Solomon and Gaenor
UK 1998
Reviewed by Simon Louvish
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
In a small village in the Welsh valleys, around 1911, a young Jewish peddler (or 'pacman') named Solomon meets Gaenor, the eldest daughter of a local family of mineworkers. There is an instant attraction between them. Gaenor doesn't realise Solomon is Jewish and calling himself Sam he pretends to be a Christian from across the valley. Solomon's parents Isaac and Rezl run a pawnshop-drapery. Smitten by Gaenor, Solomon makes her a dress, and soon they become lovers.
Gaenor asks to meet Solomon's parents, but he cannot now reveal his Jewish faith. The village is embroiled in an industrial dispute with the mine's owners, and both Gaenor's father and her brother Crad are involved in the miners' response. Gaenor's world is shattered when her new fiancé Noah denounces her in the chapel as a fornicator, pregnant by a stranger. She is put under the care of her family, and will be taken to her distant aunt to give birth after which she'll be forced to give up her baby. Gaenor tracks down her lover's home and, discovering his Jewishness, tries to speak to his parents, but they cannot accept that the child she is carrying is their grandchild.
As industrial unrest and poverty increase in the valley the hotheads march on Jewish shops, accusing the Jews of enriching themselves at their expense. Isaac and Rezl's shop is razed, and they have to seek shelter elsewhere. Isaac warns Solomon, in the midst of the unrest, that if he persists in seeing the gentile girl he will be disowned. Solomon nevertheless tries to see Gaenor, and is beaten severely by Crad. Refusing to give up on Gaenor, Solomon finds out her whereabouts and treks, bleeding, through snow and storm, across the valley, to the remote farmhouse where she is confined. Reunited, they perform their own Jewish wedding together but he dies in her arms. That same night Gaenor gives birth to her child. Gaenor is taken to a chapel where she has to give up her baby. Idris and Crad transport Solomon's coffin back to the valleys.
Review
Set before World War I, in a period of raw industrial conflict, Paul Morrison's film focuses on two communities at the bottom of Britain's class hierarchies, whose proximity in harsh economic circumstances drives them to hostility. The Jewish migrants who came to England, Scotland and Wales at the turn of the twentieth century were fleeing hardship and persecution in Europe, much as today's developing-world migrants seek asylum in what they hope will be a tolerant place. But for a younger generation, represented here by Solomon and Gaenor, the rigid faiths of both communities make building an individual bridge all but impossible.
Solomon and Gaenor is impeccable in its liberal intentions - respectably produced, nicely photographed, reasonably well acted in most cases - and appeared to induce a proper modicum of cathartic tears at the screening I attended. It is courageous in taking on a less than entertaining prospect: the self-destructive dourness both of the chapel-ridden Welsh and the law-ridden Orthodox Jewish families whose very identity is formed by their respective separation from the wider world. In one poignant scene Solomon and Gaenor's Welsh family exchange well-memorised Biblical quotations. Both communities derive their faith from the same source, but this is not enough to bring them together.
However, the movie is unable to escape from the conventions of its own filmic heritage. Despite the protestations of the director and producers that they didn't wish to make a typical BBC-type period piece, this is exactly what the film most resembles. Like many of the current crop of Lottery-funded and television-backed movies, Solomon and Gaenor appears (by choice or necessity) to have followed the prevailing formulas beloved of media commissioners, with predictably bland results. There is little evidence of directorial flair which would bring the plodding script to life. What the film lacks most is a darker subtext below the surface of the conventional craft.
Ioan Gruffudd makes an attractive lead, but neither script nor direction appears to have considered a different slant on his doomed amour. In the context of the period, as a Jew who seduces a gentile girl without revealing his true identity, he has in fact set her up for ruination in her own prejudiced society. But the film only sees his tragic destiny, not his internal flaws. (Or does he die for his sins? Perhaps there is more of the Orthodox spirit here after all.)
Much better and more ambivalent is Mark Lewis Jones as Gaenor's brother Crad, a brooding hulk of a man visibly torn up by his repressed rage as a worker subject to the whims of distant bosses, searching for scapegoats among the closest strangers. Nia Roberts as Gaenor gives a moving performance within the limits of the stereotyped victim supplied to her by the script, and David Horovitch as Solomon's father achieves a melancholy dignity. But Maureen Lipman should be banned from playing Jewish mothers until at least 2010.
Credits
- Producer
- Sheryl Crown
- Screenplay
- Paul Morrison
- Director of Photography
- Nina Kellgren
- Editor
- Kant Pan
- Production Designer
- Hayden Pearce
- Music
- Ilona Sekacz
- ©S4C and APT Film and Television Limited
- Production Companies
- S4C and Film Four with The Arts Council of England and The Arts Council of Wales present an APT Film and Television production in association with September Films
- For S4C and Film Four
- Supported by the National Lottery through The Arts Councils of England and Wales
- Executive Producers
- David Green
- Andy Porter
- Line Producer
- Maurice Hunter
- For September Films
- Fiona Alderson
- Elaine Day
- Production Co-ordinator
- Menna Jones
- Location Manager
- Bryan Moses
- Post-production Supervisor
- Chris Nixon
- Welsh Language Associate Director
- Bethan Eames
- Assistant Directors
- Howard Arundel
- Rhian Williams
- Nerys Phillips
- Jonathan Hunter
- 2nd Unit:
- Jon Williams
- Continuity
- Llinos Wyn Jones
- Casting Director
- Joan McCann
- Script Editors
- English:
- Claire Alan
- Welsh Language:
- Gruffudd Jones
- 2nd Unit Cameramen
- Peter Thornton
- Alan Stewart
- 2nd Unit Steadicam Cameraman
- Paul Edwards
- Special Effects
- Richard Reeve
- Art Director
- Frazer Pearce
- Costume Designer
- Maxine Brown
- Wardrobe Mistress
- Vicki Page
- Make-up Designer
- Gill Rees
- Prosthetic Make-up Effects
- Michael Mustafi
- Titles/Opticals
- GSE
- Music Recording
- Gerry O'Riordan
- Sound Recordist
- Richard Dyer
- Dubbing Mixer
- Adrian Rhodes
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Danny Longhurst
- Sound Editors
- Pat Boxshall
- Jennie Evans
- Yiddish Consultant
- Barry Davis
- Fight Arranger
- Andy Bradford
- Cast
- Ioan Gruffudd
- Solomon
- Nia Roberts
- Gaenor
- Sue Jones Davies
- Gwen
- William Thomas
- Idris
- Mark Lewis Jones
- Crad
- Maureen Lipman
- Rezl
- David Horovitch
- Isaac
- Bethan Ellis Owen
- Bronwen
- Adam Jenkins
- Thomas
- Cyril Shaps
- Ephraim
- Daniel Kaye
- Philip
- Elliot Cantor
- Benjamin
- Steffan Rhodri
- Noah Jones
- Emyr Wyn
- Reverend Roberts
- Julian Lewis Jones
- Wyn
- Arwyn Davies
- Huw
- Dai Morgan
- Geraint
- Rhys Evans
- Rhys
- Helen Griffin
- Aunt Myfanwy
- Gwyn Vaughan Jones
- Trefor Lloyd
- Alan Schwartz
- Uncle Mennasseh
- Anne Sessions
- Aunt Sadie
- Olivia Simova
- Naomi
- Barry Davis
- Mannie Silvergilt
- Rabbi Daniel Levy
- Rabbi Wolfe
- Derek Smith
- Jewish man
- Jane Manuel
- Jewish woman
- Daniel Pruchnie
- Jewish child
- Ri Richards
- glass woman
- Gill Griffiths
- woman 1
- Manon Eames
- Welsh woman at door
- Dafydd Wyn Roberts
- old tramp
- Ceri Evans
- Ceridwen
- Huw Emlyn
- Alun, barman
- Winston Evans
- postman
- Siôn Hopkins
- Sleepy John
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Film Four Distributors
- 9,337 feet
- 103 minutes 45 seconds
- Dolby
- Colour by
- DeLuxe