Binge-r #184: Unorthodox + How to Fix a Drug Scandal

Brooklyn Dodger: Shira Haas (Esty) in Unorthodox

UNORTHODOX

Streaming Service: Netflix

Availability: All four episodes new streaming

In this compelling limited series, 19-year-old Ultra-Orthodox wife Esther ‘Esty’ Shapiro (Shira Haas) flees her traditional Jewish family and community in Brooklyn for Berlin. Her departure, searching out a mother who made the same decision to quit her marriage years before, plays with the urgency of a thriller. But after the covert departure is over and Esty is in Germany the tension doesn’t dissipate. Unorthodox is a thriller where the true stakes are an individual’s need to somehow change their life and survive both the crushing transition and the tenacious grip of what’s been left behind. I was deeply invested watching it, with every emotional shift in the story, whether sternly repressed or palpably painful, communicated by Haas’ remarkable performance.

Inspired by Deborah Feldman’s 2012 memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, the show’s creator, Anna Winger (Deutschland 83), has crafted a nuanced depiction of history and circumstance. Esty is not a flagrant rebel, who simply abandons her past life. “God asked too much of me,” she tells the classical musical students she falls in with in Berlin, and her faith and hopes intermingle at every turn. Extensive flashbacks show the world she came from, starting with her arranged marriage to the sheltered Jacob ‘Yanky’ Shapiro (Amit Rahav), a union Esty went into with optimistic hopes even as she fretted about her own suitability. Husband and wife are a mystery to each other, and you learn more about both once Yanky is sent to retrieve Esty in the company of his more worldly – and confrontational – cousin Moishe (Jeff Wilbusch).

Director Maria Schrader is alert to the thrill of discovery, the richness of new experience – whether it’s Esty trying on pants for the first time or hearing the student chamber orchestra rehearse – and the weight of tradition. Long scenes immerse you in Esty’s prior life even as she tries to make contact with her estranged mother, Leah Mandelbaum (Alex Reid). There’s no easy point scoring in how either world is presented, and the writing is acute enough to challenge Esty’s engrained perceptions of Germany even as she tries to make her way there. Delivered in Yiddish, English and a little German, this is a story of female emancipation that unfolds with both nuance and moments of electric unease. I know light relief is tempting at the moment, but a quality drama like this remains hugely satisfying.

High Fidelity: Sonja Farak’s 2013 arraignment hearing in How to Fix a Drug Scandal

HOW TO FIX A DRUG SCANDAL (Netflix, four episodes): Having just made an almighty splash with the wildly watchable true crime series Tiger King, Netflix falls notably short with this flawed docuseries about individual corruption and systemic failure. In 2013 Massachusetts State Police arrested crime drug lab chemist Sonja Farak for evidence tampering – the 35-year-old had become an addict who was surreptitiously using the evidence she was meant to test. Getting high on the police’s supply jeopardised thousands and thousands of cases, which the authorities wanted to avoid, although it meant the chance that some innocents had been wrongly convicted, even as a second state chemist, Annie Dookhan, was changed with separate offences. Director Erin Lee Carr makes poor decisions in terms of what to emphasise (Farak and Dookhan’s bright pasts) and what not to (the institutional wrongdoing), as well as using narrative approaches, such as an actor recreating Farak’s court testimony, that serve to simply obscure the intimate mistakes that should shine through this story. It’s a fascinating subject, but this is a poor telling of it.

>> Classic Show/New Service: A hub of meta-humour that was able to not only surprise comically but also on a knottier emotional level, the American sitcom Community ran for six seasons between 2009 and 2015. Netflix now has every episode of Dan Harmon’s series, which uses a study group at a Californian community college – featuring Joel McHale, Donald Glover, Gillian Jacobs, Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Chevy Chase – to memorably satirise pop culture and deep dive into storytelling weirdness. Enjoy.

>> Further Reading: A lot more of us are watching the news on television right now, so for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald I took the tenor of Australia’s Coronavirus coverage with this snapshot of journalism’s first (and sometimes worst) responders [full story here].

NEWLY ADDED MOVIES

New on Netflix: Directed by Jodie Foster, Money Monster (2016, 99 minutes) is a Wall Street hostage thriller that’s too forgiving of corporate greed to land a serious punch but it makes decent use of Julia Roberts, George Clooney, and Jack O’Connell; Bad Boys (1995, 119 minutes) is some nostalgic Michael Bay(hem) action with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as Miami cops blowing stuff up and swapping one-liners.

New on SBS on Demand: Still unreleased in his homeland, Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin (2013, 125 minutes) is a masterfully scalding quartet of stories that depict modern day China as less of a country than a crucible; Kingpin (1996, 109 minutes) is a genially idiotic Farrelly brothers comedy about 10-pin bowling hustlers that is mainly notable for Bill Murray’s supporting role as scabrous grifter turned champion ‘Big Ern’ McCracken

New on Stan: With Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver as Jesuits secretly preaching in Edo period Japan, Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016, 155 minutes) is a solemn study of faith that reaches a bitter spiritual transcendence; The Guilt Trip (2012, 96 minutes) is a middling road trip comedy made worthy by the car’s occupants being Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen as mother and son..

>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here for reminders of why the period crime thriller Babylon Berlin is one of Netflix’s finest shows and why The Platform is an all too timely horror film about inequality.

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>> Check the complete BINGE-R archive: 225 series reviewed here, 139 movies reviewed here, and 33 lists compiled here.