To discipline his son for getting into a fight with another yeshiva student who mocks him for being Russian, David’s father sucker-punches him in the face. David, whom Levine plays with a quiet, subdued curiosity, feels little affection for his parents: His mother (Brooke Bloom), insistent on sending him to a yeshiva where he is routinely bullied, seems blind to his true needs, while his abusive, philandering father seems to be imparting the wrong ideas about masculinity. Levine, who riveted Broadway audiences in “The Inheritance,” turns in a fully lived-in lead performance as David, the only son to a family of Soviet Jewish immigrants in 1986. If 10 men gathering in prayer is a holy act, the film posits, then surely two men gathering in love must have some degree of holiness to it, as well. ( JTA) - A gay Russian Jewish teenager comes of age in Brighton Beach in the touching new independent film “Minyan,” a subtle and sensitive drama that tells an unexpected story about the Brooklyn neighborhood’s large immigrant Jewish community.īased on a short story by David Bezmozgis, an author who has long grappled with Russian Jewish identity in meticulous and probing ways, Eric Steel’s film finds a unique way to highlight its queer themes through the prism of an Orthodox Jewish culture that heavily prizes manhood, and strength in numbers.
