edition of a fistful of popcorn i'm tonight's moderator my name is janet stern and i'm happy to be joined by two of our regular panelists marilyn campbell and bob brown we are going to be discussing two films that are currently playing in our area or at least were up until last week and i know one of them still is and they are beatrice at dinner and the women's balcony and it's really film which  follows on an israeli film we discussed last time we were with you so let's let's have the summaries together since there is some intermingling of themes not much but a bit and that we can talk about the film together bob would you like to g upon trying to leave her broken down v w has trouble starting so she's got to figure out what to do and the very gracious hostesses just stay for dinner and it will be fine but it's obvious that her husband's not so keen on in the course of the dinner and we've almost going to do much detail as a plot summary there's a clash of values and clash of egos and there are some rather shocking things that happened and i won't spill the green saw last november and if you were a film festival at rutgers and it was a very popular area it's exceedingly popular in israel and here it's of course a very small independent film and it's doing a balcony above the main floor the balcony collapses the synagogue become uninhabitable the rabbi's wife is injured and the rabbi is totally just spending his time and his wife's hospital bed so the congregation is kind of left to themselves and the men want to get together a minyan of ten in order to say their prayers every day which is very important to observant jews  soon he is taking over the congregation and one of the things that he thinks the reason for the accident was that the women of this congregation are to him modest they don't wear hair coverings they don't wear  long sleeves or long skirts even though they're very observant of all other rules in the bible that he he feels that that may be the reason that god has punished the congregation so he begins to tell the men that they need to get their wives in line and also of the the women raise a lot of money by cooking and selling food for the rehabilitation of the synagogue he uses that money instead to buy a school chorus girl of that handgun and beautiful and when the synagogue is reopened there's no women's balcony at all the women are not to be in the synagogue a yes that's a good summary but it reminded me why i didn't like the film and i'm wondering what you two thought of this the victory for for people who are secular like i am i'm not going to speak for you  to the victory seems hollow like why don't they just forget the synagogue altogether they've gone to this trouble you can see the film does a pretty good job with the narrow streets and the culture of interweaving the the culture isn't is intertwined with the religion so this is where they get their social society basically but you've gone this far to raise money to have a balcony that is going to still separate you from the men i don't get it and i had no sympathy for them since this was shown at the jewish film festival they actually had a professor come to talk all about the film and this particular orthodox is a is a very small group and so it seems it seems to it seem to the professor that for these people there is no life outside the group and that there they are not like any other even larger the larger orthodox community in israel they're not really a part of and so it does seem that what they need to do is make peace within their community and then if that means going back to the way it was before the new hotshot rabb a rabbi came along and that's what they want to do they don't have the ability to imagine not being jewish but do they have the ability to imagine not having a separate  sexes women have power women have their own community they have their own ways of doing things they have their own like sister wives they have their own their own culture and that carrying as much of the food as women are there there is no difference in who's carrying food in fact one husband prepares food for his wife at one point so you're it's like it was almost as if they were saying you see you see it's not that bad know it is bad it's really bad you've gone to all that trouble don't you see that this is insignificant in this world but that's my that was my reaction i can't see it and you're looking at it as a secular america i absolutely and this is one of my problems with the film ok not that it's a bad film but i think i'm the wrong demographic to see it right one of the things if it presupposes that is that you have a cultural familiarity with what's going on here in some detail in the much better if you lived in that area too to absorb it or at least be a seriously practicing jew to understand all of the issues i felt that there was a lot going on that was just going right over my head well actually bob let me just take that one yet further because i felt that it was relying on our it to million already with films in which women try and fight on you know like getting together and doing something you know overcoming and they're relying on our empathy for that well our empathy for that only goes so far because what they are what they've achieved is hollow and i think well i don't think  it but i don't think it is how i i agree with bob that going to the complete extreme of saying ok there's no women balcony we women will just sit down say as with the men is just not going to happen why within that community will i know see that's the thing that i when i read your review now i read a review that said rather interesting that they thought the film was successful because it was highly highly specific this is a very small community of their culture and by being highly specific they say that the review believed that the universal themes came out more that what you need is tolerance what you need is not for men to tell women what to do which is what the film says even though as you say they end up still with the balcony but the message of the film is that this newfangled rabbi was that legal we legal yes beatrice is not she's a very typical mike white heroine i've seen a lot of his things and these women are not easy to get along with there's something very very complicated about them in the kitchen i don't know if we discuss a few of the dogs with molly shannon yes we did and also the good girl like me don't know where they are so enlightened the wonderful think talking about mike white's characters heroines or male also there are people who are round pegs in a square hole or vice versa they don't fit they're put into situations where they're obviously huge disruption so i'll sing now she's a little off and that's very much the case in europe a dog where you are related to animal shelters you know i don't know how many shelters you've been to but the people who work there often tend to be people who really aren't that interested communicating very profoundly with people or haven't had very good luck or having had and have turned to animals and she i don't know if you mentioned this but yeah i think you did that that she raises she has goats  he wondered as this is what i was going to ask you he wondered whether if you went to a dinner party and someone did what the lithgow character does shows you pictures of  there is a certain point where the gianluca character starts out condescending to her and thinking that she's the help yes that she's no one he need to listen to but as she argues with him on an intellectual level he engages with her he respects her and not to make his argument for why i became hunting is good for the environment or ecology because it gives jobs to people who have been have an interest in preserving the and the environment preserving these big game animals so the people who i came can come along and shoot them but without that he's probably i've heard this economic argument without the the motive of bringing tourists to shoot the animals the animals would probably be just eaten for  meat you know because there wouldn't be any control there innocent there there where there wouldn't be any motive for preserving big game and the other things that he says as well that building hotels in pristine beautiful areas brings jobs to the area bad and all of those arguments that people make on a on a rational level to excuse what you know i think i pretty bad behavior but but they are rational arguments and he and he does engage her and respect her enough to argue with her rather than just dismissing well i mean actually it's his wife his third wife this third trophy wife who springs this up for she says well we're going to you know well you know it's true what they say if you have to kill these animals to keep the bus and she says it in a very sort of superficial way he then engages in the argument she doesn't and the background characters in this are really the ones who are the least sympathetic i think there because it's a lot of hypocrisy and everything is on the surface yes right think about what they do in their daily lives that it's easiest to just say oh well you know i'm i'm trying to get something done in paris and the the environmental regulations are such a nuisance but they don't it doesn't bother to nuisance they're just keeping the project from going forward more quickly i think one interesting thing that the let's go character brings up a scene gauges her on the cosmic level at some point by saying we're incident is able to sort of give and take for a while and not get to riled until she realizes that the kinds of things he's advocating represent his feelings about the world not just her and that's when she can't was i you almost see it coming at some point and i thought ok but i guess worse would be to have something you know much more uplifting and that's right i'm funny actually in a way it is  acquainted with this family is that she works with cancer patients and she does massage and laying on of hands and whatever kind of medieval healings and she does she she does at a clinic for cancer patients many of whom are young like the daughter of the family who is thankfully in remission but was very very sick and she sees these very very sick young people all the time and she does what she can but there's a certain point where i think she says to herself i i i can't do everything i can't make the world perfect and that there's a kind of hopelessness that sets in where she sees the entire world going on yeah you know marilyn you touched on something that really struck me during the film this is why i like mike white is really clever that he made her the person who helped their daughter because when obviously we're so bonded with our children that anybody who's in their spear especially someone who really helps them from a terrible terrible illness you are going to start to feel well the kind you kind of on the same level your friend know you can certainly can't say don't come to dinner if the situation presents itself with the most so who's who comes and has no relation to the family i think we would have found it improbable i think that that one day they invited her back but that's one of her character her characteristics is that she doesn't see these sorts of boundaries that she might have been just i'm assuming for the daughter or she might have just been you know read her or of some of the whatever she does but she became involved she'd became involved personally race with this girl with with her hopes and fears and her future and all those things she became deeply involved with which the the mother recognized and that's why the mother feels that she's more than as a servant and yet when push comes to sort to shove it's the mother isn't she just really doing lip service to this whole idea what does she really believe that this woman has on the same level if she were as a friend she has referred to her as a friend but there is a point at which the mother says i know you and she says you do not know me that's where you see that that all has never been bridge right right after she shot the things that beatrice has done lines that she has crossed borders that she has not respected i thought i knew his character this recent he was so drawn to it is that the mike weight had made him someone who we are to respect for the is a love of life islam of his life his love of you know his sense that he is providing jobs he didn't mike white didn't want him to be the villain i think he started out he starts out very very cardboard and ends up much more complicated you still you still may not that shallow rationalization well well depends on how you take him yeah and i think that that in that sense the performance is very good in that he makes this person almost likable is not likable at least understandable and because and it's because john lithgow doesn't dismiss the address and eventually he does it first but eventually he wine she says somehow it said that if that somebody who was a real right winger would see this film and say it was a great film because this guy stood up to a crazy mexican woman prevail i mean because on the surface we can all pay lip service to beatrice's values oh you know it's good to love the environment it's good to love animals it's good to look children and sick people and to do your best to heal them but but she becomes so extreme and right in the 's the kind of person we've met this kind of person doesn't know when to stop and we walk away  you want to talk about oh yes well why don't you tell me quickly i didn't like their film all that much and i think maybe the ending of both i thought was a little i wasn't satisfied with  film i think because you are put into a situation where the person you think you should end a fight with becomes a little hard to take and the person you think you shouldn't be easy to hate becomes more interesting and also we're next couple of weeks for interesting local festivals one is of course the student film festival is the princeton public library on wednesday july nineteenth and thursday july twentieth at seven o'clock in the community room at the library they're going to show fabulous fabulous short films by students from all over the world but particularly local students who will be able to come and talk about their films and on friday july twenty eighth  trenton film society is going to have a pop up festival of short films from chicago and short films from this area half and half the program half and half with three freshman's and only ten dollars for a ticket so you who want to go on the line to the trenton film society and purchased to carry easy to get to and very easy to park yes thank you both so much we will be with you again next time with some more