FAITH HEALING

"Between the Temples."

- RICHARD BRODY

Most of the founding fathers of the Hollywood studios were Jewish, but very few of the movies they produced depicted Jewish American life. Since then, the most significant films that have done so have been independent productions, whether from decades ago (“The Plot Against Harry,” “Hester Street”) or more recently (“A Serious Man,” “Armageddon Time”). Now there’s a new entry in the field, “Between the Temples,” whose sardonically punning title, though suggesting something of the movie’s bitter comedy, barely hints at its bracing extremes of melancholy, derision, and tenderness. The film is the first high-profile project by Nathan Silver, who has been assiduously at work for the past fifteen years directing distinctive indie films on stressfully tiny budgets, often featuring his mother, Cindy Silver, a nonprofessional actress. His previous work has sometimes brought Jewish customs to the fore; “Soft in the Head” (2013) dramatized a pair of Shabbat dinners. In the new film, Silver, working with a bigger budget and a cast of notable actors—headed by Jason Schwartzman, Carol Kane, and Dolly De Leon—expands his emotional range and his scope of action while delving into secular Jewish life and its interface with organized religion. (The movie was shot in early 2023, before the October 7th attacks on Israel and the massacres in Gaza, thus turning it, in effect, into a historical drama of American Jewry.)