A TICKLE IN THE HEART (director/writer: Stefan Schwietert; screenwriter: Thomas Kufus; cinematographer: Robert Richman; editor: Arpad Bondy; cast: Julius J. Epstein, Max Epstein, Willie Epstein; Runtime: 90; 1996)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A charming black-and-white documentary about three elderly musician brothers, the Epsteins. Max is a clarinet player and the oldest at 83, Willie is the middle one, who plays the trumpet, and Max the youngest in his seventies, who is the drummer. They moved to a south Florida senior citizens community (which they comically say is God's waiting room) from Brooklyn to retire but continued to professionally play the Yiddish music they love, Kletzmer. The Jewish music had a rebirth and became popular again due to the young people clammoring for this music not to be forgotten. Max had the good fortune to play with the old Jewish Kletzmer masters who came to this country in the beginning of the 1900s, but since they all died out, he is the only one left who was trained by them to carry out the tradition as it was handed down from the old country. Kletzmer is a Yiddish term for an itinerant musician, a type of folk music that was popular for the Jews who lived in Eastern Europe before World War 11, but in America it was considered a derogatory term, indicating a musician who doesn't have steady work. But that has all changed now with its revival. The Epsteins, who always earned a good living playing Jewish music and were very popular with the Hasidics, especially from the 1950s through the early '70s, playing at their festivals, bar mitzvahs, and weddings.
They are shown living in their very ordinary Florida residence, travelling to concerts in Berlin and Poland, and on a nostalgia tour of their old haunts in the once Jewish enclave of Brownsville and the still Hasidic neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, and they will also visit the Lower East Side in Manhattan, where they were born.
The Epsteins are wonderful musicians and storytellers, openly explaining their music and talking about themselves with no pretensions or false modesty. They have no inhibitions about talking, in fact, it is hard to get them to keep quiet. The unevenness from the film comes from the lacklustre direction, as Schwietert, the thirtysomething, gentile German director, who lived in Florida with the Epsteins for three months, is unsure of how to pace a film and how to go with the flow of the story. But the richness of the lively music and the very natural and easy way the brothers play and communicate, makes this a heartfelt film, just like the music being played. You don't have to be Jewish to like the music, as they proved to be popular in front of a mainly non-Jewish audience in Berlin, who couldn't get enough of that music. But when they played in their Florida neighborhood to an elderly Jewish audience, you couldn't help but notice how much more lively and even more appreciative their audience was.
The documentary spends a lot of time showing them booking concerts in synagogues, setting club dates, bickering over concert fees, making potato latkes and eating a Nathan's hot dog in Coney Island. It also goes on a dull side trip to Pinsk, a place that borders Russia-Poland, where their parents are from, but someplace they are unfamiliar with and because of that there was nothing worthwhile to see there. But, in all fairness to the director, aside from a few lapses in the film, he did capture the essence of the Kletzmer music and what makes the Epsteins so special.
The brothers take pride in their craft and it shows in their musical pieces presented, as they bring out a heartfelt joy in their music. It was a fun film to watch, and it was informative to watch them practice and discuss the music, never taking themselves too seriously, but always serious about doing a good job. They seem to be very aware that they are one of the last links with the past, a tradition that might have shamefully died out if not for them becoming spokesmen for kletzmer music.
The title of the film comes from a song Max wrote for their grandfather, who went to hear an opera at the Met and liked it but said that he preferred Yiddish music, because it tickles his heart.
This film should be seen for the remakable music, the film itself is not that remarkable.
REVIEWED ON 7/26/2000 GRADE: B
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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