Unorthodox

I really enjoyed this! Feels like it would be more at home on Max than Netflix. It reminded me a lot of Disobedience, another film that I appreciated recently. My only notable irk with this was its pacing. Clocking in at nearly 4 hours in length, I felt that it could have been condensed into half of that. I also found her assimilation into gentile culture to be too seamless & quick to be realistic. Those notions aside, I found myself empathizing strongly with Esty's plight. She struggles to fit in the entire duration of the tale, both with her family & with gentiles. No matter where she is, she is "unorthodox." It's a feeling of being an otherling in worlds that don’t have an understanding or appreciation for that otherness. Her familial community is rigidly orthodox, so Esty must at all costs go along with traditions that control & funnel her down into a set life. It is her expected duty, but deep down, she herself is not in complete congruence with the way of life that comes with that duty. When she is in the gentile world, she continually sees all of the ways she does not stack up to her peers. It's a tale of being an otherling. Of the painful heartbreak & humbling that comes with that.