The Chosen Rating: Release Date: 02 September, 2003 Retail Price: $9.98 OUR Price: $9.98 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: Maximilian Schell Rod Steiger Robby Benson Robert John Burke Complete Cast (12 total)

The Chosen Reviews

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Friendship
I discovered this movie years ago and the other day I was talking to someone about the book (I have not read the book) and it caused me to search out the DVD and see the movie again. I had forgotten a lot of the story but the one thing that I have never forgotten is the friendship bond that is portrayed in this movie. It gives wonderful insight into a world not mine, but the friendship between these two boys who grew into men was great to watch. There are some fine performances throughout (especially Steiger). I wished the DVD had some special features but I was glad to be able to see it again.

Fathers And Sons
A book discussion group I participate in read Chaim Potok's THE CHOSEN a few months back. Since the majority of the group were non-Jews themselves, most of them found the novel fascinating in its portrayal of the complexities of American Jewish life in the 1940s and '50s. Many were unaware, for instance, that there was a segment of the Jewish community that was opposed to Zionism on religious grounds.

I imagine that many non-Jewish--and maybe even some younger non-religious Jewish viewers of the 1981 film version of THE CHOSEN will find its take on Jewish life in New York equally striking. To that extent, director Jeremy Paul Kagan and screenwriter Edwin Gordon have succeeded. The film is a pretty effective introduction to a world that many Americans know next to nothing about.

But admirers of the book will likely still be disappointed in the screen adaptation. You can't call it heavy-handed exactly, but the film version ultimately can't do justice to the book's complex depiction of a tentative rapprochement between two wildly divergent Jewish sects in the form of an often rocky but nonetheless enduring friendship between two bright but very different teenagers. It also can only begin to suggest the significant influence of both boys' fathers and how these two men engage in a dialog of sorts through their sons.

Getting all that into 120 minutes of screentime would have been no mean feat, of course. The filmmakers do what they can, given the limits of their medium. And the actors do what they can to convey the complexities of their characters' emotional AND intellectual lives. Old pros Maximilian Schell and Rod Steiger turn in strong performances, and Barry Miller and Robbie Benson (surprise!) are remarkable as the young Jewish boys trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world. It makes for worthwhile viewing, but fans of the novel may still find themselves wanting more. But how DO you dramatize the plight of a boy raised in silence, anyway?

I imagine that my friends from the book group would find at least one of the film's "enhancements" to be something of an improvement, however. A number of women in the group were understandably disappointed in the near total lack of visibility of the book's few female characters. They're there, but then they're not there, fleetingly seen, but ONLY fleetingly. And they are almost never heard from. Given the culture and the times, this is not surprising. And the lack of any strong female characters in the novel is a valid artistic choice on the author's part.

But when, in the film, our young non-Hassid hero Reuven develops a crush on his Hassidic friend's sister, the filmmakers had no choice but to give her a bit of screen time and at least a few seconds of dialog. And of course, that same mini-subplot gives her concerned Mama a chance to come to the fore herself and insinuate herself into the male-dominated plotline. It's nice that in the film version, there are these hints of what life is like for the female characters that were almost totally lacking in the novel.

And that's one of the things that film can do well--quickly establish a character by a few gestures, a revealing look or a scrap of dialog. It doesn't come to much, plotwise, but it does remind us that there are closed worlds within closed worlds within closed worlds, all of which would bear closer examination given world enough and time.



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