My recent three-movie day trip

Between the Temples, Didi, Sing Sing

I live in what I like to call “megarural” Pennsylvania, and the nearest cinemas (almost 45 minutes away) get what they get—a sad state of affairs for someone who wants to see indie, foreign, and idiosyncratic movies. Every so often, I summon the willpower to drive to Ithaca, NY (a little over an hour, but it seems so much longer) to see three films at the area art cinema, Cinemapolis. It’s always an arduous trip: uneventful terrain, pay parking, the search for a quick cheap lunch and dinner. Add to all that another Country Boy Nightmare: collegiate hipsters wearing social justice like $300 cargo shorts. It’s not something I look forward to, outside of the films.

I went this past weekend and saw Between the Temples, Didi, and Sing Sing. Some thoughts on the movies…

Between the Temples

This film raised a lot of questions for me regarding how I should evaluate movies. While the synopsis is alluring (Depressed cantor Jason Schwartzman tutors retiree Carol Kane for her bat mitzvah.), the film doesn’t do much with those tasty ingredients. While the characters make terrible choices (which the film seems to celebrate) and plod through the Vicarious-Embarrassment-Is-Comedy motions well enough, it’s the film’s style that occupied my thoughts from the first shot until now.

Between the Temples really, really wants to be The Graduate. And my questions revolve around just how fair it is for me to judge that eagerness harshly. After all, they say to steal from the best. But I’m disappointed it wants to commit Grand Theft Cinema at all. And why should I sneer every time it rips off the Mike Nichols masterpiece? Maybe because it adds so little.

On The Golden Girls (S6, E20), Sophia finally passes down her family’s top-secret marinara recipe. As part of the long tradition, each generation must add one ingredient to make it their own. Sophia’s great-grandmother added heat. Rose adds Frosted Flakes. The artists behind Between the Temples seem to have skipped the heat and doubled down on the cereal.

Not only does the film steal editing techniques and plot devices from The Graduate, it is filmed on grainy stock that makes it look like it, too, dates from the sixties. The contemporary analogues of Simon & Garfunkel tunes appear right on cue. The ending is ambiguous. Schartzman’s character is even named Ben! If you want to so heavily invoke a classic, you need to have something better to add than Frosted Flakes. They don’t. (And it’s not gggggggggreat.)

(I am also continually confused by “religious characters” in film who follow only the most unimportant tenets of their faith. Kosher food is a must, as is casual sex. I don’t get it. Believe in something or believe in nothing! What is this odd in-between?)

Didi

Coming-of-age movies have never been my jam. While I love a kunstlerroman, your typical bildingsroman often does little for me. Didi (a Mandarin term similar to ‘little brother’) is the latter, charting the painful summer after middle school in the life of Chris Wang, circa 2008.

If 2008 evokes your youth, you will most likely love this movie. I, however, was 28 then and missed the trials of the first generation sacrificed to social media (then dominated by MySpace). I appreciate that Chris’s family is Taiwanese, and they are realistically presented in a way that never tries to adhere to nor flout cultural stereotypes. I like when a film sticks to representation without ‘trying’ to do or be anything but true.

You could write the plot yourself: Chris is embarrassed by his friends, his family, his heritage, his age, and all other elements of his emerging self. Humiliations multiply. Skateboarding! Crushes! Cool kids! Shoplifting! Parents start to show signs of not being evil. A few small lessons are learned, and we feel that our hero will build upon them and basically ‘be all right.’

And the film itself is also all right, but it suffers by being part of a generic tradition that has rarely drawn me in.

Sing Sing

Right now, Sing Sing is the favorite for both Best Picture and Best Actor come February. The prior is certainly possible (the film has more than a little in common with CODA), and the latter is likely to be cast in stone.

While Didi represents a genre I don’t usually like, Sing Sing exemplifies a genre I love: films about the healing power of theatre. Here, that healing takes place in the titular prison through the IRL work of Rehabilitation Through the Arts (or RTA).

Not only do the actors all play real people (led by Colman Domingo as the star inmate of RTA and Paul Raci as program founder Brent Buell), but almost all of those real people are played by themselves! (Domingo, Raci, and Sean San Jose are the only professional actors in major roles.) But it doesn’t stop there. Everyone who worked on the film was paid the same wage, and they all collectively own the final product. This is reform and rehabilitation taken from a personal level to the very structure and equity of Hollywood!

The film is very good, and the performances are wonderful. I don’t know what else to say. With this film and Ghostlight, 2024 is giving us a wealth of theatre-as-therapy films! Because this one is a true story, it is much less contrived, but both films are powerful. Domingo is truly great in this role, but so are Raci and San Jose and each of the ex-convicts portraying their own journeys. (I did feel that the title called for a more musical production, however.)

I have a feeling that you will be able to see Sing Sing before the year is out without driving to Ithaca.