Thoughts on Between the Temples

    On Monday on Labor Day, I went to see Between the Temples, a 2024 indie film directed by Nathan Silver, co-written by Silver and C. Mason Wells, and starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane. I really liked it a lot, even if I felt it could have been 90 minutes instead of two hours. It’s a comedy that’s very steeped in Jewish culture and customs, and even though I work at a Jewish nonprofit, I grew up Catholic, so I know I’m not going to get all the nuances of life in the synagogue and preparing for a bat mitzvah.

    Schwartzman plays Ben, a cantor in a synagogue who is struggling to sing again because he is grieving the death of his wife from a year ago, and moved back in with his mom (Caroline Aaron) and stepmom (Dolly de Leon from Triangle of Sadness) in Sedgwick, NY. At a bar, he happens to meet his childhood music teacher, Carla Kessler (Carol Kane), who drives him home after he gets punched in a bar fight while drunk on mudslides. They are both widowed, and she comes to one of his classes where he is preparing kids for their rites of passage. She explains how she never got her bat mitzvah because her parents were Communists and wouldn’t allow it, so Ben agrees to teach her to prepare for her bat mitzvah in her 70s.

 

   From then on, it becomes this quirky, funny movie, that feels like a mix of Harold & Maude with Ben developing feelings for Carla, and with Ben feeling pressured by his family and his rabbi to date the rabbi’s daughter (Madeline Weinstein) to move past his grief, as well as Carla’s adult son, who is Ben’s age, weirded out by their seemingly platonic relationship and seeing his mother getting into being Jewish after living a Catholic life with her late husband.

    I really liked this movie, especially watching the fun and warm chemistry between Schwartzman and Kane, and seeing de Leon in a very different role from Triangle of Sadness and watching her be more relaxed and funny. The climax of the movie set at a dinner scene was hilarious, and I liked how the movie ended on a hopeful, sweet note.