My Mexican Shivah

My Mexican Shivah, Dk. Alejandro Springall; script by Jorge Goldemberg and Alejandro Springall, based on a story by Ilan Stavans, 2006. Dur. 138 min.

My Mexican Shivah is the title of a film which in its original Spanish version is called Marine esta en hebreo. It is based on a story by Ilan Stavans, which grew in size and in scope as it developed into a film adaptation. It has many of the ingredients of a box office film success, induing the plot, cast, music, and use of language: Americanisms, Mexicanisms and Yiddishisms. It includes Hollywoodesque situations, as well as magic realism, exotic kitsch, and touches of telenovela, or soap-opera, a genre at which the Mexicans are truly masters. Its comedy is rather hackneyed and broad, yet it is utterly captivating. The film's hour-and-a-half length is well structured by the narrative's breakdown into daily segments: for a shivah, the mourning period after a Jewish person's death, lasts seven days. For the duration of the wake a "shivah planner" is hired by the relatives of the diceased to make sure that his secularized family follows the rules of mourning. Among other obligations, they are required to remain inside their home during the shivah, receive guests, feed them, and share memories. The Aristotelian unity of space (the house) is preserved, along with a chronological use of time (seven days in the calendar) and a large cast of characters related to Moishe Tartakovksy, the deceased. His immediate family consists of his children and grandchildren, and his cousins; among his visitors come friends, lovers and creditors.

The film takes every opportunity to illustrate Jewish customs: the ceremonial cutting of the Chalah bread, the sumptuous Sabbath dinner table, the ceremony over the blessings.of the candles, the drinking from silver cups. It also exploits the bourgeois clich�s: glittering clothes, heavy makeup.

The family quarrels are exacerbated during the trying period of the shivah over the will that Tartakovsky might have left, and over the rivalries created between his lover and his daughter. While his daughter is extremely conservative and prejudiced, his granddaughter is fully liberated: In New York she was seen kissing a shwartze at Central Park, and when she comes to Mexico she sexually provokes her newly-turned ultra-Orthodox cousin, whom she had loved when they were children.

To the director's credit, the Yiddish language-a pure, unadulterated galitziarerYid�ish-is preserved. It is spoken by two old "sages" who come to make a judgment during the "shivah " period as to whether the man's soul should join the angels of lightness, or be condemned to live forever among the angels of darkness. This moment could seem like a magical-realistic device out of a Garcia Marquez novel, as in the successful Er�ndira (adapted into a film in 1983 by Ruy Guerra), or out of Laura Esquivel's Coma agua para chocolate, which gave rise to the highly successful film adaptation Like Water for Chocolate (directed by Alonso Arau, 1992. ). But there is more to this: The sages are more likely to be compared with the angels of Sholem Aleichem's stories, and more closely yet to those of I. B. Singer, whose novels were also adapted for the screen with great success (Yentl [1983], and Enemies, a Love Story [1989]). The old sages, who appear in their traditional black robes and wear long beards and sidelocks, also discuss matters of rules of law and of ethical choices one makes before they make their final decision.

Latin American magical realism may seem to have penetrated Jewish mysticism and Kabbala, as can be seen in the close obedience to the seven days of mourning, and in the gathering often Jewish men for a minyan-the quorum required to pray for the dead man'soul. Coming up with the ten men is not an easy task: The Mexican policeman who puts on ayarmulka to comply with the missing tenth man for the minyan, is discreetly dismissed without an explanation as the family cannot accept him because he is a Gentile; and the communist agnostic Jew who could be eligible, objects to participate on principle, as the minyan does not make any sense to him.

In this dysfunctional family everything goes, beginning with a husband who, upon realizing his days are numbered because of his cardiac condition, chooses to die "in action" rather than submit himself to a dangerous operation. He has an ex-wife who has turned to Krishna's wisdom and meditation; a mistress whom he abandons at the end without revealing to her why; a son who inherits his own womanizing weakness, yet lacks his father's charisma; a daughter who is mostly preoccupied with getting old; and a grandson whom he had once used to smuggle drugs.

The Jewish traditions depicted in My Mexican Shivah have a worthy precedent in a low budget film directed by the Costa Rican Guita Shyfter in Novia que te vea (1993), adapted from a novel by the Mexican Rosa Nissan. Shyfter's firm introduces most of the syncretic elements that we see displayed in SpringalPs film: while the Hebrew prayers are taking place, the Catholic maids pray at their altar and the younger maid is pleased to discover that "they also say Amen." In My Mexican Shivah the Catholic mistress attends services at her Catholic church, while at the same time Jewish men hold their service at their synagogue. The Chassidic prayers that the grandson recites while in jail, not only save his own life, but also help a dying Catholic inmate, who saves him from being beat up.

The film points to other traditional and religious differences: when the mistress comes to the house of mourning she brings flowers and she is dressed in black. Both of these customs, which are not observed in the Jewish tradition, provoke a wider chasm between the visitor and the rest of the women in the family, some of whom are grossly overdressed for the occasion. This is especially true because the shivah planner makes the closest relatives deceased wear wear torn-up clothes as a sign of mourning. What really distinguishes the mistress from the rest of the family, parodied througout the film, is her nobility of character, her beauty, and her self control.

Yet another syncretic element is found in the music. At the beginning and at the end of the film the same scene is repeated: the protagonist gives a party in which he engages a mariachi band, and asks them to accompany a band of klezmer musicians who play Chasidic melodies (featuring an original score by the "Klezmatics").While he is dancing to .this "ttezmariachi mix", he collapses and dies. We find out at the end of the film that the mariachis had previously been engaged by Moishe to play at his house a week after his first party, as if he had planned his own death and wished to prepare his family for their Mexican way of life when the shivah was over. The melody the mariachis sing is tender and romantic, yet schmaltzy-just the right one to suit the mood of this delightful comedy.

[Author Affiliation]

Nora Glickman, Queens College, CUNY