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NEW ORLEANS FILM FESTIVAL

10 07 03

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Grave Concerns

By Shala Carlson

In his lovely meditative tome The Talmud and the Internet, author Jonathan Rosen offers the age-old story of Yochanan ben Zakkai, a Jewish scholar whose pragmatism caused him to fake his own death and be smuggled out of a Zealot-controlled Jerusalem in a coffin in 68 C.E. Ben Zakkai knew the Zealots would never surrender to Rome, and so his prearranged death and rebirth got him out of the City of David, after which he managed to convince conqueror and Roman-emperor-to-be Vespasian to set aside a school at Yavneh, a promise kept that ensured the survival of Jewish study despite the turbulence of the times. Rosen uses the adventure story to make a much larger point about the evolution of the Jewish faith.

It's hard not to think about Rosen's beautiful telling of this tale when viewing The Burial Society, a very different story about an equally desperate Jew who ends up exploring the same unconventional means of transportation. The saga of loan manager Sheldon Kasner (Rob LaBelle) who steals millions from his Jewish Mafia bosses and then looks for a way out, The Burial Society sadly makes no such larger point and gets lost in its own telling.

Kasner, ably portrayed by Roberto Benigni look-alike LaBelle, is a mouse of a man with the scheme of a lifetime. No ben Zakkai, Kasner's first priority is saving his own skin. And so, to hide out from his former bosses, he heads for the Chevrah Kadish, super-secret Jewish burial society. Among the society's elderly members (Jan Rubes, Allan Rich and Bill Meilen) schooled in the preparations for a proper kosher burial, Kasner will bide his time, count his money and find a corpse to help fake his own death. Nothing happens the way he plans it.

Writer-director Nicholas Racz misses his greatest opportunity when he fails to linger on the rites of the Chevrah Kadish, a treasure trove of meaning and metaphor that could have added much depth and texture to this film. Without that advantage, Racz's tissue-thin tale very nearly plays like an episode of the new Twilight Zone. He helps himself out, however, with a somewhat unconventional, nonlinear construction and a modestly daring directorial style, both of which make Kasner's caper immeasurably more interesting than it really ought to be. Winner of the New Orleans Film Festival's Narrative Feature Award, The Burial Society is an amazing first draft whose greatest asset, sadly, remains unearthed.