Early in “Eyes Wide Open,” Haim Tabakman’s acutely sensitive and astutely measured film set in an Orthodox neighborhood in Israel, a storm blows a man’s hat into a puddle.
This is hardly the stuff of high drama, until I realized I’ve never seen a religious Jew lose his hat, in life or in the movies. The man in this film, therefore, must either be not very experienced or not very good at maintaining the trappings of an Orthodox Jew.
And if it’s the latter, his deficiency is probably not limited to external appearances.
We gradually come to know that this young man is named Ezri (Ran Danker), that he is gay and that he is therefore most unwelcome in Orthodox circles. But we have already discerned that “Eyes Wide Open” is a film in which small clues mean a great deal.
“Eyes Wide Open,” which has screened at major international festivals, has its Bay Area premiere on Feb. 20, the opening night of the East Bay International Jewish Film Festival.
Ezri is a stranger in these parts and he is kindly granted work and shelter by a good man, a righteous man, a butcher, who is just resuming his everyday routine following his father’s passing.
Aaron (Zohar Strauss, in a mesmerizing yet unshowy performance) is neither an outcast nor a rebel. To the contrary, he is a solid if unexceptional member of his community. But in some profound yet unclear way he is alienated.
Tabakman never spells out the source of Aaron’s discontent, nor does he need to. It is sufficient for us to see that the butcher has chosen to live and participate in this society, but has not found satisfaction here.
One Friday before Shabbat, Ezri invites Aaron to take a drive into the hills outside of Jerusalem, where they stop at a quarry-like pool. Their joint immersion in this ad hoc mikvah is the key scene in the film. It seals their connection and marks the beginning of their forbidden affair, and also re-establishes water as the pre-eminent symbol. (Remember Ezri’s hat in the puddle?)
“Eyes Wide Open” also introduces a man and a woman whose illicit relationship provokes the intimidating attention of the neighborhood “modesty guards.” Her father has arranged for her marriage to another man, and the family’s reputation is paramount. What’s love got to do with it?
This subplot allows us to see that the narrow Orthodox strictures exact a price on anyone, gay or straight, who does not comply. Three men pay a threatening visit one night to the woman’s boyfriend to deliver an unambiguous message: “You can’t do what you feel like here, get it?”
Aaron, of course, is one of the three, at the same time that he’s engaged in an affair with a man.
We are privy to several scenes between the butcher and his humane, devoted and far-from-oblivious wife (and mother of four), though we must do a lot of reading between their precious few lines. We see that Rivka (Ravit Rozen) is neither a shrew nor a burden, but she’s also understandably fearful that her husband is jeopardizing the family’s security and stability in the community.
Aaron and Ezri’s moments together, tellingly, are not declarations of freedom but of their lack of freedom. Tabakman portrays their intimate sequences as devoid of joy or catharsis, a choice that feels exactly right. Some viewers will see “Eyes Wide Open” as a doomed romance, but let’s be blunt: It’s a prison movie.
It is not, however, a polemic. The filmmaker, who edited the excellent and equally probing Orthodox-themed film “My Father My Lord” (2007) has made an extraordinarily, and excruciatingly, human film.
“Eyes Wide Open” screens at 9:15 p.m. Feb. 20 at the CineArts in Pleasant Hill.