Review: A cantor and an older student find reciprocity in the playful ‘Between the Temples’

Have you heard the one about the cantor who can’t sing and the retired music teacher who walk into a bar? In Nathan Silver’s thoroughly charming comedy “Between the Temples,” the only punchline to this setup is that these two find a singular kind of connection with each other. It’s a good thing that the film is completely hilarious too.

Writer-director Silver has been churning out intimate, handcrafted character studies for 15 years (this is his ninth feature), but “Between the Temples,” co-written with C. Mason Wells, feels like his biggest film to date, even though it’s still a small indie shot on 16mm. He has cast bigger stars — Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane — alongside his usual company players (which include his mother Cindy), and this feels like the film of Silver’s most likely to break through to mainstream success.

“Between the Temples” is a laugh-out-loud comedy about religion and unlikely relationships, a kind of Jewish “Harold and Maude.” It’s premised upon a surprising connection between an older woman and a younger man, but the ways in which it’s like Hal Ashby‘s 1971 charmer have less to do with age gaps, and more to do with the concept of two oddball people finding solace in each other while seeking respite in spirituality.

Ben (Schwartzman), the cantor who can’t sing, has lost his wife in a freak accident and, on his way to the bar, lies down in front of a semi truck, imploring it to keep moving, tormented by his grief-induced stasis, which these days involves living at home with his overbearing Jewish mothers (Caroline Aaron and Dolly de Leon). The story’s retired music teacher, Carla (Kane), comes to Ben’s rescue after a drunken spat at the local watering hole, tending to his injuries with whiskey and ice. As it turns out, she taught him in elementary school. Later, she’ll turn up at his b’nei mitzvah class at the synagogue — she’d like to have her bat mitzvah, finally, and her Catholic husband is no longer around to object, thanks to lung cancer.

Caroline Aaron, left, Diane Lanyi, Madeline Weinstein and Dolly de Leon in the movie “Between the Temples.”

(Sony Pictures Classics)

So begins the strange but life-affirming friendship between Ben and Carla. It is fumbling and sweet and quirky, their dynamic reflected in Silver’s lively, playful direction. Sean Price Williams’ elastic cinematography jumps, pulls and zooms with a lively improvisational energy among the appealing cast of characters, and Silver and editor John Magary weave and splice the footage into an amusing romp that often tips into the hallucinatory and surreal, colored by memory, dreams, booze and sometimes drugs. The handmade quality of the film is reflected in the many manual filmmaking techniques on display, such as split diopter shots, optical wipes and irises.

In “Between the Temples,” Silver demonstrates the ability to evoke the unique tone and warmth of an Ashby film: a curated sense of humanity and a heightened sense of real life, refracted through a specific lens. But this is a distinctly Silver picture, funny and neurotic and, above all, compassionate.

Schwartzman and Kane have a delightfully offbeat chemistry that verges on the absurd, and they blend seamlessly into Silver’s ensemble. Robert Smigel plays Ben’s boss, the rabbi, whose daughter Gabby (a terrific Madeleine Weinstein) is being hotly pursued by Ben’s mothers, who are working overtime to match-make her with their son). De Leon, from “Triangle of Sadness,” is a wonder as usual, and seems to command any room, space, group or scene she inhabits with a sly but iron-willed control. In “Between the Temples,” she’s as natural as can be running a fundraiser at the synagogue or a Shabbat dinner like a naval exercise.

Entertainment & Arts

Jason Schwartzman, most watched man of 2023, is shy about it | 2024 Sundance Film Festival

Jan. 20, 2024

Silver’s approach to spirituality in this film is grounded in community and ritual. Both Ben and Carla are searching for something, looking for it in their religious practices. Ben hopes to find his voice again; Carla is looking to connect with a side of her heritage that she was never able to as a kid. They ask questions about the bigger picture — Ben even goes to a Catholic church looking for answers — but the film is not about transcending what’s right in front of them. What they are searching for, they find in each other.

Crafted with care and a distinct point of view, “Between the Temples” is the kind of film that bears rewatching just because you want to spend more time with its idiosyncratic rhythm and energy. Singing in its own key, there might not be a more authentic and purely entertaining film this year.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.