We had nothing interesting to watch on Sunday, so I decided for the first time in my life to act like a standard Netflix user and chose the title that caught my eye first with its poster, title and theme. Asia doesn't always like to watch these movies or series like I do, so sometimes I compromise and when I have nothing that we would rather like, I turn on a series for a female audience. So far, I have not been disappointed in anything (although I was not always happy either), we will see what it will be like during the next weekends. Continuing the first sentence, I chose a series called "Unorthodox". Although you can guess what this series is about from the title, I expected it to be something about an extremely unusual girl. I was surprised when it turned out that the series was not only about a girl and her difficulties, but also about Jewish culture. The beginning put me off a bit, but I noticed my girlfriend liked it, so we decided to watch at least 1 episode and finished it in one take. Which was not difficult, because the series has 4 episodes and lasts about 200 minutes. Anyway, this kind of training will be useful to endure 4 hours with Snyder Cut, hehe.
Let me start by saying that this is an adaptation of a book by Debora Feldman entitled "Unorthodox. How I gave up the world of Orthodox Jews ”. The series is American-German production. From what I saw in the document that popped out right after the last episode, some of the threads are a fiction created by the creators of the series. I won't tell you exactly which ones, because we haven't watched this movie exactly, but if you have Netflix, you will be able to see it for yourself. The main characters are Esther Shapiro and Yakov Shapiro, a Jewish couple from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York. They both have problems - Yakov is an overly sensitive man who has been sheltered by his mother and knows no life, while Esther is an alienated, silent mouse and a half-orphan raised by her grandmother and grandfather. The mother ran away like her, and the father is an alcoholic who cannot cope with his problems. The story begins with Esther escaping to Berlin, and in the following episodes we learn what made her decide to make such a decision and what her life in the German capital looks like.
As much as I can say that I know a little more about Jewish culture than the average citizen, this knowledge is fragmentary and incomplete. Some of my knowledge concerns Jews living in Israel, those living in Europe before and during WW2, and those who settled in the USA. I don't know how real this show is, but I assume it mostly shows the truth. Some things are certainly true, because I had read about it before at the source (some website run by Jews), when as a teenager I read about the culture of this nation. I wanted to know a few things about "Neon Genesis Evangelion" references and references to their religion (in the sense of what the Japanese took from the source material and how they adapted it to anime). By the way, I learned, among other things: what is sexual intercourse among Orthodox Jews like, what is baptism like, what are some of their holidays like, etc. This is exactly what I saw in Unorthodox. What I read about the attitude of Jews towards women fleeing from them was also confirmed. However, I will not spoil it, so as not to spoil your impressions or to suggest anything.
Coming back to the series, apart from Esther and Yakov, we will also meet some of their family members and colleagues that Esther met in Berlin. Their roles, however, are not very extensive, they get exactly enough air time to only develop the plot of the main character, her husband, and show things that cannot be shown from the perspective of the above-mentioned. The series has a compact structure and focuses on the psyche, experiences of the heroine, as well as solving her problems. We see a selected stage in Esthera's life, having a rudimentary knowledge of her past and no information or foreshadowing about her future. The series ends at some point, and we can speculate what happened next.
Even though I didn't like half of the first episode, I'm glad that I watched this series in its entirety. It is not an outstanding production and I will not mention it as a "must watch" series, but I can definitely recommend it to everyone. The only thing that bothered me was the too shallow presentation of the main character's relationship with her family, one episode was missing to present it better. I can put him on such an honest 7/10 - it doesn't stand out in any way and I think Netflix offers more interesting series in terms of script, actors or morals, but I think it's worth watching. If only to see that Catholicism is not the worst culture, as some people with leftist views claim. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I changed my approach to "our" religion. I still think that it interferes with people's lives too much, although you can see that it is less murderous and has a better approach to people and social issues. Let me know how you watched it, I'm curious about your opinions.