Since the release of Rushmore 26 years ago, Jason Schwartzman has specialized in playing morose, peculiar characters with hidden feelings. You can see it in Asteroid City , his most recent collaboration with Wes Anderson , and even his turn as the more boyish than regal Louis XVI in Marie Antoinette . His career has been building toward a film like Between the Temples , an unconventional comedy where he plays a widowed cantor in a New York synagogue, as his precocious teenager ennui has matured into full-on middle-aged malaise.
Directed and cowritten by Nathan Silver —a stalwart of the indie scene with his first potential hit—this is a film about behavior, not religion, and how Jewish people reconcile their traditions with modernity. The premise could be fodder for an easy formula, but a few filmmaking decisions elevate the material so the characters and situations feel utterly alive. When we meet Ben (Schwartzman), he’s too shy, or traumatized, to sing at regular shabbat services.
But instead of letting Rabbi Bruce ( Robert Smigel ) cover for him, Ben makes a scene by running out of the synagogue. Adrift and alone, Ben finds himself in a bar where his guardian angel of sorts, fellow patron Carla ( Carol Kane ), takes pity on him after he loses a fight with a stranger. As the two talk, Ben learns two surprising things about Carla: She was his music teacher many years ago, and she wants to be his bat mitzvah student.
They forge an unlikely teacher/student pair, with Ben leading her through her Torah portion, while she charms him with details and stories from her past. Meanwhile Ben’s mother, Meira ( Caroline Aaron ), is on a mission to see him married. She sets him up on a series of disastrous dates, until things go slightly better with Rabbi Bruce’s daughter, Gabby ( Madeline Weinstein )—at least until these plots converge on a tense Rosh Hashanah dinner.
Along with co-screenwriter C . Mason Wells , Silver takes a wry approach to the ways in which Jewish life can liberate or trap its adherents. Sometimes the traps are small, like when Ben and Carla find themselves in a restaurant and Ben accidentally breaks kosher rules by eating a cheeseburger.
Sometimes they’re bigger, like when Ben feels suffocated by a community that only grows smaller after Gabby comes into the fold. Unapologetic and strange, Kane is pitch-perfect as Carla, the only character who liberates herself by choosing which customs she wishes to follow. But Between the Temples is not merely a critique of religion or culture; instead it empathizes with people who must reconcile their identity with their desires.
This is never clearer than the “date” scenes with Ben and Gabby: two lonely adults who are still effectively chaperoned by their nearby elders. The two take sanctuary in a cemetery, which leads to a seduction scene that’s a highlight of the film. It begins as something transgressive and strange, only to become tender and sharply observed.
The film’s look and editing deepen its astute sense of timing and observation. Between the Temples was shot on 16mm film by cinematographer Sean Price Williams , which gives each scene a glow and texture that most comedies never bother to explore. Although Silver sets this film in the present day, the shots have a timeless quality, an impression that people like Ben have struggled with love and loss over centuries.
Some scenes are also quite beautiful, like when a desperate Ben wanders into a Catholic church to talk shop with a priest. By avoiding the sheen of digital photography, the film finds a wordless way to make us believe these splotchy, pale characters who live modestly are always authentic. Cinematography notwithstanding, the film’s real secret weapon, the thing that elevates it beyond another quirky comedy, is editor John Magary .
In 2014, Magary wrote and directed The Mend , an offbeat comedy that unfolds with a type of naturalism that veers toward cinematic anarchy. That same sensibility is also in Between the Temples —scenes never cut in a way you would expect. Even a simple dialogue scene follows a unique rhythm, and this steadfast avoidance of typical patterns leaves the audience with no choice but to be on guard and more engaged—not unlike how Ben stumbles through one strained social situation after another.
Unconventional editing also means the film eschews normal comic timing, which further blurs the line between comedy and cringe. Between the Temples had its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in January, since then it has undergone significant revisions. Silver has shaved 20 minutes off the film, mostly around the ending, and changed the focal point of Ben’s character arc.
This sharper, tighter edit is less about Ben’s return to the synagogue, and more about him finding a deeper purpose outside a role that stifles him. Silver and his collaborators nonetheless preserve some ambiguity in the relationship between Ben and Carla, which starts professional and platonic, then veers toward something else. Everyone who sees this film may have a different idea about their future, but there’s no denying that the only way through tradition is to embrace the ones that work, then jettison the ones that don’t.
Between the Temples opens in area theaters on Aug. 23 ..
