Customer Reviews

Mendy

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This work is about new time and new exodus of youth leaving Orthodoxy-in this case, of the Jewish origin.

Mendy, a Chassidic teen, was on large for his sexual explorations and sheltered by Yankel having made his way from 62nd Str. D/N Station in Brooklyn, N.Y.C., into a secular world years earlier.

Viewers might agree or not about all intense shown, of which international drug trafficking is a part of, but what is utterly clear-no visual traditional attributes-no job wherever, is hardly to quarrel with, by the most of those having done this way even centuries ago.

That is, probably, a reason for all the jobs depicted story's Jewish secular characters doing.

English subtitles provide context much diplomatically than original Yiddish while I could place this low-budget movie on my shelf anyway.

Music is very kosher, the last song accompanying cast list, definitely.

Bianca is wise and beautiful, and actor plays Mendy simply brilliantly.

Enjoy!

What's the point of this movie? That you are a Jew if your mother was born into the Tribe even if you reject everything that Judaism stands for? Isn't there some level of moral and ethical behavior that is required even if it is not the extreme world of Chassidism. Don't Jews have to belong to a Jewish community and celebrate at least some of the basic rituals? I won't spoil the end of this film for potential viewers, but to me it was highly unsatisfactory. Nonetheless, "Mendy" does raise the very timely question of "Who is a Jew?" For me, it is not Mendy.

Firstly, I thought that the depth of this film lay primarily in the portrait of its three central characters. It does not have a particularly compelling narrative, but then my spouse likes to point out that I am attracted to films that lack a clear narrative. It is beautifully acted.

I should add here - and this point is really why I bothered to write this - that the film is not terribly accessible to an audience that is not acquainted with Chassidic culture (or at least Orthodox Jewish culture). Unlike in cheesy movies like "A Price Above Rubies", in Mendy Chassidic culture is neither spoon-fed to the viewer, nor is it avoided. It simply textures most of the film, which is exactly how it functions in real life. (A brief aside: I am an Orthodox Jew, very familiar with the culture being portrayed on screen, and I have never seen it more convincingly portrayed. Neither in English language or in Israeli cinema. The actors' command of Yiddish (in Hungarian dialect) is fantastic, their body language perfect... I was convinced that they are former Chassidim, and shocked and amazed to discover that they are not.)

Also, in response to some comments about gratuitous swearing and hedonism, this element of the film will be instantly understood by anyone who has encountered people who grow up in such a protective and insular environment and break out of it. They very often tend to extremes, and former Chassidim (particularly from Satmar, as they lack many of the social and language skills to integrate into broader society; although in Lubavitch a period of hedonism is almost a rite of passage) sometimes fall into such lifestyles. So in short, I do not believe it is gratuitous at all - it is simply realistic.

I would like to add that I do not think that my above observations should mean that the film can not be appreciated by non-Jewish or by secular-Jewish viewers. It simply has to be seen as a human drama set in and around what is really an immigrant culture, a culture very foreign to most people. But the characters are compelling, the drama is engaging, it is a beautifully composed film. I enjoyed it immensely, and I hope you do too.

What I was expecting - Chessid leaves community to explore outside world, Chessid discovers that life anywhere without G-d is empty, Chessid returns or at least continues in observance with new found appreciation. What Mendy is - a poor quality film (cinematography and acting), about two former Chessidim who get kicked out of the community and find a greater appreciation with the outside life of promiscuous sex and illegal drug trade. This movie was filled with useless profanity and nudity. I was sorley disappointed. Anyone want a free copy of Mendy???