Minyan (2020)

Directed by: Eric Steel | 118 minutes | drama | Actors: Samuel H. Levine, Ron Rifkin, Christopher McCann, Mark Margolis, Richard Topol, Brooke Bloom, Alex Hurt, Carson Meyer, Zane Pais, Eleanor Reissa, Gera Sandler, Michael Broadhurst, Lawrence Jansen

Homosexuality and religion do not always make for a happy marriage. In the meantime you can organize a big movie marathon with dramas about this tricky combination. Sometimes that combination is part of a larger whole (as in ‘Sputters’) sometimes it forms the main part of a film (as in ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post’). Are we still waiting for the awakening homosexual feelings of a boy in a Jewish religious environment?

In the American coming-of-age drama ‘Minyan’ we meet David, the 17-year-old descendant of a Russian-Jewish family. David lives with his parents in a quiet Brooklyn neighborhood of Brighton Beach, where he visits the yeshiva, helps his grandfather perform his religious duties and listens to the stories of ancient Russian Jews, men who survived both Stalin and the Holocaust. . Moreover, David finds out that boys are more his thing than girls. Important to know: The year is 1986, and the American gay community is still feeling the pain of the AIDS epidemic.

Minyan shows us a lesser-known branch of the Jewish community in New York. These Russian Jews find themselves in the middle of the familiar extremes: the stifling world of Orthodoxy (see ‘Disobedience’) and the more liberal Jews of TV series like ‘Seinfeld’ and ‘Mad about You’. We see the familiar rituals and hear the familiar Hebrew, but the dogmatic of orthodoxy is missing. Not that David can come out right away, but he is increasingly discovering that homosexuality and religion do not have to be mutually exclusive.

This story comes to us in stunning images of an unknown part of New York, with beautiful architecture, wide streets and a beach to get a breath of fresh air. The acting and the atmosphere drawing of New York are also excellent. The score is even more beautiful: subdued folkloric jazz by clarinetist David Krakauer, interspersed with fine pistils from the 80s.

Best of all is the consistency of the whole. Without changing tone, pace or style, we move from religious ritual to gay bar, from family quarrels to spicy sex and from discussions about literature to stories of ancient Russia. This makes ‘Minyan’ typically such a film that never blows your mind, but which you enjoy for the full two hours. Which immediately answers the question from the first paragraph.