Disobedience (2018) * * *

Directed by:  Sebastian Lelio


Starring:  Rachel Weisz, Rachel McAdams, Alessandro Nivola


We first see an aging rabbi discussing the idea of free will and choice to his congregation.    He suddenly falls over and dies from an apparent heart attack.    It is an ironic subject to discuss considering what follows.    Disobedience is a movie about two women who choose to love in a world in which such a choice is not deemed acceptable.   We learn they began their love affair many years ago, and now one of them is married to Dovid (Nivola), the rabbi-in-waiting for the congregation, but even if she weren't married to Dovid, the rules still apply to her and her lover.  


The lovers are Ronit (Weisz), who has exiled herself (or was she exiled by her community?) to New York and became a famed photographer.    She receives word the rabbi, her estranged father, has passed and she travels back to London to see the community she hasn't seen in years.    Dovid's pleasure to see Ronit is awkward and muted.    Esti (McAdams) is thrilled to see Ronit, although tries to hide it to no avail.    Esti and Ronit fell in love years ago and even though Esti is wed to Dovid, the two women still love each other.    But each woman learns the Jewish Orthodox community is not willing to be flexible in accepting this love.   

Disobedience is not Brokeback Mountain, although both films are about homosexual relationships which are taboo to the worlds in which they live.    It is not as powerful and is slow to get started, but once it does, the movie gains considerable momentum.    Like Brokeback Mountain, the "villain" is not a tangible, identifiable person, but society's attitude towards homosexuality as a whole.    The conflict is caused not just by people, but tightly held beliefs which are not conducive to 21st Century thinking.

 
 
Weisz is the more confident of the two women, mostly because she found a way to break free of her religious upbringing and forge her own path.    But that path comes with a price of broken friendships and unrequited love.    Esti deludes herself temporarily into thinking she has her own free will, but we know she does not.    She is married and soon will learn she is pregnant, so leaving Dovid would be impractical and near impossible.    McAdams gives us a sad woman whose face only lights up when she sees Ronit.    She continually behaves like a trapped woman, and her attempts to break free of her situation may be too little, too late. 
It would be easy to write off Dovid as the heavy, but even he has moments in which he questions his marriage and his long-held beliefs for the first time.    If he truly wants Esti to be happy, then would that mean letting her go?    Nivola's performance allows us to see his own ambivalence towards the situation, and in doing so, we feel sorry for him.    We know Esti doesn't love him in the spousal sense, but does that mean he deserves to be left?    We want Ronit and Esti to be happy, but does that mean we want Dovid to suffer?   The movie works best when dealing with this triangle of complexity.    There are no easy answers and we know someone will be hurt in all of this.    If not now, then definitely later.    Disobedience doesn't devolve into soap opera, but instead examines its characters with honesty and care.