Review by Matthew Lucas: The very idea of Haim Tabakman's “Eyes Wide Open” is rife with the potential for a cosmic joke. Set in a Jewish Orthodox community in Jerusalem, the film tells the story of Aaron (Zohar Shtrauss), a married butcher and father of four whose own father recently passed. This death has left a void at the family butcher shop, so he puts up a help wanted sign and attracts the attention of a young student, Ezri (Ran Danker), who ducks into the shop one evening to get out of the rain. Aaron offers the young man a job and his father's old room in the butcher shop while he looks for a new school and more permanent lodgings. But it soon becomes clear that Ezri comes with some baggage and conceals a troubled past. Aaron recognizes his talent and promise, however, and takes an interest in him, an interest that soon turns to desire. But soon neighbors begin to learn of Ezri's past, leading to suspicions about Aaron, scandal in the small community and causing a campaign of ostracism and intervention born of religious intolerance.

Like “Brokeback Mountain” before it, “Eyes Wide Open” takes a gay love story and sets it in the most unlikely of places. It's the kind of thing that has SNL parody written all over it, with Orthodox Jewish men and their trademark hats and long beards making out and endless references to meat in the butcher shop. In the wrong hands, this could have been an epic disaster. Instead, Tabakman treats his subject with dignity and respect—even tenderness. However, it would be hard to classify "Eyes Wide Open" as a love story; it's ultimately a rather stark examination of the effects of suppression due to religion. Aaron is a family man, with strong faith in his God. He's a pillar of his community and he's routinely called upon for the kind of intervention that he himself is eventually subjected to, bullying other community members into compliance with religious law. But his tentative and awkward relationship with Ezri awakens something in him. He tells a rabbi that, until he met Ezri, he had been dead. Now he is alive.

“Eyes Wide Open” is not a "love overcomes all obstacles" kind of story. It's dark and almost tragic, and it deftly avoids many Forbidden Gay Love cliches. It's biggest flaw is its lack of development of the relationship between Aaron and his wife. His dalliance with another man doesn't seem to effect his family much. His wife, Rivka, merely suffers in private. The ramifications of his relationship with Ezri are mostly social and internal. Despite those imperfections, Tabakman gracefully delivers something both unusual and powerful, an austere portrait of suffocating religious adherence and its effects on the community and the people in it. Aaron's eyes may be open, but his heart is forever scarred by a culture that insists his desires are wrong and unnatural; while Ezri, who has learned to accept himself, lives as an outsider. It's "Eyes Wide Open's" unadorned simplicity that sticks in the memory, distilling complex social and religious prejudices without judgment or condescension, and with just a little more development of its characters, it would truly soar.

Last Word: By treating its subject with tenderness and dignity, “Eyes Wide Open” becomes an appropriately moving portrait of love in the most unlikely of places, while also examining the effects of religion and society on a person’s freedom to be true to themselves.

Review By:
Matthew Lucas

IN REVIEW ONLINE