Unorthodox

UNORTHODOX - NETFLIX

Unorthodox, NETFLIX'S latest miniseries, is a somewhat satisfactory attempt at making a social drama that falters its journey to the end-point. There are, however, apparent points of contention that ultimately sour the aftertaste of moments of brilliance. 

These contentions are not visible to the naked eye during the first – and arguably best – parts of the show. In the beginning, all of the technical and creative elements work in a rather fundamental, yet harmonical way; they effectively grip the attention of viewers, demanding their full emotional investment towards the themes displayed. This triumph is short-lived. As the show progresses, these elements start to dissipate into their own individual directions, breaking the strings of any or all engagement.

The editing is the most noticeable element to dissipate the earliest, which goes from meaningful transitions and shots to randomly place one shot after another. It does so in an effort to keep up with the narrative structure of telling the story, which is presented in a back and forth – flash-back to flash-forward way. This issue could have easily been fixed if the showrunners had decided to go with a linear structure. This fragile attempt at stylistic additions to the narrative results in ruining the editing that could have been simplistic yet poignant. 

Another element that suffers a similar downfall is the music by Antonio Gambale, which goes from complimenting a scene by transferring the mood to overpowering it. At times this music is not even necessary, and a quieter environment would have given much weight to the character's words and expression; this, in effect, could have made the performance gut-punchingly real. When music is needed, it is way less vibrant than it needs to be, effectively killing all sense of build-up and pay-off to the dynamic emotions present during a particular scene. With that being said, not all the elements go through a downfall when they dissipate. Some actually improve on their individual workings, which unfortunately makes the decline in other areas even more noticeable.

The acting by the main leads, Shira Haas, Jeff Willbusch and Amit Rahav, though, only improves by every passing second, selling the audience on their character's personalities and relationships. Each character’s emotions can be tracked just by the actor's eye movements; in a sense, they create an aura of reality, a feat doing justice to the real story. These effective communications are the ones that help the social justice boat afloat to its very conclusion.

Another aspect that shows improvement is the cinematography by Wolfgang Thaler. Its brilliance is somewhat overshadowed by the poor editing choices, yet remains its saving grace at times of terrible boredom and creative frustrations. Unfortunately, despite the brilliance of the acting and cinematography, there is a consequential failure stemming from the show's inability to combine these efforts cohesively till the end. 

If one was to analyse further into this particular situation, the result will always be in either of the two categories: The show is way too long or way too short. The former stems from the viewers who will find its more suspenseful scenes to be the show's biggest strength and would wish it to be 130 to 150-minutes long. Social thriller Uncut Gems effectively provides the danger and paranoia many young people in religious circles feel till this very day. The later conclusion is provided by the viewers who are in awe of its characters and settings; it could be of the same length as the Toni Collete and Kaitlyn Dever starring masterpiece, Unbelievable. The emotions and relationships of the characters would then have more open space to brew and sprout over the audience. 

Unfortunately, to see either of the far better versions of the show, the viewer would have to travel to an alternate dimension. In this one, it is possibly the worst version conceivable. Akin to the 2018 BBC miniseries Collateral, it ultimately loses any after-effect it could have had on the viewer, due to overlapping issues that eventually result in a forgetful product. 

UNORTHODOX is streaming exclusively on NETFLIX March 26th