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A Commentary on the film, “Fill the Void”

     Origial title: “Lemale et ha’halal”  A Film by Rama Burshtein

 Commentary by John Bennison

As alien as the marriage customs of Hasidic Judaism may be to our own contemporary way of living and looking at the world -- it is the same question that is at the heart of the storyline and setting in Israeli director Rama Burshtein’s film, Fill the Void. 

What’s love got to do with it?

Sometimes described as a Jane Austen-like melodrama set in the ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jewish community of Tel Aviv, Fill the Void tells the story of a young woman who is pressured and/or persuaded by family entanglements into an arranged levirate marriage to an older widower with a young child.

In a day and age when popular sentiment suggests anyone ought be allowed to betroth oneself to whomever one chooses and call it marriage, the notion that social custom, religious dictums, cultural traditions and familial obligations should interfere with one’s individual rights may seem a bit rigid and arcane, at best.  

Our reviewer discusses the film and sets it in the context of modern day demellas.