Unorthodox – Limited Series, Netflix
Have you seen this Yiddish-English-German show about a young woman’s life within and departure from a Satmar Hasidic community? The story staccatos between three timelines: matchmaking, marriage, and escape to Berlin. It’s loosely based on Deborah Feldman’s memoir. It’s a familiar narrative: a woman is oppressed, she hits a breaking point, escapes, and now has to navigate an unknown world. You’ve already seen one or any combination of those arcs. So why watch this?
Shira Haas brings the beautifully awkward Esty to life. We follow our heroine, Esty, for just over a year and she is a woman throughout. This is not a coming-of-age story. This is a story of coming-into-existence.
Family Histories and Community Traditions
Her family circumstances make her an outlier. Esty’s parents never found their footing within the community. This is not something they can share, instead, it is the force that drives them apart. Her father is a sloppy drunk, her mother a defector, and Esty describes herself as “different” from other girls – “normal, but different.” Unconventional upbringing aside, the prospect of marriage and family seems a welcome one albeit with a healthy dose of anxiety on the side.
Esty has maternal figures in her grandmother and aunt, but it’s painfully obvious she has missed out on a proper mother-daughter relationship. Her premarital education is revelatory. You can’t help but wonder how many mothers have passed down stories. So that a young girl today is hearing accounts from all the women who came before her. This is a chain of stories from which Esty is bereft.
Esty’s lack of a mother is in stark contrast to her husband Yanki’s relationship with his mother. Forget apron-strings, the umbilical cord is still well in place here. Hyperbole? Yanki has no problem telling his mother everything – including what does and does not occur in their marital bed. Metaphorical sure, hyperbolic not so much. Still Amit Rahav, as Yanki, brings dimension to what could easily have been a flat one-note character.
Fish Out Of Water
The exodus to Berlin seems destined from the start. There’s a lot of social and self-discovery, but it isn’t any less significant than learning how to use a search engine. Berlin is where she starts to become. But Berlin is not about how she will do it. It’s a question of can she do it?
Score 3.5/5
It’s worth a watch. It won’t take you long to get through the four parts as the running time for each is just under an hour. Still, as a limited series, there is time to explore. The beauty of a visual medium is that a lot is said in the unsaid. Watch it for the nuances. There’s an abundance from almost imperceptible facial tics to lingering wide shots. It’s a rare fly-on-the-wall look into a rare world.
Have you seen it? What did you think?
