Originally a stage musical, Fiddler on the Roof was released in 1971 already a success. I like musicals, don’t get me wrong, but this nearly-three-hour movie is the only musical that’s this long that I can tolerate. The Sound of Music? I’ll watch it if I’m being held at gunpoint. My Fair Lady? Eww. Paint Your Wagon? Double eww. But Fiddler on the Roof? That one just flies on by. The music is great, sure, but really it’s a genuinely good story set in a Jewish town in Tsarist Russia about a poor man who struggles to marry off his five daughters.

Tevye is a Jewish milkman in the town of Anatevka. He explains to the audience that danger is all around his Jewish brethren as they’re surrounded by those hostile to them and the only way they can cope is to stick hard to their traditions. Tevye meets Perchik, a student of modern thought, and invites him to live with his family providing he tutors his daughters. The town matchmaker matches Tzeitel, Tevye’s oldest daughter, to marry a wealthy butcher with the coolest name in town: Lazar Wolf. However, Tzeitel is in love with the tailor, Motel, and so Tevye breaks tradition and allows Tzeitel to marry Motel, much to Lazar Wolf’s embarrassment. At the wedding, the guests argue over whether girls should be allowed to choose their husbands. Perchik throws in his two cents and also crosses an imaginary barrier between the men and women guests to ask Tevye’s daughter, Hodel, to dance. As the wedding finally becomes a joyful occasion, a group of nearby gentiles come to the wedding and begin to riot. Later, Perchik decides to join the revolution, but before he goes, he and Hodel agree to marry. They tell Tevye, and he is furious that they did not ask permission before deciding, but he softens after understanding their love for one another.

Tevye finds the line he will not cross when his next daughter, Chava, asks permission to marry Fyedka, a young gentile. Tevye flat out refuses to condone the marriage as he believes Chava will be effectively walking away from the Jewish faith. Chava and Fyedka elope anyway, in the Russian Orthodox Church. Chava returns ask forgiveness and a blessing on her union, but Tevye rejects her. Later, the entire Jewish population of Anatevka is notified they have three days to pack up their things and leave. They accept their fate and some make their way for the United States, some to Israel, and beyond. A fiddler who had been on the roof for metaphorical purposes is invited by Tevye to join them.

Fiddler on the Roof is a product of the counterculture movement that emphasized new over tradition and encouraged the youth to make their own decisions instead of relying on the wisdom of the aged. Tevye sits in the balance. He puts more stock in young love than tradition allows, but he refuses to allow his family to completely break from that tradition. I imagine that’s a hard place to be for any parent, but especially a father to daughters. I’d say that’s why I love it so much, but I’ve loved it for years. Instead, I’ll say it’s because of the great songs, particularly, “If I Were a Rich Man”, and Topol’s second greatest performance as Tevye, behind his role in Flash Gordon.

Bonus Review: Days of Heaven

Terrence Malick released his first film in 1973. The movie, Badlands, was a fictional retelling of the Charles Starkweather killings across the Great Plains in 1958. It’s a slow, dreamy fairy tale with no explanation for the reasoning behind the murders, and it was an emphatic debut. His next film, Days of Heaven, was proof that the filmmaking style behind Badlands wasn’t a fluke. Days of Heaven is light on story. In 1916, Bill, his girlfriend, Abby, and his sister, Linda, leave Chicago for the Texas Panhandle after Bill kills his boss at a steel mill. They get work at a farm where the owner is dying with an unnamed disease. Bill and Abby claim to be brother and sister to avoid scandal, and, thinking that she’s single, the farmer shows affection for Abby. Bill convinces Abby to marry the farmer, knowing he will die soon, so they can inherit his wealth. The farmer’s health maintains and as time goes on, Abby starts to fall in love with him. A locust swarm destroys the farmer’s wheat fields around the time he discovers the true nature of Bill and Abby’s relationship.

Days of Heaven was filmed almost entirely at golden hour – that time around both sunrise and sundown where the sun itself is not actually visible but its light splays the sky with beautiful hues of red, orange and yellow. Golden hour is a misnomer, unless you count the two as one, because it’s really around 20-30 minutes before the sun comes up or after it goes down. To film entirely at Golden hour means to get a max of one hour each day for exterior shots. This caused a prolonging in the project to the point where some of the crew quit and others had to leave because of other commitments, including Nestor Almendros, the cinematographer. On top of all of that, at the end of filming, the movie took another two years to edit because there wasn’t enough footage that flowed well together. To make it flow better, Malick added narration throughout the film from Linda. The production was so stressful that Terrence Malick did not make another film for twenty years.