Eyes Wide Open
Director: Haim Tabakman
Country: Israel
Release: 2009
The story takes place in Jerusalem, and is about Aaron, a devoutly orthodox husband and father who takes over his own father’s butcher business after the elder man’s death. Ezri, a handsome, young and gay religious student has traveled to this area, searching for a fellow student he had fallen in love with, and enters the shop in search of a phone. When the object of his affections rejects him, Ezri has nowhere to go until the new butcher offers him a job and a place to stay in the small quarters above the shop. As they work together the butcher becomes attracted to the young man’s spirit and carefree demeanor. Aaron has lived his whole life inside the boundaries of the city and he seems captivated by Ezri’s worldliness, and soon that attraction turns into a sexual relationship between the men. This complicates the married mans concepts of himself and his strong religious devotion, but he seems to either reconcile the conflict or at least ignore it at first. However, the people in the community learn the young stranger’s reputation and true nature, and the two men’s growing relationship becomes the subject of ever intensifying gossip which quickly turns into visceral confrontations and intervention. Aaron is forced to confront his feelings and decide between his secret life and the life he has always known. I felt that the movie did not seem to pass a judgment on the morality of alternate lifestyles or on the narrowness of traditional beliefs – and that either point of view is valid if the result of thoughtful consideration and personal choice. Instead one could make a good case that the fault is the restrictive nature of intolerance between differing viewpoints that limit people – through fear, intimidation, or need of acceptance – from having the freedom to pursue their true nature and choose their own path. The affair may not have been so much a case of repressed homosexuality, but a physical expression of an awakening of the spirit to a world of possibilities.
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