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(More customer reviews)Judging from the many questions I get through my website's Hasidism FAQ, the book "The Chosen" is now a literary classic. It is being read in high school literature classes all over the world. Excerpts are a staple in multi-cultural textbooks. So nu -- why is this great movie STILL out of print? Is the movie industry really so unaware that there's a market out there? I certainly hope it's going be re-released on DVD sometime soon.
Now granted, the book is always better than the movie, and this case is no exception. The opening scene at the baseball game, which is many pages long in the book (and is often the scene excerpted in textbooks) is not well-developed in the movie at all. That's too bad, because the ball game sets up the whole story by showing the deep animosity between the boys at the two schools. Also, the way that Mr. Malter (Reuven's father) is played in the movie gives the impression that he is a Reform Jew. In fact, that's what most viewers I've talked to assume him to be. He's not Reform in the book, however. Both he and his son Reuven are observant Jews, what would probably be called "Modern Orthodox" today. The Modern Orthodox do not wear traditional garb like Hasidim, but in terms of religious practices (dietary laws, the Sabbath, ethical behavior, etc.) the Orthodox and the Hasidim are not really all that far apart. This point is made in the book as the story progresses, but is not so clear in the movie, because people tend to focus on the clothes.
In the book, the friction between Mr. Malter and Reb Saunders centers on issues of Talmud scholarship (textual critical vs. literalist readings of the text). The movie tends to focus more on the question of Zionism. I suppose the producers felt they had to "dumb down" the story to appeal to the general public, but a lot of the plot was lost in the process.
Still, in spite of its faults, "The Chosen" is one of the better films about Hasidic Jews. It would be very helpful to be able to show the movie along with reading the book in class, especially in areas where there are no Jews and the teachers are trying to teach about this novel without ever having seen a Hasidic Jew. So come on, production folks -- let's wake up and re-issue this film!
(P.S. A bit of trivia: Chaim Potok, author of "The Chosen," makes a cameo appearance as the Talmud teacher in this film.)
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Item Name: The Chosen; Studio:20th Century Fox
