Saturday, September 04, 2010

"Arranged" the Movie

Carol and I viewed this via Netflix download last night. It had been recommended by several of our Christian friends (but not a Christian anywhere in it - imagine that - except perhaps for the blind Puerto Rican boy and his mom). We recommend it now, too.

ARRANGED centers on the friendship between an Orthodox Jewish woman and a Muslim woman who meet as first-year teachers at a public school in Brooklyn. Over the course of the year they learn they share much in common - not least of which is that they are both going through the process of arranged marriages

-from the plot description at the IMDb link above.

There were all sort of interesting aspects of this movie, but one I will mention is how modest the two young women were about their hair. The Muslim woman wore her hair covered and the Jewish woman wore her hair pinned up or in a braid. On the few occasions when one saw them in the film with their hair down (always at home among family members, except in one extraordinary case), these already attractive women were transformed into absolutely beautiful women. I'm sure there were some cinematic tricks being played here, but I also wondered this: had my mental picture of these women in their public appearance been fixed early in the movie, so that when I saw them later with their hair down I could not help but find their full beauty stunning? Is this, after all, how God intends feminine modesty to work?

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