A man returns to his Jewish-Argentinian roots in THE TENTH MAN. Courtesy of Kino Lorber.November 2016. On no, it wasn’t just the US election. It was the 36th “Double Chai” Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival, taking place at PJFM’s previous home, the Gershman Y. It was my first year at the organization and the second week into the festival. We were preparing to show a movie called THE TENTH MAN, described as a “quirky” little drama set in Argentina and very Jewish. The intros went fine, the movie began…and then it ended…and the audience skedaddled out of there faster than the speed of light. Only a very small handful of viewers stayed in the risers for the post-film discussion. What the heck happened?!
Well, no movie is perfect, and THE TENTH MAN was one of the most divisive films PJFM has probably ever shown. I had never seen it, and it took me seven whole years to finally watch it and find out what the big deal is. Was it really that bad? Was it really that good? Was it offensive, egregious, and positively atrocious? My honest opinion: none of those things, but THE TENTH MAN is indeed a strange movie, a film that I can understand completely would turn people away. It looks like it has the set-up of a sweet romantic comedy, but it’s much more nuanced than that. It looks like it will have your typical linear narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, but it doesn’t have any of those things. It’s artsy, and even though the term “artsy” has almost become a pejorative in today’s film world, a lot of them do their job. Even the least film-loving viewers in the world can watch a well-made, artsy film and deny that they were affected by it. Having seen THE TENTH MAN, another “artsy” collection to the ever-growing world of arthouse cinema, I wouldn’t call it a masterpiece, but it beguiled me in the most peculiar way.
Sometimes a movie can be slow and confusing and still manage to move me. THE TENTH MAN left me thinking for many days. It’s a drama, overall, about coming home, going back to your roots amidst this crazy, chaotic, obnoxious reality we all find ourselves living in. Filmed in an almost fantastical, surreal way with equally surreal characters and moments, it shows that returning to our home roots can be the solution after all, no matter how incredulous we are at the thought of that.
The film was written and directed by Daniel Burman, a unique auteur who has been credited as the father of “New Argentine Cinema.” I have yet to see his other films, but now I’m very curious. He is a storyteller who puts a magnifying glass very closely on his characters, examining their every move, decision, and thought. The lead character of THE TENTH MAN, Ariel (Alan Sabbagh), is someone we get to know through long and carefully thought-out moments. He is a somber, busy man, someone who is living in a world of copious requests and demands. When his phone rings, someone asks him to do something. When he runs into someone on the street or in a building, he is asked to do something. This is his life. Does Ariel enjoy it? Not so much.
Sabbagh’s deeply complex performance earned him the Tribeca Film Festival Jury Award for Best Actor in an International Narrative Feature back in 2016.
“A performance of natural subtlety that reflected a community that is unknown to most of us,” said Tribeca, adding that his character takes part in “an intriguing journey for connection in search for identity.”
THE TENTH MAN is an existential drama, for sure. The film takes place during one week leading up to the holiday of Purim. Ariel was raised in a strict Jewish section of Buenos Aires, but now he is fully secular, totally incognizant of the customs his father, Usher (Usher Barilka), instilled in him as a child. Years later, Ariel, in a boring relationship with a whiny dancer on the cusp of retirement (she is never even seen on camera), is requested by his father to return to his hometown, El Once, and support him with his Jewish aid foundation he runs.
When he returns to his hometown, it’s like Ariel is invisible or something. It isn’t necessarily that he’s the only non-religious Jew in a community of Jews. It’s the noise. All around him, there are requests and demands being shouted out. There’s just…. a LOT happening. Burman is very particular with this and creates this strange sense of fantasy and “chaos” in his story without turning into parody. Is this world, this society of demands, a healthy lifestyle for our protagonist?
Ariel steps in and takes orders from his friendly aunt, Susy (Elvira Onetto), sending all kinds of items to Jews throughout the town in hospitals and homes. He soon meets the mysterious Eva (Julieta Zylberberg), a colleague of Usher’s foundation, and there is a subtle attraction between the two of them. Eva is Orthodox and never talks or touches any man around her. She isn’t a mute, however, so why the silence? Has she capitulated to the endless demands being tossed at her for so long? Has she secretly renounced her religion and just refuses to engage in any joy of her community?
“Talking to you is fun,” Ariel tells her in one scene. “It’s like playing charades.”
Ariel confides in Eva and recounts his childhood. He says he stopped being religious at 10 years old when his father didn’t go to his school assembly because he had to attend a funeral and join a minyan of ten. (The number ten plays a huge motif in the film.) Is there a part of him that yearns for religion all along? Eva senses this. There is a very bizarre moment where his phone rings and Eva picks it up, runs off into the other room like a child playing a prank, and hides it in Ariel’s box of old items from his Jewish childhood. Burman has crafted a metaphorical moment out of whimsy.
Ariel’s curiosity in Judaism is certainly apparent. In one scene, he speaks with a client about why God made a minyan ten men and not nine.
“Do you ever ask yourself why your balls hang?” the client replies very unexpectedly. “Me neither.”
In other words, you don’t question these kinds of questions. You just believe what you are told about Judaism and live with it. Now, perhaps this is a reason why THE TENTH MAN was so hit-or-miss when it first debuted. Has Burman made an anti-religious movie? In my honest opinion, I don’t think so. I do, however, think that this film demonstrates how religion is wonderful yet problematic for some people. It’s complicated, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As the audience, it’s our call to decide whether Ariel’s return to his childhood home – his return to Judaism, that is – is a good thing or not. Take a good look at the moment when he tries on tefillin for the first time while his fellow men sing “Evenu Shalom Aleichem” around him. Ariel…doesn’t know how to react. Is that a smile on his face? A smile of “this is so ridiculous” or a smile of joy?
Will you like THE TENTH MAN? Is this an “enjoyable” movie or a pretentious trainwreck? You be the judge. Divisive movies are my favorites to review because “hit-or-miss cinema” is always essential. After all, where would the fun be if everyone loved every movie the same way? There are moments I still don’t understand in THE TENTH MAN, moments of such bizarre, inexplicable actions and dialogue, but Burman has made his art and asked us to interpret it. We may fail, but it was all worth a try.
THE TENTH MAN is now available to stream on ChaiFlicks.