Fill the Void

I will say that the acting in this film was great. Hadas Yaron is an excellent actress. I just hated the situation her character was put in. Because of social and familial pressure, Yaron has to consider marrying her brother in law after her sister passes away. Yaron, only 18 in the film is asked to marry an older man out of duty. The film is very well done and heartbreaking. If you are looking for solid entertainment though, you won't find it here, unless you like arranged marriages.

It seems, that after all, and not because of some outrageous theories about the nature of Language - the empiricists were wrong, and some sort of innate experience or meaning does exist. All you have to do is BELIEVE.

You can't argue with Rama Burstein's description of marriage politics within the Haredi community. She comes from the inside and knows what she's talking about. But that's just not enough to make for a substantial and compelling script. While soft-spoken and full of awkward silences, "Fill the Void" is still a melodrama: Everything seen or uttered revolves around the interpersonal conflicts, even the men's singing is there to prove a point about patriarchy. Real life is bigger than this.

To me, it was a fascinating look into a very different world.

The film isn't quite able to offer much more than its intrinsic ethnographic merits but it's still a solid and sensitive observational drama featuring a terrific central performance by Hadas Yaron.

Flawlessly acted & masterfully crafted, this may be the most subtle polemic in history. Fastidiously steering well clear of glib arguments or any kind of straw-man villainy this is a powerful argument against the kind of rigid patriarchies that make up many a religion. When gender roles are this culturally circumscribed, the pressure 2 conform is implicit & the lack of options 2 do otherwise the antithesis of freedom.