Minyan | Little White Lies

Minyan

07 Jan 2022 / Released: 07 Jan 2022

A man standing shirtless in a kitchen, cooking on a stove.
A man standing shirtless in a kitchen, cooking on a stove.
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Anticipation.

Eric Steel has previously directed two great documentaries, The Bridge and Kiss the Water.

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Enjoyment.

With far too many parallel plot points, Minyan never fully leans into its existential quandaries.

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In Retrospect.

An easily forgettable, painful waste of potential.

Eric Steele ven­tures into nar­ra­tive film­mak­ing with a lack­lus­tre adap­ta­tion of David Bez­mozgis’ queer com­ing-of-age story.

Judaism states that, in order to insti­tute a syn­a­gogue, ten adults must come togeth­er to form a minyan – a tra­di­tion­al prayer cir­cle. In more ortho­dox strains, these adults need to be male and old­er than 13.

Though sim­ple by def­i­n­i­tion, the prin­ci­ple is far from it in prac­tice, par­tic­u­lar­ly in 1980s Brook­lyn where the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty con­sist­ed of immi­grants still deal­ing with the post­war trau­mas that kept once faith­ful fol­low­ers from return­ing to the teach­ings of the Torah.

Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly direct­ed two doc­u­men­taries, 2006’s The Bridge and 2013’s Kiss the Water, Minyan marks Eric Steel’s first ven­ture into nar­ra­tive film­mak­ing. In this queer com­ing-of-age dra­ma adapt­ed from David Bez­mozgis’ epony­mous short sto­ry, 17-year-old David (Samuel H Levine) is strand­ed some­where between two insu­lar iden­ti­ties as a Russ­ian Jew and a young gay man com­ing to terms with his sex­u­al­i­ty at the height of the AIDS crisis.

Nei­ther ful­ly here nor there, the teenag­er spends his days between par­al­lel yet con­trast­ing spots. In the ear­ly hours, he con­ducts menial tasks in the neigh­bour­ing apart­ment shared by two elder­ly Jew­ish men whose rela­tion­ship floats on a heavy cloud of unspo­ken speculation.

As the hours draw in, David heads to a local gay bar, ten­ta­tive­ly test­ing the waters as what was once a mea­gre pool of inte­ri­or pas­sion slow­ly expands into a wide, expan­sive ocean.

A group of people, some seated at a table and others standing, in what appears to be an office or classroom setting. The image has a sombre, serious tone.

Steel’s film is drained: of colour; of depth; of emo­tion­al reach. Every­thing is a tad sur­gi­cal, a cal­cu­lat­ed nar­ra­tive that attempts to cre­ate an exis­ten­tial rumi­na­tion on life and yet feels itself life­less. Washed up apart­ments and freez­ing beach­es blend under an over­pow­er­ing score rem­i­nis­cent of 90s erot­ic thrillers – the loud sax­o­phone des­per­ate­ly seek­ing to mask the all-per­vad­ing blandness.

For a film built on the impor­tance of what is left unsaid, Minyan far too often relies on over­ex­po­sure. Steel goes from the harsh­ness of reli­gious school to adul­ter­ers caught red hand­ed to tense funer­als with all the sub­tle­ty of an ele­phant on a unicycle.

When the direc­tor occa­sion­al­ly allows for the char­ac­ters to digest the immen­si­ty of their strug­gles, search­ing for com­fort­ing cama­raderie in the few who relate to the iso­lat­ing speci­fici­ty of their predica­ment, the film comes to life.

This is even truer of the explo­ration of the metaphor built around the minyan, one beau­ti­ful­ly enveloped in a pri­mal need for com­pan­ion­ship – be it either through manda­to­ry tra­di­tions or nat­ur­al yearnings.

Thieves, adul­ter­ers, homo­sex­u­als… I take them all. With­out them, we would nev­er have our minyan”, says the rab­bi when David, at last, asks the unques­tion­able ques­tions. The sur­vival of the com­mu­nal depends on the inte­gra­tion of the indi­vid­ual – whomev­er they may be.

It is hard not to remain hope­ful that, at some point, Minyan will reach an emo­tion­al apex of glo­ri­ous scale. Per­haps, one eager­ly tells one­self, the first and sec­ond acts are not bland – they are mere­ly slow-burn­ing. Per­haps, all loose ties will be tied in one boun­ti­ful burst of inspi­ra­tion. Per­haps. Alas, all that is left is a nag­ging hunger for what it could have been.

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