“Fiddler: Miracle Of Miracles”– Movie Review

This week at Film At Lincoln Center, I attended an advance screening of the new documentary, “Fiddler:  A Miracle Of Miracles”. 

Story

The background of “Fiddler On The Roof” -- how both the musical and the movie were adapted.

Synopsis

The musical “Fiddler On The Roof” originally opened on Broadway in 1964.  Amazingly, it is still performed on stage to this day. Perhaps even more amazingly, despite being about the Jewish pogrom in eastern Europe during the early 20th Century, it is performed in many different languages and by many different cultures and countries around the world.  Some of them are professional productions, others are of an amateur nature (e.g., school plays). In fact, there was once a high school production in Brooklyn that did non-traditional casting in the sense that Black and Hispanic students were cast in the roles; Jewish teachers complained, fearing that the students would use this opportunity to make fun of their religion.

When the original Broadway production opened, it starred Zero Mostel as Tevye, the patriarch and protagonist; the production was directed by Jerome Robbins, who previously worked on “West Side Story”.  Robbins was hired in part because he himself was Jewish (his real name was Rabinowitz) and because having directed “West Side Story”, he knew how to tell a story where the characters did a great deal of moving, especially dancing.  Robbins’ hiring turned out to be problematic because he didn’t get along well with Mostel. What was behind their animosity towards each other was that Mostel resented Robbins for testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee and giving them names of people who were alleged communists. 

Early in its life, the book for the musical was titled “Tevye” because it was based on short stories about this character by author Sholem Aleichem; specifically, the inspiration was the story titled, “Tevye and His Daughters”.  As the play developed, it was later re-titled “Fiddler On The Roof”, based on a 1912 painting by Marc Chagall called “The Fiddler”. Sheldon Harnick was the composer and lyricist of the songs in “Fiddler On The Roof”; he said that if anyone ever read Aleichem’s stories, they would realize that Harnick “borrowed” many of his lyrics directly from Aleichem’s own language in the various tales about Tevye.             

Review

This passion project by director/producer Max Lewkowicz is informative for people who have enjoyed “Fiddler” in various forms over the years, even if you only have a passing familiarity with the play, movie or songs.  While it contains a great deal of talking heads combined with old footage and photographs, where you get drawn into the documentary is when Lin-Manuel Miranda appears; he manages to modernize it a bit (he appeared in a stage production as a schoolboy) and also conducts some on-screen interviews with one of the creators of the original musical.  His interest and enthusiasm can make this more palatable for younger audiences. 

One thing that’s somewhat curious is the fact that there is a writing credit.  There aren’t too many documentaries around where you will see a writing credit.  Presumably, this refers to the voice-over narration that is used in certain segments rather than the interviews themselves.  This, however, must be done after the fact – until you have thoroughly researched the subject of the documentary, you won’t know what to write or why it needs to be written.  Obviously, this differs from feature films in the sense that the writing is typically done prior to the commencement of the shooting. Depending on the time and/or budget, documentaries can sometimes develop their narration during the editing process (and are occasionally improvised rather than formally written). 

Following the screening there was an interview with the filmmakers, Lewkowicz and his co-writer Valerie Thomas.  Thomas said that the documentary began with talking to Harnik about how the musical came to be; they then started filming him about three and a half years ago because he had so much information and was a terrific storyteller.  Lewkowicz observed that the story of hatred for someone’s race/religion is sadly one that still resonates to this day, citing the recent mass shootings over the past weekend as an example.  Originally from Montreal, Lewkowicz said that his first experience with “Fiddler” was the movie version which he saw as a boy; it wasn’t until he saw the Broadway version a decade later that he had an emotional reaction to it because he is the son of a Holocaust survivor.       

IMDB