The Chosen

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When a child-stealing demon attaches itself to a little girl, her family is thrust into a battle against time in order to save the girl and send the demon back to hell.



NYTimes

The Chosen (1981)

'THE CHOSEN'

By JANET MASLIN

Published: April 30, 1982

''THE CHOSEN'' is careful to disarm its audience right away. It begins with a baseball warmup, as a team of Jewish schoolboys in Brooklyn prepares for a game. Along comes the opposition - a team of Hasidic Jews wearing side curls, austere clothing, heavy glasses and very sour, unfriendly expressions.

The first team is as put off as the audience initially must be; Hasidic Jews don't turn up in very many movies, and as sympathetic screen characters they don't turn up at all. When Woody Allen puts a Hasid into a film, it's strictly as a sight gag and nothing more. But in ''The Chosen,'' it immediately becomes apparent that the Hasidic characters, even if they're laughed at, will also have to be reckoned with. ''They should stick to praying,'' mutters somebody from the first team - but the Hasidim win the game.

''The Chosen,'' adapted from the novel by Chaim Potok, is about two Brooklyn Jewish families in the years immediately after World War II. The Malters are the more secular, a professor (Maximilian Schell) and his son, Reuven (Barry Miller), who meets Danny Saunders (Robby Benson) at the baseball game. Danny is the Hasidic son of Reb Saunders (Rod Steiger), and a stranger to most of the things that Reuven thinks familiar.

The growing friendship between the two boys is also the process by which Danny sees his first movie, wishes for his first pair of stylish eyeglasses, gets his first kiss (from a strange woman celebrating the news that the war is over) and begins dreaming of a life less cloistered than the one he is used to.

For Reuven, and for the viewer, Danny provides an introduction to the isolated world of the Hasidim, with its long silences and exceptionally strict protocol. Invited home by Danny to meet his father, Reuven finds himself assiduously grilled in matters of Jewish law and history.

Once he passes the Reb's inspection, though, Reuven is made welcome in the Saunders family, participating in celebrations and meals and group discussions. Throughout all this, Reuven also maintains his distance, attending college with a group of Jewish friends who are less sympathetic to the Hasidic way of life. ''Hasidim!'' one such friend snorts. ''Hasidim, but I don't believe 'em,'' jokes another.

''The Chosen'' is partly about how these two sons of distinguished papas become friends and how their fathers' subsequent ideological disagreement (Professor Malter's Zionism is anathema to Reb Saunders) interferes with the friendship. It also describes the Hasidic culture through Danny and his reactions to the secular world, and this is what it does best.

Robby Benson, who might not be expected to be the quiet surprise of a movie like this one, nevertheless makes a fine impression as Danny. He is eager without being overeager, and full of a gentle inquisitiveness that can't help but win the audience's sympathy. He is also, and this is the one weak spot in the performance, outfitted with side curls that change from shot to shot, sometimes looking tightly wound and sometimes looking droopy. Another hair problem in the film afflicts Mr. Steiger, who sports such a long and luxuriant beard that he seems to be speaking through a fluffy rug.

Mr. Steiger speaks with a great sonorousness and a slow, rolling delivery that is more numbing than prepossessing. His scenes tend to be a bit more overwhelming than is necessary, and Jeremy Paul Kagan, the director, intensifies this so greatly that he even, at one point, allows Mr. Steiger to dance in slow motion. Among the other principals, Mr. Miller and Mr. Schell are very good in their way, much more naturalistic and much more quietly convincing. But the performances are uniformly guarded and cool, and the story becomes less involving than it might be. The friendship between Danny and Reuven is presented carefully enough, but it doesn't have much warmth.

What ''The Chosen'' lacks in dramatic excitement, it tries hard to make up for in atmosphere. Anyone interested in the time and place of this story will find a wealth of period details in the movie, all of them noticeable but none of them instrusive. Mr. Kagan, who also directed ''Heroes'' and ''The Big Fix,'' locates and illustrates his story better than he tells it. Certainly, this is a gently evocative movie, with its glimpses of a strict and self-contained culture, and its memories of a time gone by.

''The Chosen'' is rated PG (''Parental Guidance Suggested''). It contains brief but graphic footage of the liberation of concentration-camp inmates after World War II.

A Time Gone By

THE CHOSEN, directed by Jeremy Paul Kagan; screenplay by Edwin Gordon, based on the novel by Chaim Potok; director of photography, Ar- thur Ornitz; edited by David Garfield; music by Elmer Bernstein; produced by Edie and Ely Landau; an Analysis Film release. At the Cinema 3, 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, and Beekman, Second Avenue and 65th Street. Run- ning time: 108 minutes. This film is rated PG. 

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