13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Honest and insightful. Also, very entertaining, March 1, 2007
This review is from: Mendy (DVD)
I watched this movie in the Manhattan theater in June of 2006.This is one great movie that you will fall in love with. Although it's my belief that some knowledge (of) and/or Jewish background is necessary in order to grasp the meaning of the movie and not to misjudge the characters and the plot. Otherwise, you'd be asking (just like Bianca in the movie did) "So, your G-d is a racist then".
I think that this is a very honest movie and raises some important issues that we don't usually want to deal with or even admit to ourselves (well, this does apply to me) they (issues) exist and affect us in one way or another.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What are the Questions? What is Soulfulness?, April 29, 2011
This review is from: Mendy (DVD)
I am sorry this movie is so poorly reviewed and is looked upon by many as a two-dimensional contrast between a frum/halachic life or descent into Yetzer Hara. Or that some see this as a denial of Yiddishkeit or are offended by the significant questions it raises. The fact is that Haredi or Hassidic sectarian Jews makes up a tiny fraction of the Jewish population, so Mendy "mainstreaming" is the state that the vast majority of Jews are now living. If you see Judaism as a Soulful religion rather than a Spiritual religion, then the question is "what is Jewish Soul?" Can you be Jewish, or connected to Jewish Soul, without being strictly halachic?
The movie contrasts two characters; Mendy and Yankel. Yankel is truly a "lost soul." He is completely involved in drug use and sexual encounters, hanging out in strip clubs and dealing X. He says "women are like lemons, you squeeze what you can and then throw them out." Mendy on the other hand sees the emptiness and pain, and may I say insanity, in Yankel, and does not accept or strive for a life ruled by soullessness and indulgence in the yetzer hara. He can also no longer live a Haredi life. So, what is he to do? What understanding does he need to come to?
Many reviews intimate that this movie rejects Yiddishkeit, that Mendy is a "bad Jew." But I think Mendy says it all when speaking of Yankel, "He cannot be a good human because he could not be a good Hassid." Who could not get the meaning when Mendy walks away from Yankel to go to the mikvah? Or be moved when Mendy is himself is spontaneously moved to lay tefillin which he is traveling with in his backpack?
Mendy's sister comes to see him in his apartment and tells him that the Rebbe of the community says that the reason Mendy is being tempted is because he has a "great soul" (It is a Hassidic belief that the "evil inclination" doesn't bother with the ordinary person). As Mendy says to his girlfriend "it take a lifetime to study Torah." That leads me to ask, why wouldn't it also take a lifetime to connect to your soul in the deepest way?
The end of the movie says "Revolution don't give answers, only sometimes they will change the questions." This movie does not preach, judge or give answers. Many Jews of my generation, after being raised to believe that Judaism is strictly a set of arbitrary, restrictive rituals and superstitions, carried out for tribal reasons, are now returning to the heart of Jewish practice. This is what this movie, to me, is trying to point to. Not a simple subject.
I apologize that this review is directed towards Jewish readers.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Hard to say..., August 27, 2009
This review is from: Mendy (DVD)
As a non-Jew I was hoping for a way to learn more about the orthodox life, but I'm not at all sure I found it in this film, interesting though it was at times. I certainly appreciated hearing Yiddish...something I had never been exposed to at all and was thankful for the subtitles.
I think some of the meaning and the questions presented were sincere and reasonably well conceived, yet the obvious effort to be edgy and raw with ugly street language, doping, sex, etc. made the film into something rather mundane. The acting was okay, direction okay, production in general okay...but overall, at least for me, it was disappointing and no better than two stars.
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