Keeping the Faith

Written by: Stuart Blumberg Starring: Edward Norton, Ben Stiller, Jenna Elfman, Anne Bancroft, Eli Wallach, Ron Rifkin, Milos Forman

Easily the freshest film of the year so far, “Keeping the Faith” is that rarity: a romantic comedy that is both romantic and funny. Directed with warmth and wit by Norton (who also stars), the movie swings. It sets up its own hip rhythm, and we are swept up from the start. A series of deftly sketched vignettes opens the movie and establishes the premise: Jake (Stiller), Brian (Norton) and Anna (Elfman) are best friends in grammar school. Anna moves away, but Jake and Brian always remember her. Flash forward 20 years or so; Jake has become a rabbi, Brian a priest, but they remain best friends. Anna, now a high-powered executive living in California, re-enters their lives, and questions of faith, love, and friendship arise. In the movie’s admittedly idealized scenario, Jake and Brian are a new breed of clergy. They want to shake up the establishment, bring religion to their congregations in a way that holds meaning in the modern world. The people respond to their approach, and they become local celebrities, but they never stop being regular guys.

They walk the neighborhood in their leather jackets and shades and play pickup basketball at the local court (where the other regulars call them the “God Squad”). They have respect for each other’s faiths and are not averse to a bit of stagecraft if it helps bring in the crowds. They even work together to set up a cross-denominational karaoke club. (It is so appealing a notion, in fact--this harmony between faiths--that it almost makes us forget that Jews and Christians have killed each other for millennia, and religious strife wracks the planet still. But then, this is not a theological tract.) Still, the scenes of Jake and Brian at work do not shy away from what their mission is. They preach the faith--albeit with a modernist twist--and it is this underlying seriousness that gives the film its foundation. The undercurrent of true belief raises the movie above the level of simple, frothy entertainment. Jake and Brian crack jokes, yes, but it is in the service of trying to express what they truly believe, and to make others believe it too, in a way that is accessible and non-threatening. It almost makes you want to take up religion again. The movie has fun with religion, but it doesn’t make fun of religion, and therein lies a crucial difference.

It even treats with respect the notion that tradition and custom--as dull as it may seem to the new generation--are a large part of what draws people to religion in the first place. When Anna (a truly luminous Elfman, who leaves behind the trappings of her Dharma TV character) shows up, the two men are sorely tested. As the three of them enjoy the playground that is New York (and Manhattan, by the way, hasn’t looked so lustrous and appealing since the heyday of Woody Allen), both Jake and Brian fall in love with Anna, who in turn falls in love with Jake. Jake, mindful of his role in the community, wrestles with the implications of his love for a woman who is not Jewish (especially since his brother has been estranged from his mother since marrying a Gentile). Brian must contend with his feelings for Anna, the kind of feelings he has never had to face since becoming a priest. Furthermore, Jake and Anna keep their affair a secret from Brian; when he finds out he feels betrayed, and the friends must find a way to reconnect. The two men’s struggle to resolve these conflicts is the emotional center of the story.

And that is why, as good as the actors are, the true star of the film is the script. It is funny, to be sure, with equal shares of cerebral humor and plain slapstick (it even made me rethink my global opposition to voiceover narration), but Blumberg never forgets that he is raising serious questions about how people relate to each other. It is also a remarkably generous script; it gives good, memorable bits to even the supporting players: Jake’s mother (a terrific Bancroft), a senior priest who counsels Brian (director Milos Forman, in a nice cameo), a senior rabbi who counsels Jake (Wallach), the bartender to whom Brian is telling his tale of woe (Brian George, whom many will recognize as Babu from the TV show “Seinfeld”), even Don, the karaoke machine salesman (Ken Leung) and T-Bone (Brian Anthony Wilson), a guard at Anna’s office building. Such generosity of spirit may be too good to be true, but it infuses the whole movie, making it a spiritual fable we can all enjoy. In the best sense of the word, “Keeping the Faith” has soul. (5/6/00)