This queer and Jewish coming-of-age drama builds up a vision of neighbors who speak through gestures of care and affection.
The subtle coming-of-age drama “Minyan” creates a version of 1980s New York where whole neighborhoods have built up around the grief that’s carried by those who live there. The film observes as older Jewish men in Brooklyn recall rebuilding their lives after the Holocaust. In very different places of congregation, young gay men navigate death and persecution as a result of the AIDS epidemic. The hero of this film, David (Samuel H. Levine), is a novice in both worlds.
When the movie begins, David is a disaffected youth who starts fights at the Brighton Beach yeshiva his mother forces him to attend. Discomfort has made him a quiet, if beautiful young man with haunted, watchful eyes. When he lets his gaze wander, other men look back, and they invite.
David finds freedom when he moves in with his grandfather, Josef (Ron Rifkin). Josef’s landlord wants the building to have a minyan, the quorum of 10 people required by Jewish law for communal prayer. Here, encouraged by his grandfather and their new neighbors, David completes the minyan. Bolstered by the security of a safe home, David wanders into an East Village gay bar called Nowhere. He connects with a laconic bartender, and they begin an affair.
The director Eric Steel follows the lead of his introverted protagonist and takes an understated approach to the story. The dialogue is spoken in hushed tones, and Ole Bratt Birkeland’s cinematography is trained to catch glances in rearview mirrors, knees that touch on park benches. The film allows its societies to speak through gestures, whether it is the passing of personal possessions after a death or the brush of bodies behind a bar, and its portrait of both Jewishness and queerness is richer for it.
Minyan
Not rated. In English, Hebrew, Yiddish and Russian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. In theaters.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
