An Unorthodox Show: Review of Netflix’s mini-series Unorthodox
I will readily admit it, I am a subtitle junkie. It began innocently as an attempt to improve my Italian, but once Netflix caught the scent of my interest my suggestions were flooded with shows from every part of the world. Once you accept the subtitles into your life, a whole new world of interesting shows you never would have touched before opens up before you and there is truly no going back. Despite this, if you had told me a few months ago that I would be raving over a show primarily in Yiddish, I would have never believed you. But that is the beauty of widening your perspective - you never know what cultures and perspectives you might get to see.
The story
The four -episode Netflix mini -series is based on the 2012 autobiography Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots by Deborah Feldman but follows the life of the fictional Esty. Cutting between her time in a tight-knit community of Satmar Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and her eventual escape to liberal Berlin, the show both displays a culture usually kept behind closed doors and explores the effect of traditions born of shared trauma can have on the individual.
The Brooklyn portion of the show centres around nineteen year old Esty’s arranged marriage to Yanky, the couple’s inability to have sex and the pressure this puts on Esty, in particular as they are expected to have as many children as possible, as quickly as possible. The Berlin-based parts of the show, however, take place after Esty finds out she is pregnant on the same day Yanky asks for a divorce and, with the help of her non-Jewish piano teacher, flees to Berlin. In Berlin, she meets a group of music students and explores life free of expectation and littered with possibilities.
The show is not an exact recreation of the book, although the author was heavily involved, but rather a representation of her experience and of the community played out with fictional characters. Much like Esty, however, Feldman’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors, her father had issues with his mental health and her mother left the community and came out as gay. In the show, her mother’s escape from Brooklyn to Berlin acts as a sort of desperate inspiration. Although Esty is angry at her mother for leaving, she feels she has nowhere else to go and eventually finds out that her mother’s “abandonment” was not as simple as she had been told.
An important distinction
What is important to note about the show is that it is not a takedown of the Hasidic community. Although the show doesn’t exactly paint a rosy picture of Esty’s Brooklyn life, every member of the community is not cartoonishly vilified and the premise is not that of a prison break film. The normally unseen culture is rendered beautifully and, as far as I can tell from the making of documentary, faithfully. A perfect example of this is Esty’s wedding. While the match is arranged, Esty and Yanky are both clearly willing participants and display a kind of sweet affinity for one another, that in any other show would have been a meet-cute. The wedding itself displays the great juxtaposition of the culture, as the traditions are separated into acts of great solemnity and reverence and explosions of pure celebration and relief. Likewise, the other members of the community are not two-dimensional representations of devout followers, they are real people who you can understand and relate to, even if you don’t always agree with them. For example, while we don’t want Yanky to succeed in bringing Esty back from Berlin, we are shown the pressures he is put under and can see how guided and confused he is by the singular path that has been shown to him. The only real villain of the show is Moishe, a cousin sent with Yanky to retrieve Esty, with the promise of absolution of his sins when he himself left the community. While Yanky’s motives appear to be a mixture of concern for Esty and their unborn child and familial pressure, Moishe’s motives, and methods appear a little more seedy. While it is made clear that Moishe is more than happy to commit further sins to clear his debt, his motivations are less fleshed out than the other characters. Moishe’s presence is perhaps used to show the darker side of the community, and the lengths they will go to to keep members in, or perhaps he is simply the villain they think we need to keep us engaged with the story. Either way, his character is the weak link in an otherwise skilfully composed cast of characters.
Behind the scenes
Netflix has also granted us an extremely enlightening behind the scenes documentary of the process of making such a unique show, and its development from book the screen. It shows the work that went into making hundreds of extras into believable members of the community and the attention to detail is incredible. The decision to make the show mostly in Yiddish, a language many viewers may have never heard of, is a testament to the makers’ dedication to creating an honest and unfiltered representation of the community. The documentary details the process of finding actors who knew Yiddish and, for the majority of the cast, the actors who didn’t learnt their lines. Eli Rosen, the actor who plays the Rabbi who sends Yanky and Moishe after Esty, also acted as a cultural consultant on the production and made sure every detail was as accurately represented as possible.
Conclusion
Overall, the show is a thrilling watch and has been raved about in the reviews. Ultimately it is about the tension between the world you know, the world of family and the uncertain world beyond you that you have only been given a glimpse of, but know you must experience for yourself. Unorthodox takes a sensitive subject and a complex theme and presents all sides with clarity, honesty and heart. It is well worth a watch, whether you want a peek into a new culture or simply to join an exciting and touching adventure of self-discovery, freedom and reinvention.
