A STRANGER AMONG US
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
A STRANGER AMONG US is a film directed by Sydney Lumet. It stars Melanie Griffith, Eric Thal, Mia Sara, Lee Richardson, and Tracy Pollan. Rated R for violence.
A STRANGER AMONG US is a cop show that would have been better to have eschewed the shoot-up and chases, the Irish cop and Italian thugs, and to have found another excuse for letting a liberated shiksa find family and friendship and her own soul amongst the Hasidim of New York. The crime that gives the cop her entree into this island of 19th century, mystical Judaism is largely pro forma and uninteresting, and for most of the film, and especially its best parts, is strictly on the back burner. The interest of the film comes in the cop's growing involvement with her Hasidic "family," her growth as a complete human being, and especially her relationship with the rebbe's son.
Of course, for us who are outsiders, there is the interest and attraction of seeing and learning something of this fascinating world. This isn't a travelogue ("as the sun sets on the happy natives of Hasid-land"), and it never pretends to being anything but friendly to Hasidism. Every Hasidic interior is bathed in the golden light of spirituality. These Hasidim are uniformly cheerful, friendly, and entirely free of sectarian rivalries. They are a community. The film makes you regret you are not part of that community. But the film does a creditable job as an introduction, even though its purpose is not promoting Hasidism, but a spiritual life within a family of your choosing in whatever context is appropriate for you.
Sidney Lumet, the son of a Yiddish theater star and director of TWELVE ANGRY MEN, SERPICO, NETWORK, and DOG DAY AFTERNOONS, has given us an interesting film about spirituality, as personified by an idealized portrait of the New York Hasidic community and as disguised as a police drama. In the process, he has coaxed an energetic and intriguing performance from Melanie Griffith as Emily Eden the cynical detective who is afraid of commitment and he has discovered an attractive and promising actor, Eric Thal, as the Talmudic scholar and Kaballistic mystic who becomes Emily's contact point with the closed and hermetic world of the Hasidim. (Thal originally was cast for a lesser role, but showed so much promise that he was promoted to the pivotal role of Ariel, the rebbe's heir apparent.)
Griffith has always seemed an interesting performer to me. I remember with no small pleasure her performance in WORKING GIRL, in which she easily held her own against Harrison Ford and especially a powerful satire by Sigourney Weaver. STRANGER only adds to my impression of her as a slightly unappreciated, underused resource of no small power. She contrives to tough, callous, fragile, and in pain, at the same time; Emily is the victim of her Irish-cop father, who cannot express anything as unmanly as love for his cop daughter, she is the victim of her own fear of life who refuses to love the man she sleeps with. She starts off in the rebbe's office with the grace and sensitivity of a water buffalo and ends whole, healed, and self-accepting.
But it is Emily's relationship with Ariel that is the moral epicenter, the heart, the justification of this film. Ariel gets to do a little growing himself, thanks in part to the temptations that Emily offers him and which he finally decides to reject. It has been suggested that some Jews may be offended by the idea that the brilliant and committed Ariel could ever be attracted to the rather vulgar and concupiscent Emily. Not being Jewish myself, I don't know, but it seems realistically possible that Emily is so different from the traditional and retiring Hasidic women that he would intrigued by the novelty she represents. His father, the great rebbe, played by Lee Richardson, is himself caught up somewhat in Emily's verve and purpose; he tells her tells her he has seen her soul, that they are alike, death-camp survivor and cowboy cop, in their mutual knowledge of evil. Once Emily tones down her brassy clothes and hair to fit into the conversative community, she still attracts a lot of attention, even a suitor, by virtue of her dynamism. Curiously, both Emily and Ariel find a deeper friendship and their own strengths as they work through their mutual and forbidden attractions.
Eric Thal as Ariel is a wonderful discovery. He's handsome, sexy, intelligent, sensitive, confident, dynamic in his own way, and irresistible. Thal brings strength and mysticism to his role. He is emotional and completely manly. His Ariel, as the otherwordly Hasidic anachronism, is the paradoxically perfect 90s man. I look forward to seeing Thal in his next movie.
There are two death scenes in this movie that represent departures from the Hollywood norm. In one criminals and cop are united for a moment by the fear of death and the pity and tenderness the survivors feel in the presence of death. There is an extraordinary moment of profound grief at the killing of the killer, something you will almost never see in a Hollywood shoot-'em-up.
I can recommend A STRANGER AMONG US, even with its largely superfluous crime theme and its stereotypes, as a movie with a strong moral center, with an intelligent friendship of a man and a woman, with some interesting things to say about how we can live to be happy. It is a film worthy of its director and it is worth seeing, even at full ticket price.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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