A Stranger Among Us

Infobox Film
name = A Stranger Among Us


caption =
director = Sidney Lumet
producer = Steve Golin
Howard Rosenman
Sigurjón Sighvatsson
writer = Robert J. Avrech
starring = Melanie Griffith
John Pankow
Eric Thal
Tracy Pollan
Lee Richardson
music = Jerry Bock
cinematography = Andrzej Bartkowiak
editing = Andrew Mondshein
distributor = Buena Vista Pictures
released = July 17, 1992
runtime = 109 min.
country = United States
awards =
language = English
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id = 1:47204
imdb_id = 0105483

"A Stranger Among Us" is a movie directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Melanie Griffith, released in 1992. It tells the story of an undercover policewoman's experiences in a Hasidic Jewish community.

It is often cited as one of Lumet's two failures of the 1990s, the other being Guilty as Sin (1993). Despite the poor reviews suffered by both these films, Lumet received the 1993 D. W. Griffith Award of the Directors Guild of America. Some of the criticism of "A Stranger Among Us" is based on comparisons with the Oscar-winning film "Witness", which has a superficially similar plot. Similarly, Lumet's earlier film "Fail-Safe" was unfavourably compared to "Dr Strangelove", but in that case both films have subsequently achieved cult status. Griffith's performance in the lead role has also been heavily criticised.

Plot

In the film, Emily Eden (Griffith), is a hardened homicide detective. She goes undercover to investigate the murder of a diamond-cutter. To do so, she lives with the family of the Hasidic rebbe, an elderly Holocaust survivor who is revered for his wisdom and compassion. He says to her,

"You and I have something in common: We are both intimately familiar with evil. It does something to your soul."

While living with the rebbe's family, she takes a liking to his son, Ariel, a young man who works as a diamond-cutter but teaches in the yeshiva and is expected to follow his father as the next rebbe. Ariel doesn't allow himself to be intimate with her. He is waiting for his intended, or beshert, the daughter of a Paris rebbe whom he has not actually met. They are the subjects of an arranged marriage, but he believes that she is his ideal soulmate, chosen by God.

He is also studying the Kabbalah, which is regarded as rather daring for a man under forty.

The crisis of the film is when Emily finds out that the "inside man" in the murder plot is the rebbe's adopted daughter, Mara, who had been living a disorderly life until the future murder victim, Yaakov Klausman, had introduced her to the rebbe. Afterwards, she had joined the community as a "baalat tshuva," "one who has returned," and followed their rules, but a person from her dark past approached her and she let him into the Diamond Center to rob Yaakov of diamonds worth about $750,000, and incidentally kill him. This is all Emily needs to solve the case and arrest Mara, but when returning to the rebbe's home with Ariel finds Mara has taken the rebbe's daughter hostage. After an attempt to negotiate, Mara knocks out Emily, and Ariel shoots Mara with Emily's gun.

The film ends with the wedding of Ariel and his beshert, Shayna Singer, which Emily watches from a distance.

External links

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