Customer Reviews

Quarrel [VHS]

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is 1948. World War II has been over for three years and distinquished author and poet,Chaim has come to Montreal for a reading. His blissful sleep is broken by the harsh ring of a phone. On the other end, his one night stand, requests that he return her necklace. How annoying when you want to sleep but he acquieces to her request to meet her in the park but first he must have breakfast.

What a beautiful day and such a bountiful breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast. Just as he begins to dig in he realizes that it is Rosh Hashana. A man outside of the restaurant stares at him. Chaim's appetite goes away and before long he reluctantly finds himself in a minyan. After prayers he escapes to the park where he encounters him.

His enemy, his friend has come to life before him. The two had thought that the other had perished in the Holocaust as had their families. They look at each other, keep silence and then a spew of emotion unleashes as the two clash about the meaning of life and God after that experience.

The Quarrel takes up the age old question of God's justice or lack there of that plaqued Job and other humans since the dawn of time. Hersh stands firmly in his fundamentalist faith. Chaim insists on the goodness of humanity. Both men have become extremists as they attempt to give some meaning to their lives after being in the Holocaust. Hidden within their psyches are betrayals, hypocrisy and plain stubbornness that the two were unable or unwilling to share. This brief moment in the park is an opportunity for reconciliation, if they choose to do so.

A brilliant film such as this should be shown in every class room and home as we struggle with the notion of forgiveness, human failure, and religious faith. All of these questions emerge from the encounter of these two men who deep inside are filled with loneliness and grief. Rosh Hashana leaves open for them a new beggining in faith as it will for you.

I am the son of Holocaust survivors and remember seeing this movie in the theater with my father. Later, I returned see it with an Armenian businessman friend of mine, a man who had lived in Africa and Europe. All three of us thought it was great. I could not remember the title and have been wanting to buy it for the last 2 years, until I found the name today at a Jewish film website and ordered it on Amazon about 15 minutes ago.

This movie was as if someone took all the conflicting arguments in my head and soul, ripped them out, and put them on the Big Screen for all the world to see.

Yes, as one reviewer said, it is a bit overblown, pedantic, but..the people portrayed were small town/city Europeans living in a sheltered Yeshiva (Jewish religious school) world until the wider world shocked their existance and social order with great force in 1939.

I don't think the characters could have been portrayed much more accurately. False beards ? Maybe, but not false emotions.

The Quarrel, taking place in the late 40's, is the story of two Jewish Holocaust survivors who have both lost their entire family during it. For one of them, the experience bolstered his faith in God until it was all that he had, while in the other it killed whatever faith in God he had had left. The second man, Chaim, is now a writer who has come to Montreal to publicize his book, when he bumps into the other, Hersh, who he believed dead in the Holocaust. Hersh is now the head of the local Jewish community and Yeshiva. This film is about an afternoon spent together between them and their quarrel over their friendship and faith.

I believe that this movie was originally either a short story or a play, and it was probably better as such, because it doesn't make the big screen too well. It is too slowly paced and is basically one big discussion with little background music (though what's there is quite good).

However, its points are still remarkably relevant to Jews in todays world over fifty years later. We watched this in my Bible class, and it left our teacher crying. I definitely recommend this film to everyone, but especially those who lost family or faith in the Holocaust and to Jews wondering about their faith.

Even if you only watch it once, go out and rent or buy The Quarrel

My family (wife and 15yr. old girl) were glued from start to finish. The story weaves it's path over and under many threads of life using the motif of secular/orthodox tension such as guilt/forgiveness, reason (as basis for good)/or God and His Words, youthful zeal/aged wisdom (remember the brash orthodox student?), self rigteousness/self sufficiency etc. A nice balance of gripping emotion as well as deep profoundness of thought.
Even though I was not a holocaust survivor I could relate to some degree with this movie as my best friend growing up was Jewish. He went on as good Jewish boys do and became a Geriatric Physician albeit liberal; and I an all out hedonistic pagan eventually distanced myself from him during the turbulent '60's. Since then I learned my bio father was German also I had become a Christian and quite devout. So I couldn't help but picture the two of us in a similar reunion as I was watching The Quarrel.

"The Quarrel" is one of the most thought-provoking and entertaining films I've experienced. While the setting is simple, the dialogue is outstanding. For those who believe in God and those who don't, it is certainly a challenging dialogue for either viewpoint. I am a Christian and saw it with my Jewish friend and we were both stunned and thrilled with the whole film. I have so insufficiently recovered from the experience that I searched for the film here at Amazon, 8 years after seeing it in the theater. I feel it would be an excellent film for a philosophy or religious studies course. Get it, watch it, and share it with your friends.

I watched this movie and immediately fell in love with it. It's a true piece of art, and it addresses the tension between the secular and the orthodox worlds with incredibly beautiful feelings and poetry. A lovely masterpiece that cannot be missed by anyone who is interested in this theme, regardless of what your personal belief and/or affiliation are. I strongly recommend that you watch it if that's a theme that is genuinely interesting to you.

I saw this movie first on TV nearly ten years ago, and even then I recall how gripping this was. While I would not call myself a movie critic or even one qualified to explicate or evaluate stories, I have to admit that I was moved to tears each time I have viewed this. If a story can do that it must merit some recognition--even from me.

The movie is simplicity itself: set in 1948 in Quebec, this movie focused on story almost exclusively. There are no special effects, except as it's found in the story itself. This fact alone warrants consideration; a good story today is in short supply! Moreover, the exploration of such a painful issue as the fallout from the Holocaust is beyond my words to describe. Simply stated, it's a must see for anyone interested in Jewish history.

Beyond that, it's a moving dialogue between two people that invaded my heart and vicariously brought me alongside in an over-powering sense of emotion. Seldom can a movie evoke such a powerful response in me--I can honestly say this is the most emotional movie I've ever seen. My sympathies towards anyone who suffered through that has greatly increased.

This movie in DVD was difficult to find (it took me several months). If you do locate it, do yourself a favor and snap it up right away! You will not regret it.

I watched this on VHS a few nights ago for a second time. On this occassion I seem to have been on the correct frequency because the film jolted me deeply. In fact I would volunteer that the quarrel of these two men is one that I profoundly identify with. I bring to this review the wonderfully challenging quote from the German philosopher, F. Nietzsche "Belief means not wanting to know what is true". One has to toss that around in the mind for a few minutes until the embers start to glow and we start to feel a rumbling of a predictable emotional reaction. For those who are the product of a belief system, which in my case was the Judaic, though equally valid for all major religious systems, the notion that belief must be put aside in order to allow the truth to make itself visible....is anametha insofar as the truth was "believed" by followers to have been revealed by a higher power, usually through a messenger like a prophet. So, if that was the case then it was not belief that was an impediment, but a willingness to believe what was revealed. But, is that the case? Can we be so sure that the "truth", whatever this might be, can ONLY be revealed by divine messages? Or, maybe Nietzsche had it correct, and that we must find the truth on our own, without recourse to falling back on a belief that our ancestors were properly instructed in what truth was?

Returning to the film, the premise is that two long seperated Jewish students from a small town in Eastern Europe, who had both thought each other the victims of the holocaust, bump into each other in Montreal long after the war. The one who had left the Yeshiva to follow Nietzsche's path only had his distaste for faith deepened, the other friend who was devout remained so. Both lost all of their families in the most tragic of ways and both were burnt by the heart break that this forced them to live through. However, the polarities of their attitudes and choices only made them appear further apart. But, this is just the premise of the drama and as we listen to them quarrel we see that the fringes of their relationship are filled with many grey areas that they both acknowledge. They are also incapable and unwilling to allow that mutually shared grey area to muddy their own convictions with any extra ambiguities. They both argue with equal heartfelt and intelligent passion that their own views are valid and correct.

There are some special moments in this drama that bring the two long lost friends to a realization that there will always be places within themselves where their common love and respect for each other, founded in their youth, will always live on. These areas are highlighted when the men begin to reveal some of their own secrets about what they experienced, choices made that now fill them with regret and pain. Both men recognize how very much alike they are at simple levels, how their wounds bleed the same color blood, how much they toil to find truth in their own ways.

Who then argues for the correct path to enlightenment? They both do and with equal conviction. Their argument is everyone's struggle to come to balance the pains of the spirit, the dissapointments and destructions imposed on our hearts and minds. It is well enough known that many people who began their lives before WW2 and survived concentration camps and ghettos lost all of their faith at wars close. It is also true that some who lived through the death camps, losing their families, often destroyed before their eyes, also came through with an even deeper belief in their creator and their place in the world. How do people manage to bring that sort of order to a life that survived such degradation and darkness? The drama points at that question and the turmoil of the quarrel offers just a few ideas to consider. Faith, it is said, is a personal matter between a person and their divine figure. There is probably no more correct approach, one over the other. If free will is believed to exist, then we can choose our own methods in which we seek our answers, in which we try to find what the truths are. I would offer that the far greater tragedy is that so few humans stop at some point and ask what the truth is; the greatest mass of humanity accepts what truth is by passive submission to what they have been taught. How can they examine those truths outside of beliefs grip?

The two main actors are Canada's finest and have been in several dramas together. I strongly recommend this for its provocative and well written dialogues. Superbly acted; this will linger in the mind for a long time.

Two yeshiva comrades are reunited and take up the argument that has raged since the Enlightenment and intensified since the Holocaust. Coming from the hand of Rabbi Joseph Telushkin we should expect it to be humorous, realistic, and serious and "The Quarrel" is all of these. These aspects grow considerably at film's end - love the Amish thing from Hersh and Chaim's disclosure of the last time he prayed. The closing lines about Yoseph haTzaddik being alone in Egypt until his brothers came is a huge boost to Ahavas Yisrael.
The film puts us in the proper frame for Rosh Hashana, which begins tonight. My teacher, Rabbi Avrohom Sternberg, showed "The Quarrel" on Motzei Shabbas right before the first Selichos service. The Selichos combined with the movie make me venture - G-d should relate to us as Hersh and Chaim came to relate to another; accepting us in our sinfulness while we work on betting things (starting with ourselves) through man/G-d relations (Hersh's approach) and man/man relations (Chaim's derech). Both are directed at uplifting man since G-d needs nothing from us.
But G-d is ultimately necessary because, as Chaim learns, all actions are morally equivalent without G-d's judgment as to which are good and which are bad (reason is limited and rationalism is an ethical quicksand like no other; take it from a sufferer like me). In the Heavenly court as well as in the court of public opinion, might (G-d's) makes right.

The Quarrel is a superb, and unfortunately little-known movie about two jewish men and their relationship shortly after the Holocaust. It is thought-provoking, brilliant, and deeply moving. An extraordinary experience.