'The Chosen Ones' are coming to a theater near you. That is, if the theater near you happens to be hosting a Jewish film festival. According to the promo for the film posted on the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (I miss San Fran)..."Music is a calling, divine or otherwise. For some the calling is entirely secular, for others it is profoundly spiritual, but all the talented young musicians featured in Wendla Nolle's documentary The Chosen Ones feel deeply and undeniably the intertwining of the music they make and their religious experience."
I haven't seen the film yet and was really excited about it until I saw this review on the SFist website:
"...Tooth-grindingly frustrating! [The producer's] complete lack of any background in the subject drove us CRAZY. Why doesn't [the producer] seem to know anything about Judaism or Jewish history if she's so interested in learning how faith informs popular music (as she repeated on the voice over fifty bazillion times)? For instance, she seems startled to hear that a member of a Jewish acoustic-folk band she interviews doesn't buy German products. What could they possibly have against Germans?
And who were these guys? What did any of these musicians have in common besides being Jewish? Why didn't she translate any of the Hebrew lyrics? Why even make this movie if no one had anything interesting to say about their faith and music (beyond "I live in two worlds")? And why didn't she tell anyone any of the names of any of the bands? ..."
Sigh. I'll still go see "The Chosen" if it comes to Detroit or Ann Arbor, but my expectations have dropped a bit.
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