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A14 PEOPLE / ARTS
Thursday 22 augusT 2024
Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane forge an unlikely friendship in

‘Between the Temples’

By LINDSEY BAHR who is,’” Schwartzman said.
AP Film Writer “These people are moment
Carol Kane’s name came to moment, and they are
to filmmaker Nathan Silver walking each other to this
in a fever dream. next door, and they could
He’d come down with a go through it together.
case of COVID-19 while They could not.
trying to get his new film Whatever. But it’s like it’s
together. The story he and just this moment where
co-writer C. Mason Wells they are each other’s es-
envisioned was about an corts, and it’s essential that
unlikely friendship between they are.”
a recently widowed can- Although it’s set in a kind
tor in a depressive funk and of bleak-looking small town
an older woman, his former in the dead of winter, Sil-
grade school music teach- ver wanted the movie to
er, who wants to study for a evoke Carla’s spirit.
bat mitzvah. “HD is inherently cold. Film is
Ben, the cantor who can warm and alive,” Silver said.
no longer sing, would be “We wanted it to have that
Jason Schwartzman. Carla, warmth, her sensibility to
who was based on the film- take over the film, for it to
maker’s own mother, was feel like her because she’s
more of an enigma. And This image released by Sony Pictures Classics shows Jason Schwartzman, left, and Carol Kane in bringing this warmth to this
then came a fit of inspira- a scene from “Between the Temples.” very cold present, this de-
tion in that fateful, feverish Associated Press pression that Jason’s char-
sleep.“Everyone was like, we did. That made it pos- another at the perfect some brightness in the fu- acter is going through.”
‘of course it’s her,’” Silver sible. It made it, dare I say, time, over mudslides at the ture.” Silver’s references are vast
said in a recent interview almost easy because it was local bar. In that spirit, “Between the and deep: 1970s soviet film-
with The Associated Press. sort of natural to talk to Focusing their lives in and Temples” is also not eas- makers like Kira Muratova
Though the two actors had each other.” around Judaism allowed ily categorizable as a May- and Larisa Shepitko, the
never worked together “ Between the Temples Silver to embrace the December romance ev- folk singer Sibylle Baier, and
before (“In my mind we “ opens in theaters this beauty of the question. eryone wanted to keep everything from Howard
had,” Kane laughed), they week. A breakout from this “I feel like these characters that line a little blurry. But Hawks’ “Bringing Up Baby”
had an immediate rapport year’s Sundance Film Fes- are questioning everything it is, Silver said, “a May-De- to Maren Ade’s “Toni Erd-
and comfort with one an- tival, Sony Pictures Clas- in their lives,” Silver said. cember connection.” That mann” helped inform vari-
other transcending even sics swooped in to acquire “It’s about celebrating that reminded Schwartzman of ous aspects of “Between
the awkward stillness of a the distribution rights after idea that you’re not taking something his mother said the Temples.” One that
group Zoom session. And it received near-universal the reality that you’re hand- to him about a breakup proved especially useful to
that was when he knew praise for its performances ed as the reality you need years ago. Schwartzman was David
they really had a movie. and its unique tone and to live. I think that no matter “She said, ‘sometimes we Berman, the late poet and
“I had such a feeling about style: A screwball comedy how despairing things are can meet someone, and indie rock musician of the
Jason,” said Kane. “We with a 1970s vibe, that’s wry in your life or in the world, they may not be right for Silver Jews and the Purple
had such a trust in each and life-affirming, about you have to have this faith us, but they walk us down Mountains, known for his
other. Lord knows why, but two lost souls who find one in the absurd, that there is the aisle to the next person, brilliant lyrics. q

Book Review: In ‘The Slow Road North,’ a New York

writer finds solace in a Northern Irish town

By MAE ANDERSON several years, she decides to attend a creative writing
The Associated Press program in Belfast in 2019. She soon settles in Glenarm, a
Can what looks like running away from grief and sadness coastal town north of Belfast.
actually be a way to heal? Facing loads of skepticism from her friends wondering
In “The Slow Road North,” writer Rosie Schaap chronicles why she would give up her perfect Brooklyn apartment,
her circuitous route from spending most of her life as a from Irish neighbors wondering why an American would
dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker to finding herself settling move to Glenarm, and even her own fear that she might
down far away in a small town in Northern Ireland. be running away from her problems Schaap dedicates
Schaap, an established journalist, teacher and occa- herself to becoming involved with Glenarm’s communi-
sional bartender in Brooklyn with a cozy apartment she’d ty. She finds solace in the people, the countryside, and
lived in for decades, seemed set as a New York lifer. establishes her place among new friends. She even em-
But she is dealt a crushing loss when her husband dies of barks on a new love.
cancer in 2010, leaving her a widow at 39. A little more Peppering her own story with snippets of Irish poetry,
than a year later, her mother, with whom she had a com- folktales, colorful descriptions of small-town characters,
This cover image released
by Mariner Books shows “The plicated relationship, dies, too. Faced with conflicted and the history of Irish travesties like the potato famine
Slow Road North: How I Found feelings that she isn’t dealing with her grief in the “right” of the 1800s and the later decades of the sectarian con-
Peace in an Improbable way, she begins to ache for change. flict known as The Troubles, Schaap’s memoir details how
Country” by Rosie Schaap. Schapp has a longtime fascination with Ireland and its Glenarm and Northern Ireland’s nuanced relationship
Associated Press poets, writers and history, and after returning there over with grief helps her face her own.q