Women and Hollywood has temporarily suspended our recommendations newsletter. We’ll be sharing some of the week’s highlights in TV, VOD, and streaming via blog posts.
Netflix’s “Unorthodox” explores a vast array of subjects in its four episodes: faith, culture, family, marriage, sex. But more than anything else, the miniseries is the story of a young woman focusing on herself and her own desires for the first time in her life.
Based on Deborah Feldman’s bestselling memoir, “Unorthodox” sees 19-year-old Esty (Shira Hass) fleeing her Hasidic Jewish community and arranged marriage, and traveling to Berlin on her own. The reasons for her abrupt departure are slowly parsed out over the course of the miniseries via flashbacks. We see Esty adhering to the strict rules of her ultra orthodox faith, while also dreaming of more — and then experiencing guilt for wanting something else. Once she’s married to kind man-child Yanky (Amit Rahav), the only value she has in her world is her ability to bear children. Until she has a baby, her cousin informs her, she’ll have no “leverage” in her marriage. It’s a conversation one would expect a 16th-century queen to have with her parents, yet it’s actually taking place in 2019 Brooklyn.
At a certain point, Esty realizes “God expect[s] too much” of her, and makes her way to Berlin. For the moment, she’s free — free from the gossip of her friends and family, from the rules and practices of orthodox religion, and from the idea that women are only useful as wives and mothers. As much as she misses her family, especially the grandmother who raised her, Esty basks in her new life. She focuses on piano and music, which was considered a sin in her old life, gets rid of her wig, wears what she likes, and begins making friends.
Things are pretty good, but Esty hasn’t fully escaped her community: her husband and his ne’er-do-well cousin (Jeff Wilbusch) are hot on her heels. She may have decided to break with Hasidic Judaism, but they feel well within their rights to bring her back — by force if necessary.
Created by Anna Winger (“Deutschland 83”) and Alexa Karolinski (“Oma & Bella”) and directed by Maria Schrader (“Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe”), “Unorthodox” is as much a deconstruction of orthodox religion’s intersection with gender as it is a bildungsroman. The more Esty questions Hasidic Judaism, the more she trusts in herself. Giving up the ultra orthodox lifestyle doesn’t mean giving up her spirituality — instead, it allows her to gain autonomy.
“Unorthodox” is now streaming on Netflix.
https://youtu.be/-zVhRId0BTw
