Fleeing her home in Williamsburg, New York City, ultra-orthodox Jewish woman Esty Shapiro (Shira Haas) tries to make a new life for herself in Berlin.
While Esty focuses on applying to a musical conservatory, her husband Yanky (Amit Rahav) and his cousin Moishe (Jeff Wilbusch) arrive to bring her back home at all costs…
I do not binge TV. But I watched all four episodes of Unorthodox in one sitting. I actually went back and did a re-watch, I liked it that much.
A big part of the series’ success is lead actress Shira Haas.
Open yet guarded, world-weary yet naive, Haas’s performance is a marvel.
There are so many different levels to Esty, in terms of her beliefs and how she acts.
The essential problem she faces is that people expect her to fit a box, with no exceptions for who she is.
There are so many powerful moments where Esty is positioned in wide or long shots that highlight how small and isolated she is, and Haas keeps your attention with a vulnerability and steel that keeps shifting and changing as the character works out who she is and wants to be.
Unlike Esty, her husband Yanky is unable to see the world without positioning himself at the centre of it. Amit Rahav plays Yanky with a timid lack of centre - the character is still a child, struggling to work out how to deal with a situation that does not fit his assumptions of how life is supposed to go.
His cousin Moishe is a hypocrite, happily acting as a hatchet man against Esty while treating the trip as a chance to indulge his vices. If the series has a villain he is it, and Wilbusch gives the character an arrogance and physicality which is terrifying.
What I liked about the way the filmmakers approach Esty’s storyline in Berlin is how they play with expectations around these kinds of narratives.
Combining elements of a coming-of-age story with stranger in a strange land and a competition narrative, the movie avoids familiar plot turns and pat conclusions
While the story is based around Esty leaving her community, the filmmakers do not present them as villains - what becomes obvious as the show heads into its home stretch is that Esty’s personal circumstances were at the root of her oppression - a combination of familial breakdown and being surrounded by people who are more concerned with dogma than supporting her.
The flashback structure helps to balance between the oppression Esty experiences with her desire - in the present - to express her cultural identity on her own terms.
You can see this in the way she argues with Yanky and his mother in the past, with how she defends herself to people in the present. She tells one character that she is not a baby factory, but when offered the option chooses not to have an abortion.
The show is ultimately about Esty’s ability to make choices for herself.
The only character who comes off as a villain is Moishe, and even in his case he is defined by his contradictions between his double standard for Esty and his own behaviour.
Rather like Edge of Seventeen and Starter for Ten, I really liked how dark the show was willing to go in terms of the fallout of its character’s actions: the sequence where Esty plays piano for her new friends is absolutely excruciating.
Tamar Amit-Joseph plays Yael, an Israeli musician who decides to be honest with Esty about her musical abilities - it is a brutal scene, even though it is clearly not malicious. This scene is also important because it ultimately reflects how her friends are willing to be honest with her, even if it hurts her.
This scene is re-contextualised by the later revelation that Esty's family had lied to her about her mother's exclusion.
Why I appreciate the series' aversion to cliche, I was expecting Yael to offer some kind of acknowledgement to Esty after her audition, but this does not happen.
Multifaceted and empathetic, and anchored by Haas’s superb performance, Unorthodox is terrific.
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