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Film review: Minyan

A story of gay awakening against an Orthodox Jewish background

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Cert: 15 | ★★★★✩

Directed by Eric Steel (The Bridge) and co-written by Daniel Pearle, Minyan is an LGBT themed coming of age story with a difference, the difference being Orthodox Judaism. Set in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, New York, the film tells the story of a young gay man from a strict Orthodox community struggling to fit in his own community. The title, of course, comes from the ten men needed to pray.

In 1980s New York. David, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants finds himself caught up in the tight constraints of his community. After the death of his grandmother, David’s grandfather Josef (Ron Rifkin) decides to move to a smaller apartment in Brighton Beach, known as Little Odessa.

David finds himself spending more and more time at his grandfather’s new place where he soon forms a close friendship with the old man’s new neighbours, two elderly, closeted Jewish men who open his imagination to the possibilities of love and loss.

As he explores the East Village and his own burgeoning sexuality and new romance with a handsome barman, David finds a world teeming with new promises of love and an exhilarating gay scene, soon to be decimated by the early years of the AIDS epidemic.

Director Eric Steel presents an impressively detailed slice of Jewish and gay New York history as he delves into a world full of contradictions, rituals and stifling family dynamics.
He delivers a genuinely engaging story about finding one’s self in a world where so much is expected and nothing is ever forgiven.

The spectre of the AIDS epidemic is never far behind, but also the other menacing presence here is the persecution of Jews in Europe. There are some very strong performances, especially from Mark Margolis and Christopher McCann as the old gay Jewish couple Itzik and Herschel, while Ron Rifkin is exquisite as Josef.

Steel has given us a film which is both anchored in his own Jewish background and his identity as a gay man who lived through the AIDS epidemic.

Moving Bezmozgis’s story from Toronto to New York, he has delivered a wholly believable and handsomely executed tale of acceptance and grief which is further elevated by his peerless attention to detail and undiluted documentarian style.

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