Eyes Wide Open
FILM: EYES WIDE OPEN
STARRING: ZOHAR STRAUSS
REVIEW: MICHAEL ALLARD
RUNTIME: 91 MINS
RATING: ***
Eyes Wide Open is a story of forbidden desire, and as such may seem to follow a recognizable story arc. The lovebirds meet; the relationship begins; they are forced to part. But at a key point in the narrative, before friendship turns into illicit love, something unexpected occurs.
Haim Tabakman’s film takes place in an Orthodox Jewish community in Jerusalem, where Aaron, a married father of four, runs a butcher shop. After a few encounters with Ezri, a homeless nineteen year old, Aaron decides to hire the young man as an apprentice, letting him sleep in the shop’s spare room. The pair become increasingly attached, and the audience is given indications of Ezri’s sexual attachments with other men, as well as his desire for Aaron. On a dusty, neglected rooftop balcony, Ezri inevitably tries to kiss Aaron; but when Aaron rejects him, he does so not with a predictable “But our religion says it’s wrong! And what if we get found out?” Instead, he stares straight into the other man’s eyes, and defiantly tells him that he refuses to give into desire; and that by refusing, he will be closer to God.
The pair start sleeping together a few scenes later, for Aaron – in a compelling and extremely believable performance by Zohar Strauss – is full of contradictions. He is humble, a religious devotee who is rarely dogmatic, and yet this fighting attitude of self-preservation and determined spiritual elevation always lingers just underneath the surface. Word begins to spread around the neighbourhood about the unspeakable sexual acts occurring in the butcher shop, and as the pressures of the community get stronger, it’s clear that conformism will triumph. The last scene sees Aaron alone with an unanswerable mystery. By renouncing desire, has he gotten closer to God? Or has he forsaken a love that’s part of another, greater spiritual happiness?
Merav Doster’s script justifiably shows the paranoid response to gay love given by members of the religious community, as Ezri is outcast and Aaron’s shop is vandalised. Aaron’s greatest problems, though, are the ones created by his own decisions, as he must choose between his love for his family and Ezri. When we meet Aaron, he’s taking down a wet poster advertising the death of his father, and a profound loneliness then reigns over all of the film’s events. This provides an existential familiarity to the central crisis, making the film more than just a study of intolerance.
The solemnity is given the backdrop of a repetitive, ambient score which makes the film seem much longer than 91 minutes. There are far too many shots of Aaron walking slowly around the city and Ezri flirtatiously smoking, which are all the more frustrating when they follow some of the most dramatic scenes – Aaron and his wife in their bedroom, the rabbi’s study group – where the dialogue is brilliantly suggestive and the comic, ironic touches are surprisingly numerous. This uncertainty no doubt stems from the problem of speaking about a community who aren’t interested in making films about themselves for the benefit of the non-Orthodox. Rather than making great generalisations about the religious Jewish world, Eyes Wide Open works as a character study set within a part of that universe.
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