Ms Feldman is a remarkable young woman who left her ultraorthodox community, became a literary sensation in the US and eventually moved to Berlin. She was brought up to be a man's servant and a mother, was not educated, had to sneak read English literature in a NY neighborhood where Yiddish is obligatory. Married at 17, a mother at 19, she managed to convince her husband to move out of Williamsburg and to let her study literature in college and drive a car, and made a sensation publishing her memoir "Unorthodox". She continued to publish her works and, in her late twenties, she decided to get a divorce, take her son and move to Berlin, where she continues being a writer.
This is a miraculous yet plausible story I would have liked to watch.
Instead, in "Unorthodox" a la Netflix, loosely (emphasis on loosely) based on Ms Feldman's life, the heroine, Esty, flees her community at age 19, with practically no money, no education and no knowledge of the outside world whatsoever (I am surprised she found her way around the airport to begin with), goes to constantly sunny Berlin, becomes a homeless person, yet not only nothing bad happens to her, but she makes a bunch of new friends and meets a new lover on day one. Also, she proves to be a talented singer (actually singing with the voice of a well trained singer - miracle!) and gets a scholarship in a conservatoire where, by the way, noone speaks German.
All the above, including how much it pisses me when shows have no knowledge and no respect whatsoever for all the hard work singers put in training their voices - I bet you the actress has had at least three years of musical training), plus some pretty lame ideas like the Arab professor buying the jewish girl he just met a ham sandwich, make for a bad script which ruined this show for me.
On the plus side, the director did a good job, the actors playing members of the Satmar community gave good performances (the ones in Berlin much less so, maybe because they didn't act in their mother tongue), both Esty and Yanky were wonderful and the depiction of the way of life of the Satmars very interesting (assuming it is more accurate than Berlin-sunny-paradise-for-homeless-foreigners).
I still wish I had seen the real story.
Review of Unorthodox
