Menashe **** (2017, Menashe Lustig, Ruben Niborski, Yoel Falkowitz, Meyer Schwartz) – Movie Review

Co-writer/ director Joshua Z Weinstein’s sweet, appealing and tenderly emotional drama stars Menashe Lustig as the titular widower Menashe, who battles for custody of his son in Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community.

After his wife Leah died a year earlier, Menashe has been trying to regain custody of his nine-year-old son Rieven (Ruben Niborski) from Rieven’s strict uncle. Tradition prohibits Menashe from raising his son alone and the Rabbi (Meyer Schwartz) will not hear of it unless Menashe re-marries and he refuses as his marriage was unhappy. Menashe and Rieven get on well, but can Menashe has problems holding down his low-paid job as a grocery clerk to devote enough time to Rieven.

However, the Rabbi grants Menashe one week with Rieven before Leah’s memorial as a chance to prove himself a suitable father.

The affectionately honed and expertly crafted screenplay by Weinstein, Alex Lipschultz, and Musa Syeed is tinged with a quiet air of wisdom, bitter-sweet regret and much sadness, as well as well-placed gently done humour. It feels real and personal. It persuades, moves and informs you. It is performed entirely in Yiddish, which the director does not speak, and so needed a translator on set.

Its themes of course are faith and fatherhood but it is best seen as a heart-warming Kramer vs Kramer-style personal drama of a victory of the unorthodox over the orthodox. Lustig is very good, just right as a hapless hero, unlucky, a bit inept, but basically nice and just unlucky. It is not a particularly easy role to pull off, but Lustig is there for it.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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