Between the Temples

Grade: A

I can usually tell if a film will wind up being a truly special one within its first few minutes. This wasn’t the case with Between the Temples. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure what to make of it, or where it was going – but when it escalated and bloomed into brilliance, it retroactively made the previous passages better. This might be the most interesting movie of the year, and it inspired many facial reactions from me. If you had set up a camera to record me as I watched, I bet it would look like I was doing some kind of “face expression” warmup exercise.

The plot involves Ben, who has been a cantor at his synagogue in upstate New York for most of his adult life. Since the death of his novelist wife about a year ago, he has been living with his mother (Caroline Aaron) and her partner (Dolly De Leon from Ghostlight and Triangle of Sadness). He has lost his singing voice, and goes blank at the pulpit. He walks out, and lays down in the middle of the street, begging an oncoming semi truck to “Keep going. Keep going, please!” The driver gives him a ride instead. When he gets dropped off, there’s a hospital in the shot. I figured he was sent there to be taken care of for suicidal thoughts, but then the camera pans over to the bar across the street, where Ben goes for a drink. It’s one of numerous moments of sneaky humor. Another favorite is when a woman tells Ben to “unbuckle your belt,” and – being in a car – he undoes his seatbelt. It took me a while to get the clever double meaning of the movie’s title. It’s about Judaism, and the organ that resides in your head, between your temples.

In the bar, Ben ends up sharing a drink with an older woman who turns out to be a former teacher of his. She is Carla, played infectiously by the great Carol Kane, from The Princess Bride and Scrooged. She has also lost her spouse, so they have that bond. She never had a bat mitzvah, and she wants one, with Ben as her instructor. They become good friends in this unconventional role-reversal. There’s a great scene where she tells him about what happened to her on her 13th birthday. Afraid that he stopped listening, she asks “what did I just say?” Most people would just say the main idea in one sentence. Not Ben. He repeats every last bit of her whole story with 95% accuracy.

This is the second year in a row where Jason Schwartzman has played a recent widower, after 2023’s Asteroid City. His character in Between the Temples shares a first name with Dustin Hoffman’s in The Graduate – and I saw a couple of possible callbacks. There’s a scene where he pounds on a locked door, calling out the name of his beloved, and I could almost hear the staccato Paul Simon guitar chords while Schwartzman is frantically running to catch up to her. It has been lovely to see him grow from his breakout role in 1998’s Rushmore. Madeline Weinstein is one to watch as Gabby, Rabbi Bruce’s daughter – newly single, back in town, and you guessed it…everybody in Ben’s orbit wants them to end up together. Especially Bruce. He knows Ben and Gabby have been seeing a little bit of each other, and when he tells Ben “you left your yamaka in my car the other day,” he has such a delighted smile. The shooting style is unique, with the camera frequently zooming in so close to the actors’ faces that I thought I could sometimes make out the reflection of the crew, lights, and other equipment in their eyes.

There is a climactic scene around a dinner table that is just mesmerizing. There are confessions, proclamations, discoveries, jokes, serious bits, and every imaginable form of unpacking. It’s a masterful testament to the power of an ensemble, and filmmaking. After Ben professes a significant piece of information, it’s supremely intriguing – and quite telling – how the camera takes a while to return to one particular person, in the midst of volleying through extreme closeups of everybody else at the table. He makes a choice that may make many viewers happy. It’s great that he knows what he wants, but I felt a pang of deflation, because it’s not what I would have chosen, for reasons of my own. My personal investment was at that Shabbat dinner, too.

Between the Temples is one of the year’s best films. There isn’t a resolution to a couple subplots, nor is everything tied up by the end, but that didn’t matter to me. Whatever ends up happening is for them to know – not necessarily us. The characters are so real and full of life that they have outgrown the movie by the time it’s over, and they still have more living, learning, and evolving to do. It’s their world. We were just privy to a piece of it for 111 minutes.

Grade: A