Yentl (1983)

Second viewing; first viewing with original audio; first viewing of the extended cut; previously viewed, dubbed in Portuguese, on May 8, 2002.

Based on the short story Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy, by Isaac Bashevis Singer, first published in 1960, and on a play derived from it.

In 1904, a Jewish woman living in Estern Europe wants to study the Torah and other related texts, but Jewish law forbids women from doing it. After her father dies, she takes a man's identity and enters a yeshiva (a school for the study of traditional texts of Judaism).

I didn't find the experience of viewing this for the second time too unpleasant. It is not badly made, and, for the most part, is easy to follow and reasonably well written. The actors, too, perform well enough. The songs are solid, both in music and in lyrics. Still, I don't see what made me like the film as much as I did on my previous viewing. Its dramatic limitations are evident. What begins as a paean to intellectual curiosity shifts very quickly into one of those farces about crossdressing that have been so popular since the days of Shakespeare. Only one year before Yentl's release in theaters there was Tootsie, which has similar plot elements, but with the sexes interchanged. Unlike Tootsie, however, here one does not have the protagonist becoming a better human being through impersonating an opposite-sexed person. The point in common to all those works mentioned (and others such as Grande Sertão: Veredas, a novel by Guimarães Rosa) is the development of sexual attraction between two people one of which thinks they are of the same sex. Yentl, however, is not particularly exciting in its flow of dramatic or comic events. The ending is somewhat fraudulent, because I never knew the American branch of Judaism to be more liberal than its European counterparts. But then again, I'm no authority on the subject.

Rating: 50 (down from 68)