April 26, 2020 – Unorthodox (2020) Netflix
I am late to the party on this one – most everyone I know has already watched this limited Netflix series about a young woman who decides to leave behind her Brooklyn community of Chassidic Jews to flee to Berlin. I wasn’t eager to watch Unorthodox. The subject didn’t interest me, and I didn’t have the heart to watch Chassidic characters depicted as two-dimensional bad guys. I thought I knew what I was going to see in this show. But so many of my friends love this show, I decided I would give it a chance.
The show is much more subtle and moving then I expected. Unorthodox is about more than leaving a Chassidic community. It is about a young woman finding her voice and sense of self. Shira Haas, the actor who portrays Esty, the young woman who flees to Berlin, is just amazing. She is vulnerable and completely compelling. The whole cast is good, and the Chasidic Jewish characters are three-dimensional people, not cardboard villains. You feel real sadness for the husband Esty flees, who wanted to have a real and respectful relationship with his wife but didn’t have a clue how to do that and was misguided by bad advice from his community. But mostly you feel bittersweet: exhilaration as Esty begins to find herself and sadness at the cost to her in doing so.
Unorthodox is gripping and genuinely moving. I highly recommend it.