deceived by my beliefs more than once into thinking a movie was saying one thing when the director actually meant the opposite. Recently, this occurred with Fill the Void (Lemale et ha'halal), the Israeli movie by first time director Rama Burshtein. I won’t define my culture (it is, like all cultures, too complex to even try), but I will say that I embrace values of equality, especially among sexes, as I think has been made pretty evident in many of my posts. I therefore saw Fill the Void as a movie that denounced arranged marriages. In Fill the Void those marriages are imposed upon women by a closed religious group, the ultra-Orthodox Hasidic community in modern day Tel Aviv.

The movie tells the story of Shira, a devout 18-year-old girl who is pressured to marry Yochay, the husband of her late sister.  Shira and the other non-married women in the movie (those that can still expose their hair), are basically engrossed in finding a spouse. Shira’s hope is to marry someone her age that has never been married. The movie makes it clear that women who don’t marry are pitied by the community.  Shira’s mother and the unmarried aunt present the conflict: will Shira be allowed an iota of choice in the matter or will she follow the mother’s wishes and, ultimately, those of religious law, and the absolute word of the rabbi? In my perception, when Shira finally gives in to the community, it is with anxiety and sorrow.

Fill the Void

This is not, it seems, what Rama Burshtein, who also wrote the screen play, wanted to show. In interviews I have read since, this director indicates she was actually praising arranged marriages, something she is looking forward to do for her own children. While she does admit that she did show the complexity of Shira’s feelings about marrying her sister’s husband, ultimately she was just showing us the world she is a part of and the passion that can arise even within the boundaries of strict religious tradition.

I find this fascinating. It also reminds me of how culture is such a complex and difficult thing when we address the issue of women’s equality. When confronted with traditional cultures –religious or not- many within and without the culture feel that in order for it to survive, it must retain very ancient mores, upholding, among other things, practices that diminish and discriminate against half the members of the culture: the women.  And many times, like with Ms. Burshtein, it is the women themselves that are the strongest proponents of maintaining the traditions that bind them.

For presenting this complexity and for many other reasons I recommend the movie. It is an amazing first movie for any director. It is an authentic portrait of this Orthodox Hasidic community. Ms. Burshtein’s camera is intimate, delicate in capturing feelings and expressions.  And, yes, it seems that Shira was expressing sorrow and anxiety, just for different reasons than those that I believed. The acting is subtle yet powerful.  This is, most certainly, a film worth seeing.

There are many movies that do denounce the practice of arranged or forced marriages (however one wishes to call them), many from different cultures other than the western American one, where we view these types of marriages as a thing of the past. Movies like Zhang Yimou’s Raise the Red Lantern (China), about the fourth wife of an elderly landlord, a college student who is married off by her stepmother; a woman who had hoped to broaden her horizons thanks to her education, but is now trapped behind her luxurious surroundings, reduced to a life of being at the beck and call of her husband.

Raise the Red Lantern

There is Deepa Metah’s Water (India) which tells the story of Chuyia, a child forced into marriage that becomes a widow. By tradition, she is left at an impoverished widows' ashram, where she meets a follower of Gandhi, who falls in love with her. Jane Campion presented the issue in The Piano (New Zealand), about a mute woman who arrives with her daughter for an arranged marriage to a wealthy landowner.  I am just mentioning a few. There are many others.

Water



Fill the Void is a work of art and, like all art, once it leaves the author’s hands it is exposed to interpretations and different readings. Rama Burshtein has opened a window onto a culture so very different from many and so her movie will be subject to many elucidations.  Interestingly, she mentions in one of her interviews that her rabbi has never seen a film in his life and will most likely not see hers; in fact, most of her community members won’t see her movie in theatres.  This is, in a way, a shame.  It would be interesting to know what the women members of her community would see when looking upon this film that shows and says so much about them.

 

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