What's "between the temples"? The answer is relatively simple: the brain. And yet, that conclusion leads to an organ so complex and weird that, no matter how many people try to map it, understand it or unlock its potential, its mysteries and power will always be an enigma. Sure, we know some of what it does and how, but so much of the organ remains uncharted territory.
In Nathan Silver's Between the Temples, the phrase becomes a complex play on words, symbolizing not only the organ that continues to be our frenemy, but also the physical space between temples-as-buildings, as well as our bodies-as-temples, vessels for spirits that never cease to confound, manipulate and inspire.
Benjamin Gottlieb (Jason Schwartzman) is a cantor at a local synagogue, where he helps kids prepping for their bar and bat mitzvahs by teaching them how to read and sing the Torah. His wife, a writer, is recently deceased, and he lives at home with his moms. When a day of moping and faux-suicide leads him to a bar, he gets drunk and has a chance encounter with Carla Kessler (Carol Kane), his old grade school music teacher. Carol has recently embraced her long-neglected Jewish heritage and wants to have the bat mitzvah she missed out on as a child due to religious politics. She decides that Ben should help her prepare, and he accepts.
This simple premise leads to all sorts of misadventures and revelations, fleshed out by a supporting cast of characters — Ben's moms, Meira and Judith (Caroline Aaron and Dolly de Leon, respectively); Carla's self-absorbed son Nat (Matthew Shear) and his family; Rabbi Bruce (Robert Smigel); and Gabby, Rabbi Bruce's daughter (Madeline Weinstein) — who are eccentric, intrusive and real. They're not there in service of Benjamin or Carla, but in spite of them. They exist as their own people, living, loving and working.
With shades of John Cassavetes, Hal Ashby and the unavoidable spectre of '70s Woody Allen, the film explores the intricacies of faith, friendship, relationships and how to persevere, even when feeling spiritually and physically tested.
Both Ben and Carla are experiencing crises of faith, but in very different ways. Their overbearing and over-involved families make it difficult for them to escape the presence of expectation and time. Benjamin is particularly lost, his neuroses manifesting as various intrusive tics. He chokes out of nowhere and can't seem to swallow, which makes him unable to sing, a worrisome position for a cantor. All of this stems from his inability to connect — or allow himself to connect — to others and Carla, predictably, opens him up. They connect quickly and deeply, their relationship serving as the film's quirky heart.
Shwartzman is clearly at home in this role and in this performance, inhabiting Ben's neurotic skin with ease and (dis)comfort. There's an unmistakable melancholy in his face and in his tortured, fractured soul, an anxiety that creeps through every motion. He is overwhelmed by both the beauties and grotesqueries of life, and Silver for the most part treats Ben with respect, even when he's at his most pathetic — which is almost always.
Kane, obviously incredible, leads as perpetually frazzled and entirely hilarious — sharp, cutting and as natural as a spring. She calls Ben out on his bullshit and their relationship is warm and loving.
The story itself gives director and co-writer Silver ample opportunity to explore the foibles of adult life, the moments of feeling lost, confused and/or abandoned (whether those feelings are founded or not). Thankfully, Silver lets himself explore these ideas in unexpected ways, experimenting with time, space and lucidity, even if the themes themselves are rooted in reality.
As Carla and Ben watch his bar mitzvah on an old VHS tape, Ben first sees his younger and older selves in the video, before his younger self joins them, physically, in the living room. They then proceed to chase each other, the film stock (and it is actual film stock!) speeds up to produce jittery movements that are uncanny and hallucinatory. Turns out the tea he drank with Carla was of the psychedelic variety, but still, we're tripping right there with him with nary a fractal in sight. It's revelatory for Benjamin, opening up a new sense of self-comfort that was missing before this experience.
Halfway through, the film seemingly changes directions when Ben meets Rabbi Bruce's daughter, Gabby. Gabby is shy and reserved, incredibly difficult to read and seemingly fragile, which makes her a very strange and somewhat unwelcome presence in his life — that is, until a moment in a parked SUV changes the way he looks at and feels about her. The moment also gives Weinstein the chance to show her dynamic range; she's great and dangerous and volatile. She also plays Ben's wife, Ruth, in flashbacks, memories and reflections, continuing the uncanny thread set up by the hallucination scenes. Put her in more films, please.
While overall the cast exhibits a natural ease to the performances, the same can't always be said of Silver's direction, or of Silver and C. Mason Wells's writing.
The filmmaking wants so badly to be firm and empathetic, yet it's also relentlessly intrusive, Silver's repeated use of closeups interrogating people without offering security or respite. The camera forces them to transmit their inner worlds, sometimes crumbling, sometimes elated, and he's not shy about bringing in something tense or discomfiting. But because Silver rarely offers a contrasting approach — one where a character openly and willingly reveals themselves — it becomes redundant to the point of minor cruelty.
The film's dragging, protracted climax — an overextended dinner scene that results in a predictable bombshell — feels particularly trite and hurried. It loses its dramatic potential, leading to a compressed moment of slapstick before the heartfelt, if foreseeable, conclusion. Silver forces the awkwardness simply for awkwardness's sake, which leads to a lack of necessary tension.
Most damningly (or maybe just annoyingly), there is an unmistakable Sundance-ness to it all, where the idiosyncrasies and fractured humanity embodying the same pitfalls that have afflicted so many films that have come out of that festival. It'll get a bit weird and unsettling; there will be a moment where things blow up; the characters will mumble and fuck and share their indiscreet intellectualism and unbutton their "shameful" feelings — and we've all seen it before. The tedious, jilted privilege, the middle age malaise, the general ennui, the tweeness — it's all there. Most egregiously, Silver and Wells squander the character of Gabby, who is used as little more than a necessary-for-the-plot red herring. She deserves better, and this choice gives the film an overall insincerity that it simply can't shake.
While faith is seemingly at the centre of Silver's film, it's really an examination of people and community, both the one we're forced into, and the one we strive to build for ourselves. Here, the temples are physical, mental and spiritual, and they're always difficult to traverse.
Unfortunately, Between the Temples isn't always successful in presenting these themes, instead determined to let its derivative story, and the relationships contained therein, play out more predictably than they should. It feels very much like a safe reboot of Harold and Maude, and that's a film we never really needed to see.