Between the Temples (2024)

Between-the-Temples-(2024)
Between the Temples (2024)

Between the Temples

This year, the 2024 United States Dramatic Competition at Sundance had their expected mix of voices from the indie scene stories from different genders, races, classes and backgrounds. All three movies in this dispatch could be called character studies, but what’s exciting is how vastly different those characters are and that one of them, at least, will be talked about all year.

That one is writer, director, star Jesse Eisenberg’s incredible leap with his second feature “A Real Pain.” I thought his Sundance debut “When You Finish Saving the World” faltered in part because it seemed like a film that didn’t really like its characters. This is the opposite of that. A deeply empathetic work about the limits of understanding each other’s pain but also about how we shouldn’t let that stop us from sympathy. It’s about tourists through one of the darkest chapters in human history who are removed by time and circumstance from what they’re actually considering but respectful of it nonetheless. It’s also about two cousins who live very different lives and try to understand each other while realizing they never fully will.

I could talk for hours about Eisenberg’s rich script for “A Real Pain,” which just won the jury award at Sundance for writing a kind of nuanced character study that is my absolute jam but Kieran Culkin gives such a phenomenal performance in this film that it has to be the main event. The recent Emmy winner from “Succession” shows he’s going to be a force for years to come here with an acting turn I’m going to be annoying about during next awards season. It’s that raw and organic and subtle one of the best performances I’ve seen at this festival in over a decade.

Who is Benji? He’s the type of friend who gets to the airport five hours early not because he’s worried he’ll miss his flight but because he wants to meet people; he’s lonely on his couch at home. We all have a friend like that, the person who knows the name of everyone in the bar before you’ve even parked the car. Benji is a social butterfly through and through he seems genuinely interested in everyone he meets. He’s also extremely, extremely sad, a fact you can see in Culkin’s eyes as Benji embarks with his cousin David (Eisenberg, doing some of his best-ever film work) to join a tour group in Poland, visit a concentration camp and split off to see the house where their grandmother was raised (the actual house in the film belonged to Eisenberg’s grandma). Benji was very close with his grandma, who recently passed away, so this is potentially an act of closure for him.

Culkin takes a very showy role the manic traveling companion has been done before and fills it with truth, something that comes from emotions he can’t control. And while this buddy duo may seem simple on paper Benji is too reckless, David is too conservative the two actors have such believable chemistry as something like brothers. They are two people who want to know, maybe even be each other, and they have to go all the way back to where their grandmother lived to learn both of those limits. They don’t find some sort of pat Hollywood resolution that makes them closer, but they do leave with a much greater understanding of not each other but themselves.

A different kind of trip is taken in India Donaldson’s strong debut “Good One,” featuring a breakout performance from the naturally great Lily Collias. She plays Sam, a 17 year old on a camping trip in the Catskills with her dad Chris (James Le Gros) and his friend Matt (Danny McCarthy). Matt’s son was supposed to come but his teenage apathy has been amplified by mom and dad getting divorced, he doesn’t feel like walking through the woods with pop. At first there’s a kind of sad sack sympathy for Matt engendered, McCarthy plays this character’s emotional flatness well, he’s going through a rough chapter in his life, and his kid isn’t there for him. At least Chris has a “good one.”

Donaldson basically acts as an observer here; she is like the fourth traveling companion through these lovingly shot woods. Chris is kind of an asshole the A type personality who mocks Matt’s physical shape and accuses Sam of packing wrong, when she says he did that, we believe her it’s probably not the first time he’s blamed her for his flaws. Le Gros deftly captures that kind of guy who gently pushes people around in every aspect of his life, it led to the divorce from Sam’s mother and she’s now about to have a half sister with Chris’ new much-younger wife. He’s that guy, and it’s obvious from the very beginning. Matt is a little harder to pin down until he isn’t.

Both Chris and Matt exit these woods in an air of failure that won’t be spoiled, but what works so well about “Good One” is how much it echoes the observational skill of its protagonist. Collias has a remarkable ability to do something that is often very hard for actors her age. listen. A lot of young actors often look like they’re waiting for their turn to say their line instead of actually existing in the moment, responding to their scene partner’s dialogue and action. Collias grounds “Good One” in every single scene, leaving those woods a victor in both character and performer.

Finally, fun and sweet “Between the Temples” by Nathan Silver is more evidence that middle aged Jason Schwartzman is going to be something special after his wonderful turn in “Asteroid City.” Once again he’s great as Ben Gottlieb (“Even my name is past tense”), a cantor who has lost his faith and singing voice due to deep seated grief. His life turns around when Carol Kessler (Carol Kane), a grade school teacher with a desire to be his Bat Mitzvah student, reenters his world. More than just a ‘May/December’ awkward comedy, “Between the Temples” is a shaggy character study, loosely structured look at the human condition with strong performances, Sean Price Williams’ effective 16mm photography and John Magary’s lively editing.

Between the Temples” features supporting characters that feel like archetypes the doting mother (Caroline Aaron), meddling rabbi (Robert Smigel), even a love interest in the rabbi’s daughter (Madeline Weinstein) which should make this kind of Sundance comedy not work. It should be too cutesy or twee or laden with life lessons. What’s remarkable about Silver’s work is how many of those traps it avoids, reminding us how well this can be done when it feels focused on character and truth instead of theme or message. It’s hard one to make sound appealing in that the market has been flooded with unbearable stories about very different people coming together on common ground they both need to heal but it’s also reminder that movies still can do right by these kinds of stories if they’re done well and reminder that healing sometimes comes from most unexpected places. And comedies are good too.

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