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Kadosh
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Customer Reviews
Rating:  - Kadosh
A beautifully realized and sensitive drama, Amos Gitai's controversial "Kadosh" observes a little-seen religious community where women's roles are severely restricted to child-bearing and strict obedience to their husbands. Love is both triumphant and tragic in Gitai's story, the ultimate cause of dark disruptions. Abecassis and Hattab inhabit their roles with deep feeling, making us believe in their mutual respect and reverence for tradition. Barda is also wonderful as the younger woman whose need for escape materializes when her new husband proves incapable of warmth or tenderness. Somber yet hopeful, "Kadosh" is a marvelous Israeli gem.
Rating: - Ghosts
Rivka (Yaël Abecassis), Meir (Yoram Hattab) and Malka (Meital Barda) walk through the frames of Amos Gitai's "Kadosh" as if they were ghosts: human beings without a physical presence, without a solid place on which to land their phosphorescent bodies, souls and hearts. Their haunting unhappiness with their lot in life makes them transparent. You can see their hearts slowly break as they go about the business of life.
Set in the ultra-Orthodox quarter of Jerusalem called Mea Shearim, "Kadosh" (meaning "sacred") studies two sisters, Rivka and Malka, enduring the ironhanded restrictions of their tiny, airtight society. Director Gitai fastidiously features the endless rituals of the sisters lives: everything from how tea is taken to how love is made. Then one day someone sends a note to Rivka, happily and lovingly married to Meir for ten years...but childless, stating "A woman without a child is no better than dead." And thus begins the forced and tragic separation of Rivka and Meir.
Malka is younger than Rivka and questions everything about the Orthodox way. She is also in love with a Mea Shearim deserter, Yaakov (Sami Hori) but is forced into a loveless, arranged marriage with a blustering bully: the scene of their first night of marriage is brutal and frankly disgusting with Malka's beautiful spirit and life force seemingly extinguished in the process.
"Kadosh" is very still, very quiet, claustrophobic. The only sounds evident are the sounds of hearts and souls in anguish as they are being crushed and strangled from the inside.
Rating:  - Disgusted
First off, it was a bad movie-- scenes were too long, little character introduction, development, etc.
However, I am writing to express my disgust and devastation at a very different issue: Jewish Orthodoxy. Let's just start by saying that there were many, many unimportant details of Jewish Law that the Producer/Director royally messed up. If they weren't even familiar with laws such as the opening scene of waking-up rituals, then how much more so would they be prone to fallacy in their depiction of the real underlying issues that they were trying to explore?!
All I can say is that there were way too many mistakes-- small and large-- to make any point whatsoever. If you want to see a good film about Orthodoxy-- and issues of childlessness, see Ushpizin.
Rating:  - heart breaker
I just saw this movie tonight. All I can tell you is it was a heart breaker. Rivka and Meir had a loving marriage until the Rabbi ruined it. Malka was doomed from the start. Her husband was a disgusting, frightening, sick man. The wedding night scene was a nightmare for Malka. This man was an animal. Absolutely an uncaring lover. He never heard of the word foreplay? Guess not. He was extremely rough on their first time lovemaking. (she was a virgin) It turned my stomach. The ending will definitely call for tissues. This movie was not rated... but deserves an R. Not for teens, or children.
Rating:  - What Is Truly Sacred? Let the Viewer Decide ...
Amos Gitai sheds light on how stifling and confining it may be for some women living within a Hasidic religious community. It looks nearly impossible for them to live fulfilling and joyous lives. The film has a universal message which can apply to any religion or community which influences and advises its members in personal life matters that are, in this viewer's opinion, best left to be determined for one's self. In this film, two sisters lose their self-determination and are sadly compelled to follow the norms of the community ... just because they are women ... whose roles are proscribed. They are to obey the man and be dependent rather than self-determining individuals. The community is run by men who define behavioral norms based on passages from the Torah. The rabbi interprets how these passages are to be understood in modern life. The community influences the lives of its members to a degree most viewers would find highly objectionable and down right intrusive. Whether or not this is a truthful depiction of the Hasidic way of life is unclear to this viewer but the point which is crystal clear by the director is that some areas of life are *indeed* *sacred* and are no one's business but one's own. This is a totally compelling and fascinating film in how it unravels, unbalances and destroys the lives of an apparently happily married couple who are childless after 10 years of marriage. Both Meir, the husband, and Rivka, the wife, are heart-broken after the rabbi at the Yeshiva compels Meir to consider divorcing Rivka in favor of an arranged marriage ... to produce offspring ... evidently his "sacred" duty to G-d. It is not at all clear why *only* Rivka is blamed for this flaw ...
The klezmer music at the beginning and throughout much of the film proclaims the joys of life and its meandering mournful paths as well ... the sadder tunes reveal the future anguish of Meir and Rivka as they sort out their problems within the expectations of their religion. Sadly, Malka who is Rivka's sister is not looking forward to an arranged marriage to Yosef because Malka has a boyfriend Yakov who had left the Yeshiva and religious community to pursue a secular life. He sang a haunting tune in a nightclub about how love can not be fulfilled in this world but instead he will meet his lover in the next one ... Malka obeys her parents and marries Yosef but her marriage life is a sham despite going to ritual baths to become spiritually more clean and praying as required. She follows her heart and breaks her sacred marriage bond by secretly meeting with Yakov for a tryst. The film shows Yosef to be an unthinking and insensitive man which is not entirely his fault but he is also brutish which again, he may not be able to change. He entered into a marriage for the wrong reasons - just as Malka became an obedient daughter rather than showing courage and breaking with tradition to do what is in her own best interests to follow her heart and mind ... even if it meant being banished from the Hasidic community. This film does indeed film less than joyful moments in the lives of its characters, the clothes and colors worn by the women, the older brick buildings and narrow passageways in the streets ... all are symbolic of a lifestyle which makes the insides of its members crumble and breakdown ... Who should decide in the final analysis of what is important in life? Erika Borsos (pepper flower)
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