To watch or not to watch

A still from Shtisel, a popular Israeli drama about a Haredi Orthodox family in Jerusalem

When it comes to finding either a film or a series to watch, I can be extremely undecided. I feel pressured by the fact that I have a limited bandwidth. I want, often, to be moved by something, and so, find, I don't enjoy frivolous viewing, unless I'm specifically in the mood for it. I've also evolved into that peculiarly critical person that has possibly too many demands to make of television. I'm careful not to watch something that might totally destabilise me. Even though, for example, I was mightily impressed by the first season of The Handmaid's Tale, I didn't find it in me to immerse myself in the second. I was unsure how not to receive so much of what was being screened as rape pornography. Or, for instance, Michaela Coela's critically acclaimed series whose title I May Destroy You I have taken as a threat. I am afraid of being triggered to a point of difficult return. I experienced that anxiety, recently, of being simultaneously drawn to the narrative style and characterisation of an excellent show and yet repelled by the core plot when I watched Broadchurch. I had the weirdest dreams and I often woke up to this heaviness inside me. Fundamentally, I'm unable to watch anything passively.

Sometimes it takes me so long to decide on what I want to watch I forget why I was browsing to begin with. This happens even on long flights. I browse the TV menu, scour the trailers for possible red flags, look closely at the cast, themes, etc until 45 minutes to one hour later I finally settle upon something. I've just understood this to be part of my process as a viewer and spectator. And often enough I am rewarded for my cautious foresight. What I finally choose pleases me endlessly, and thanks to the air pressure within the cabin, I experience the film in a deeply emotional way and it tends to form how I frame the journey I am either about to have or from which I am returning. When I saw Roman Holiday, for example, on a flight back from Italy sometime last year, after having had to leave my partner behind to return to my then life in Delhi, I found myself drawn to the film's central dilemma, of Audrey Hepburn's character having to navigate what I see now as a false choice between love and duty. I began, myself, to wonder about what it meant for that predicament to be framed within female subjectivity, especially since it is generally men who grandly make sacrifices for the sake of nation state, like in the Ramayana. I still return, time and again, to the debate I have with myself over the film.

I had been eyeing the series Shtisel on my Netflix menu for a few months, wondering what it might have to offer. I am generally wary of films that are premised on religion or set squarely within religious communities. I had felt very disappointed by Unorthodox, which is strange to say, because, as a feminist, I'm expected to be drawn to a story about a woman who feels trapped within a religion and who plots her escape from its orthodoxies. But the film had taken liberties with the source material that felt disingenuous to my artistic sensibilities. The characters were denied a humanity and felt always extreme. The gaze felt extremely white American; where there had to be a damsel in distress, a villain, and a romantic-hero saviour. Too much that happened in the contrived storyline felt implausible. It wasn't complex enough for me. And in general I'm wary of storylines where your emotional response is being cinematographically set up through structural foreshadowing.

Some weeks ago, though, when my partner and I were deciding what to watch, after having delighted our way through Love and Anarchy, we were browsing through Netflix. He had watched a few episodes of Shtisel by himself. He ventured to suggest we give it a chance. He promised me there was no earth-shattering drama. It was about the Haredic Jewish community in Israel and their lives. It was a good pitch. I was hooked after the first episode.

I am a bit apprehensive about telling you more about the show because I don't want to inform your reception of it. What I'll say is that its gaze is a loving one. You experience somehow the personhood of each character, you get to glimpse their subjectivity, their fears, their insecurities, their joys. Because the show's creators were invested in showing the relationships between people in such a close-knitted community, it doesn't set up false dichotomies, and it pays wondrous attention to how people with limited access to the outside world dream, and the possible seamlessness with which forms of consciousness coalesce. If there's one show I'd really love more people to watch, it's this. You will find yourself at the edge of your seat rethinking the relationship between action and drama.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper