The more I think about it, the less I like “Unorthodox”
So I watched Unorthodox over the weekend and I do not quite understand why it’s this masterpiece. Please tell me why I’m wrong — I love changing my mind about these things.
- It’s a pageant of stereotypes
I thought there were quite a few flat characters such as: the pushy mother-in-law; the drunk daddy, the brave, martyr-like mother; the long suffering grandma whose entire personality was based on being long-suffering; the sweet but pathetic husband; the evil smoking (but sexy) gambler who wants still to be accepted…. (also: how random was that gun?)
Meanwhile, to me it felt as though the entire group of musician-friends in Berlin was downloaded from a nineties stock photo website: bitchy but honest tall girl; sweet insecure friend girl; cute gay couple both of whom are all smiles and “you go girl!” — energy and nothing else; love interest with overtly plucked eyebrows, muscles and no defining character traits besides being supposedly dishy; strict and intimidating music teacher who however sees talent by simply looking at you, Good Will Hunting style.
Also, the narrative of amazing girl fleeing oppressive environment is such a cliché, no? (But a cliché we love — see Tara Westover’s Educated). And of course you are especially deserving to get out if you are young and beautiful and talented.
2. It’s a Yes from me
The whole song thing at the end felt a bit like voice-ex-machina: when did this girl ever (learn to) sing? Or did she realise within two days that she would sing for this first time in her life — and subsequently kill it? The whole audition segment felt like an X-factor trailer, including the robotic questions from the jury.
3. Feisty mousy
Though I thought the lead actress was brilliant, I thought her character was bizarrely inconsistent: she is tremblingly shy one moment, mostly obedient, suddenly rebellious and outspoken, then mousy, then feisty again. Though it’s great to have a character that is multifaceted and unexpected (especially in a show that to me felt populated by flat characters), it seems her character’s changes did not come from inner complexity but simply squeezed into whatever shape the narrative required at any given moment to provide the dramatic fuel.
4. Shaving
Also — I found the head-shaving scene almost unbearable to watch as it reminded me of the same happening to women in the concentration camps. Am I the only one who had this association? In any case, the connotation felt truly perverse in this context.
5. A human wall of flesh
Most of all, though reviews praise this show for being so humane and a rare insight into the ultra-Orthodox community, I thought the show did not show their humanity at all. There is an almost fetishistic, old-national-geographic- magazines–like aspect to it, that does not make you identify with the characters (except with the lead actress) but rather observe them from up-close like a voyeur. I think this is mostly because of the flat characters: the actors playing the ultra-Orthodox characters make up, with their clothing and arrangement, the scenography — creating (beautiful) set pieces like living tableaus… but it’s almost impossible to empathise with them. Instead, they are almost like a human wall of flesh, preventing our heroine from reaching her true self.
I do not think this show provides any true understanding why people would choose to stay in such a community, as in Unorthodox it clashes so perfectly — like in a checklist — with all the values we idealise in western popular culture: individual talent, sexual freedom, youth, passion, adventure.. So I think it inherently it has quite a creepy, othering narrative, where the beautiful, passionate, tender girl has to escape the tendrils of her strange, oppressive environment — an environment that is presented to us with all the subtlety of a foot stamping on a glass at a Jewish wedding.
