Between the Temples [Review]
Jewish screwball comedy Between the Temples, starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane, is full of funny and awkward moments.
Between the Temples. Credit: Sony Pictures Classics
Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples is a hilarious and sad portrait of a man adrift in loss. The film premiered at Sundance 2024 and was picked up for distribution by Sony Pictures Classics.
Ben Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) is a cantor who can no longer sing. His wife, Ruth, died suddenly in an accident, leaving him in a tailspin. He’s tired of being pushed by his overbearing mother (Caroline Aaron), stepmother (Dolly de Leon), and his well-meaning boss, Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel). At a point where he’s lost his faith and will to live, a chance meeting with Carla (Carol Kane), his childhood music teacher, puts Ben on an unexpected path when she confesses wanting the bat mitzvah she never got when she was 12 and insists on becoming his adult student.
Between the Temples. Credit: Sony Pictures Classics
Between the Temples is an actors’ film. Director Nathan Silver approached it without a traditional script, often delivering dialogue to the actors only a day or two before shooting a scene. Silver encouraged his actors to improvise and trusted them to help shape the characters, and a lot of the spontaneous energy of that process made it to the screen.
Jason Schwartzman is excellent as a man perpetually on the brink of self-destruction who never stopped mourning his wife. He and veteran actress Carol Kane are funny onscreen and great scene partners. Madeline Weinstein is great as Gabby, Rabbi Bruce’s daughter, a “mess” struggling to stave off her own breakdown. She exudes uneasiness on screen as she’s unsubtly pushed as a match for Ben by his stepmother, played by Triangle of Sadness breakout Dolly de Leon. I also loved Robert Smigel, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog himself, playing Rabbi Bruce.
Between the Temples. Credit: Sony Pictures Classics
Sean Price Willams’ (Good Time) cinematography is a big part of what gives the film its character. His fluid, naturalistic camera work heightens the painfulness of the film’s many awkward moments, especially with how heavily the movie favors close-ups. The camera helps the tension boil over in one of the film’s final scenes, a climactic dinner, making it almost difficult to watch. Notably, Between the Temples was shot on film, giving it a certain softness, especially with how it was lit.
The movie feels authentic in its American Jewish identity, and for me, it is the film most notable for that feeling since the Coen brothers’ excellent A Serious Man. It derives a lot of its humor from that experience and gets some great laughs out of it. From a scene where Smigel’s Rabbi Bruce is putting golf balls into an “unkosher” shofar, to a particularly hilarious scene involving JDate, there’s a lot of funny in there.
Between the Temples is a funny, earnest, sad film. I’m glad it will get a theatrical release.
Between the Temples opens in theaters August 23, 2024.
