Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 7, 2021

Actor Dave Davies, the star of ''The Vigil'', said he didn't succumb to stereotypes while playing a grief-stricken Jewish man in the horror movie.

''The Vigil'', which comes from debutante filmmaker Keith Thomas, is set in Brooklyn's ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jewish community.

It follows a man, named Yakov Ronen, who is tasked to sit as a Shomer, the ritualistic practice of looking after a dead body over the course of one night. But during the course of the night, he is targeted by a malevolent spirit known as a Mazzik.

Davies, who previously made appearances in movies such as ''The Big Short'', ''Logan'' and ''Greyhound'', said he instantly agreed to do the film when Thomas sent him the script.

The actor, however, soon realized that Yakov was not an easy character to play on screen.

''When I started really trying to live in the character of Yakov, it came with a number of difficulties. He is struggling and has mental health issues. He lives with a lot of guilt and fear. He comes from a culture that I didn't know and wasn't familiar with. ''I had to learn about it. Plus, he sounds very different to myself. He has an accent and English is not his first language. So all those things were the beginning of me trying to piece together who Yakov is. And over time trying to organically build this character,'' Davies told PTI in an interview.

The actor, who is in his early 30s, said he made sure his performance as Yakov didn't look like an impression. ''I never wanted to do an impression. I never want it to be copying something that I thought was how Yakov was supposed to sound. I wanted to build it organically so that Yakov had the luxury of being his own person, his own character. ''So I had to listen to a lot of people and how they sounded. And then I had to listen to a lot of people's stories and where they came from. It was over the course of about two months, probably of thinking about him all the time,'' Davies said.

The actor worked with a dialect coach to get accustomed to Yiddish, the language primarily used by the Hasidic Jews.

''Oftentimes, in films, you see a scene, where maybe two Russian characters will say hello to each other in Russian. And then for the sake of the audience, they'll finish the scene in English. ''And it was very important to me that was never the case. At any point, if it should have been in Yiddish, then it was in Yiddish.'' But the main challenge for Davies was to understand the mindset of a man, who is depressed and tormented by his past.

''Diving into Yakov's sense of loneliness was something that was really difficult for me to explore because I was living in an apartment that they put me up in and it was very isolated.

''So I was sitting alone in this apartment and was imagining things in corners. I was trying to get into the mindset of someone who is seeing things and who's afraid of their own health. And who's afraid of their own safety. And it was a very painful place to live in,'' he added.

''The Vigil'' comes at a time when filmmakers have started exploring different cultures to tell varied and fresh stories.

Films like ''Get Out'', Robert Eggers' ''The Witch'' and Ari Aster's ''Midsommer'' are products of this change.

Davies said he was glad that filmmakers are mining different cultures to tell diverse tales.

''I think the more cultures and the more human stories you have to explore, the better it is. What's really great about filmmaking and about art is it gives us the opportunity to share our experiences and live other people's experiences.

''And in that way, we understand each other better, which allows us to talk to people from across the world in extremely different cultures and understand each other a little bit more,'' he added.

''The Vigil'' is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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Wanted to build my character organically: Dave Davies on playing Hasidic Jew in 'The Vigil' - Devdiscourse

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