Aaron, a righteous man with a wife and four children, operates a butcher shop in the heart of the ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem. One rainy day an unknown young man comes into the shop and asks to use a telephone. He tells Aaron that his name is Ezri and that he is a yeshiva student. He makes his phone call and leaves. At prayers the next morning, Aaron again encounters the mysterious outsider. When he learns that Ezri has no job and no place to stay, Aaron generously offers him a job as an assistant with lodgings above the shop.
As they work closely together in the butcher shop, the two men develop an attraction to each other that Aaron initially tells Ezri is a lust created by God, a challenge for them to overcome. Zohar Strauss (Aaron) and Ran Danker (Ezri) have remarkable chemistry with each other. Their eyes and body language heartbreakingly express the turmoil going on inside their characters. In a wonderfully performed scene, after helping Ezri unload a large carcass of meat and hang it in the cooler, Aaron stares intently at Ezri while playing with the fringes on his tallit katan. Then, with his eyes wide open to the consequences, he walks unhesitatingly toward Ezri.
Eyes Wide Open depicts a community in which everyone knows everyone’s business. Rule-breakers are quickly, sometimes violently, brought back into line. People know when Aaron is in Ezri’s room. They circulate posters that say, “A sinner is in the neighborhood.†In an amazing camera shot, while Aaron and Ezri are talking outside the shop, a vehicle passes by and reflected in its windows is a group of men who are watching them from across the street.
The dialogue is spare and stunning. The Rabbi asks Aaron why he cannot let the young man go. Aaron replies, “I need him . . . I was dead, and now I’m alive.†When Aaron tells Ezri, “We cannot go on like this. I have a family, a wife, children,†Ezri says, “And I have only you.†Rivka, Aaron’s wife, who knows what is going on, generously asks him, “Where do you want to be?â€
This gorgeous, intense film drenches the viewer in a culture in which to be something that is not expected of you is forbidden. The musical score indelibly expresses the almost overwhelming melancholy of the film. Aaron and Ezri find that it is impossible to live authentic lives in a community that does not acknowledge that homosexuality exists.
Click here for an insightful interview with Zohar Strauss that includes brief clips from the film.
Eyes Wide Open, one of the best gay-themed films ever made, is essential for all GLBTQ film collections.
Reviewed by, W. Stephen Breedlove
Reference and Interlibrary Loan Librarian
La Salle University
