Festival REGARD presents the filmmakers of the Canadian Grand Prize Competition. The Mohel directed by Charles Walh, is one of them and was screened within the program 2 of the official competition.
REGARD : What inspired you to write and direct The Mohel?
Charles: I was at a screening sitting next to a Jewish-Israeli filmmaker. We got to know each other during a festival, and I explained to him how I grew up in a large city, but I had moved to a smaller city with a small Jewish population. I told him some of the challenges that come with that. I'm not a very deeply religious person, but I still follow some traditions and it is hard in a small community.
One story that came up was how, if you have a son and need to do a brit milah, you need to fly in the Mohel because there aren't any in Atlantic Canada. Whereas, coming from Toronto, they're everywhere. That story started spilling into many other stories, and by the end of the conversation, he was like, "Listen, you gotta make a movie about this." At first, I didn't want to make a movie about religion. I didn't want to ever do anything about religion because it's a little sensitive for many people. Still, the more I thought about the situation, I was like, "I've never really seen a film that takes the brit milah ceremony seriously."
When most people think of a Mohel or think of a brit milah, they think of the Seinfeld episode. Which is awesome, and it's hilarious, but it's always shown with humour in movies and never taken seriously. I thought it would be nice to approach a situation like this honestly because I hadn't seen it before. I also felt that through it, I could explore many themes that are at the forefront of my mind: Things like the often transactional nature of religion, how you are accepted by religion, how authority figures put expectations on you and if you don't meet them, the disappointment that comes from them. A big one, too, is the challenge of maintaining some of the beliefs instilled in you by people who may come from a different place, a different time, and try to live with those in a modern time.
REGARD : A lot of the film is centred on internal conflicts. How did you develop the emotional journey for the character?
Charles: I always saw the journey about a guy just trying to please everybody. He's a father for the first time, and then to have to put this ceremony together in the middle of that is pretty brain-frying, especially if you don't have a lot of support around you. He's trying to please his wife, he wants to make his mom happy, and he wants to make this rabbi happy. And of course, he wants his son also to be safe, taken care of, and be a part of the traditions he's in. A lot of the internal struggle comes from a guy just not wanting to make other people upset. Throughout the whole movie, he's a guy that is doing what he thinks is right. He thinks he's doing the right thing the entire way.
Once we get later in the film, we see that the rabbi didn't see it that way and rather than having him go very external with that, he still took that and internalized it until the very end. Had he externalized it at that moment, he might've ruined the day for everybody. And I don't think he wanted to ruin the day for his wife, for his mom or everyone there.
What's so crazy about religion, in general, is that he wants to be a part of it. He wants to be Jewish, and he wants his family to be part of it, and there's a struggle against him for really no reason, but then again, that's debatable too. There's a whole school of people that watch this movie, and they look at James, and they're like, "what did he expect?"
REGARD : Could you discuss the casting process?
Charles : Casting to me is number one. In terms of the film's execution, if the acting is not good, if you don't have the right people, it doesn't matter how pretty a picture is or how good it sounds; it's just not going to hit. I work very hard to find the right people. I made this film for a very modest amount of money, I got a small grant from an arts council, which allowed me to make the film, but I still had to use favours.
I knew I wouldn't be able to go to the traditional casting director route, I didn't have the resources to do it. I just started going through people I know in the business. A lot of it began with Kaelen [Ohm], who plays Lola in the film. I'd worked with her in my previous short film, Little Grey Bubbles, and she's so amazing in that. I sent her the script, and she loved the script and agreed to do it. She was in the middle of working on a Netflix series, so I had to call Netflix to free her up for a weekend, but they were great. It was all very smooth.
Next was James, and I looked at a lot of different people. Kaelen was the one who recommended Daniel Maslany. I knew Daniel from Murdoch Mysteries, but I didn't know his other work, so it was hard for me to picture him in the part initially. I was looking at him and a few other people, but then I started to look at more of Daniel's work outside of Murdoch, and I felt he had the right energy for [the part]. He seems like he's always thinking, weighing things in his mind. Kaelen put me in touch with Daniel. She sent the script to him and my previous film, and he liked both. We ended up connecting on the phone, and we spoke for a long time. By the end of the hour, I knew we had James, and it would work out. Thankfully with the shows he works on, we were also able to work out a schedule. There was a lot of schedule Tetris for this movie, but thankfully we made it work.
Beyond that, the rabbi is arguably the biggest character in the film. He swings the entire movie. That's the one I had the hardest time casting. I couldn't find anyone that I thought was right. I was starting to give up. And then one actor called me out of the blue, and he was like, "Hey, do you know Sam Rosenthal?" I didn't know Sam. But at the time, he was the creative director of a theatre here in Halifax. And [this actor was] like, "you should check him out. He's in a show tonight." I went to the show. When I saw him, he was nothing like how I pictured the part. He was a clean-shaven, very debonair guy. He was awesome in the show, but he was like nothing like the part. I sent him the script, and we had coffee. You could tell he grew up in a very similar environment [as I did]. He grew up in Toronto as well in a similar community with a similar upbringing.
You could tell he got it; he knew the guy. He was like, "listen, physically, I know I'm probably not what you pictured, but I get this, and I can get us there." It was a bit of a leap of faith, but like just sitting across from him and talking to him, he was so engaging. I was just like, "let's do it, don't shave from now until we shoot!." We worked hard with him to get it authentic. He can read Hebrew and speak Hebrew a little. We met with a rabbi, and the rabbi helped us with all the prayers and how to do everything. He gave us so much information and so much help.
[Sam Rosenthal] worked really hard. I wanted him to be able to take charge of the film completely. He had to know everything, all the religious aspects through and through. Sam learned everything, all the prayers. He was able to sing everything back and forth if we wanted. All the other supporting characters were people locally that I've worked with in the past or were people I'd seen other things that I liked for their energy and vibe. I just directly offered them the parts, they accepted.
From there and working with the actors, we didn't have much rehearsal time. My approach is I do a lot of talking with them ahead of time, just discussing the character. I showed them references to the type of filmmaking approach [I want], so they can get the vibe that I'm going for—the shooting style of the film [helped] give them time. We shot predominantly in natural light and almost all handheld. I like to move from room to room so that the actors don't need to worry about hitting certain marks. It also just allows us time to take after take, if they need it, but we never really had to do a ton on this one. It was a very calm environment where we could take our time and play. When you get the right people, you just kind of watch.
REGARD : What are your future projects?
Charles : I'm in development on a project. We got some money through Telefilm to keep working on a script. It's a feature version of my previous short Little Grey Bubbles. I also recently just pitched several projects to a streamer in the States. I'm doing another short as well that I received a small grant for; it's a short visual poem. I was about to shoot it, but we went into another lockdown literally right before [we shot]. I'm hoping in another month or so to do it.