Movie review: ‘Eyes Wide Open’

In “Eyes Wide Open,” the quietly effective new Israeli film, the love that dare not speak its name is too terrified to even whisper.

That’s because the two men who are powerfully attracted to each other are members of Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, a world where homosexuality is so rigidly taboo that, as director Haim Tabakman has said, it simply does not exist: “It’s just an evil urge. It cannot be part of a human being’s essence.”

While there is a certain familiarity to lovers battling against society’s hostility and repression, “Eyes Wide Open” makes the situation seem fresh and involving through Tabakman’s low-key but confident directing style, convincing acting and, perhaps most surprising, an accurate and respectful treatment of the community that is making these men’s lives so unendurable.

Tabakman, a filmmaker whose credits include editing the equally restrained “My Father, My Lord,” has chosen his actors exceptionally well. Zohar Strauss as the older of the two men has a haunted look from the film’s opening frame; Tinkerbell (winner of an Israeli Academy Award for “Time of Favor”) is expert as Rivka, his wife and the mother of his four children; and actor-singer Ran Danker smolders as Ezri, the younger man who comes into their lives.

Strauss plays Aaron, a butcher introduced in Merav Doster’s nuanced script reopening the family business, which had been closed since his father’s death. Ezri, classically new in town, comes into the shop during a rainstorm and asks to use the phone.

Though nothing is said or even hinted at, the merest beginning of an attraction can be felt stirring between the men. Aaron, who has posted a Help Wanted sign, ends up hiring Ezri as his apprentice, bringing him home to meet his wife and children and letting him live in a storeroom above the butcher shop.

The ultra-Orthodox world both men live in is rendered in convincing detail, from the wide-brimmed black felt hats the men wear to the atmosphere inside the small shul to the women’s wigs and the ritual mezuzas everyone kisses.

Because this world is so intensely male, with women rarely involved outside the domestic sphere, Aaron and Ezri spend a lot of time together. They go to religious services and also to study sessions, where Rabbi Vaisben (an effective Tzahi Grad) leads discussions that turn out to be pertinent and provocative.

The rabbi quotes a passage that insists “he who dwells in abstinence is a sinner” because God doesn’t want man to suffer. Aaron, however, disagrees, saying that being religious means loving the hardship of sacrifice.

In a private moment, the rabbi tells Aaron about Ezri’s past, revealing that he was thrown out of a yeshiva in another city. The reason, the rabbi says enigmatically, was “doing too many good deeds,” but while Aaron understands he insists he will not send the young man away, adding “I will help him get closer to God.”

And, in fact, Aaron at first forcefully resists Ezri when the younger man makes a physical move. Restrain yourself, he says, adding passionately, “We have an opportunity to overcome. It’s a challenge we can meet.”

But the intense physical attraction both men feel is too strong for Aaron to pull away for long. He begins this clandestine relationship, as the title says, with eyes wide open, but still he is not prepared, as no one could be, for what takes place when the inevitable happens and other members of this small, tight-knit community suspect what is going on.

“Eyes Wide Open” obviously has no sympathy for the self-appointed guardians of morality who interfere in Aaron’s life, even going so far as pasting broadsheets announcing the presence of “a sinner in our neighborhood” and making explicit threats to every aspect of his existence.

Yet the film understands completely why Aaron is attracted to the ultra-Orthodox world with its emphasis on study, belief and family, understands why his having to choose between a man and a way of life he loves equally is so tormenting. We see clearly what this world has given Aaron, a gift that makes his story more tragic than it would otherwise be.

kenneth.turan@latimes.com