Actress Carol Kane gets bat mitzvah in new film ‘Between the Temples’

Even on Zoom, her voice sounds like no one else’s.

That’s because she’s Carol Kane, the iconic actress who is currently starring in Nate Silver’s Between the Temples, which opens on August 23 in theaters around the US.

Sitting for a Zoom chat with Silver (who is not to be confused with the election pundit of the same name), Kane, 72, asks, when she hears that I am from Israel, “Let me just ask: Are you actually in Jerusalem?”

Before I can answer, for a moment I can’t believe I am really speaking to this actress whose appealing presence and distinctive voice – I’m struggling for the words to describe it, and I think of “quavering” and “fluttering,” but both words are inadequate – made her an instant success when she began acting in the early 70s.

“Do you love it, or what?” she asks. I feel for a moment I’m in a movie with her. If only!Kane has had an unusual career. She is the only actress to have received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for a role in Yiddish, in Joan Micklin Silver’s Hester Street.

She has had key roles in some of the greatest movies of the 20th century, playing Woody Allen’s first wife, Allison Porchnik, in Annie Hall – where she wins him over with the line, “I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype” – and Dog Day Afternoon, where she bonds with bank robbers Al Pacino and John Cazale. Other notable roles among Kane’s long filmography include The Princess Bride, Scrooged, The Last Detail, and Carnal Knowledge.

But out of all her roles, she is probably best known for the TV series Taxi, where she played Simka Gravas, the wife from back home of Latka Gravas, the immigrant mechanic from an unnamed Eastern European country who was portrayed by the legendary Andy Kaufman. 

When I tell them that as soon as I saw that Between the Temples was showing at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, last year, I made sure to see it – out of all the hundreds of movies showing – Kane replies, like a first-time actress, “I’m shocked and grateful.”

The story the movie tells

The touching, funny movie tells the story of Ben (Jason Schwartzman), a depressed cantor in upstate New York mourning the death of his novelist wife and living with his mothers (Caroline Aaron and Dolly De Leon). His life turns around when he reconnects with his former music teacher, Carla (Kane), who wants him to prepare her for the bat mitzvah she missed out on. The relationship that develops between them transforms both their lives.

I ask Kane if she had a bat mitzvah, and she says, “No, we weren’t observant at all. We just did the little fun things like Hanukkah candles... The most I learned about it was in order to prepare for Hester Street and to play this Orthodox Jewish woman.”

She drew some of the inspiration for her character from her music teacher mother, who is still composing and teaching music at the age of 97.

Kane initially wanted to make the movie so she could work with Jason Schwartzman, but she said that seeing the movies Silver made about his mother, including Cutting My Mother, a docuseries that touches on his mother’s decision to have a late-in-life bat mitzvah, was part of a “smorgasbord of reasons why this was what I wanted to be in this.”

They both laugh when I say I saw the movie described as a “trau-medy,” a play on the word “dramedy,” which is used to describe a drama/comedy. “I think it was Chris [C. Mason Wells], my co-writer, who coined that,” says Silver. “He’s good with words.”

Although Kane said she originally saw herself as a dramatic actress, “I was lucky enough to get some brilliant writing [in comic roles], starting with Taxi. That writing was so brilliant that sometimes I would think, ‘I’ll pay them to get to say this line.’” She quotes one of her funniest lines from the series” “Peel me like I grape so I can get outta here.”

Working with Kaufman was a treat, adding that contrary to rumors, Kaufman did not improvise his lines. “What was improvised was the language [a fictional language spoken in the Gravas’s home country] that Andy brought to his character, and I learned it from Andy. And that language was part of a character he had developed called Foreign Man, which he did in performance art; some people call it stand-up, but I call it performance art... He said it was the way like when you’re a little kid and you open your mouth and just speak Russian or Chinese; you make it up.”

Interestingly, she says, “We always had our lines in English. So we always knew what we were saying and what it meant and what the emotion was... But there were a few of Andy’s words that the writers were starting to know and repeat. There was ‘yaktibay,’ which was butt.”

Mixing pathos and laughter 

Between the Temples, which also has the mixture of laughs and pathos that characterize Taxi, makes strong allusions to the classic younger man/older woman films, The Graduate and Harold and Maude. “It was about these characters finding each other and connecting in an honest way,” Silver says. “They weren’t quite sure what they were feeling for each other, but they had this deep connection, whether it was romantic or not. But it was a deep enough connection to bring Jason’s character out of his funk and to bring Carol’s character into this religion.”

Having a leading lady as unique as Kane isn’t the only special thing about the movie. Nearly half of the songs on the soundtrack are classic Israeli tunes by beloved artists Arik Einstein, Matti Caspi, Boaz Sharabi, Shmulik Kraus, and others, and it’s virtually unheard of to find this kind of music in an American film, even if the director is Jewish. “

We wanted something like that Cat Stevens vibe from Harold and Maude or Simon and Garfunkel from The Graduate, and these songs felt like they were of a piece with those and it felt right for this movie,” Silver said. “And in our heads, it felt like maybe it was what Ben was listening to as a kid.”

ABOVE ALL, they say, it’s a love story. Speaking from the point of view of her character, Kane says, “For Carla, to find someone at this stage of my life, who respects my dream of having a bat mitzvah is life-changing. My son just breaks out laughing and thinks I’m nuts [when I tell him about it]. My parents wouldn’t let me have a bat mitzvah; my [late] husband wouldn’t let me; and so, in a certain sense, Ben is the first man in my life to really get me and let me be who I am, whoever that is.”

“Yes,” says Silver.  “I keep saying it’s a movie about hope in a hopeless time.”

We talk about whether the movie will get an Israeli release, and Kane is interested in my dog tag “Bring Them Home Now” necklace to remind people about the hostages held in Gaza.

“I hope it works out,” she says. I thank both of them and tell her how much I love her work.

“She’s the best,” says Silver.