Two things struck me about Yentl. When this is set in 1904 my grandmother was 8 years old and the woman of the house raising two younger brothers because her mother had died young. It was a strict Jewish household like the one you see in Yentl with her Rebbe father Nehemiah Persoff raising Barbra Streisand.

Like Streisand in the movie my grandmother was a bright person. But in 1904 America opportunities for women were non-existence. Had she had an opportunity to go into a career she might have turned out totally different than the mean miserable person she became in life. Barbra's Yentl character escapes that fate. My grandmother cared for two younger siblings, one of whom died as a child. No sooner was she done with that than she was a mother in her own right.

Yentl is also a bright person and wants to express that by studying the Torah as any male rabbinical student would. Her father teaches her in secret, but when he dies she decides to go into male drag and enroll in a Yeshiva.

Here's the second thing that struck me. Yentl joins a long line of films like Sylvia Scarlett, The Major And The Minor, and Victor/Victoria where the female protagonist goes male and does some gender bending. Although I can't remember the name of the film Dale Evans did that in one of her films with Roy Rogers.

But the context here is the Ashkenazic Jewish culture where the sexes are never to meet. Certain gender specific roles are assigned and crossover is the worst thing going. Today we have female rabbis and not just in Reform Judaism. How Barbra's Yentl would have liked that.

I thoroughly enjoyed Yentl, its story as well as its musical score by Michelle LeGrand and Alan and Marilyn Bregman. Yentl's Oscar came for the overall score. It also received nomination for Art&Set Design and for Amy Irving for Best Supporting Actress.

Amy's at one end of a romantic triangle involving herself Streisand and fellow Yeshiva student Mandy Patinkin. But as this involves some gender bending it's not like any usual love triangle plot. That's all I'll say.

Although he's only in briefly before his character is killed off I also enjoyed Nehemiah Persoff's performance raising a closeted girl Torah scholar as he was. A very wise man and his wisdom is not just from reading the Torah.

Although a Jewish background with some cultural knowledge would help I think an audience of Shegetzs would enjoy this as well. And it certainly would be of interest to transgender people.

It's 1904 eastern Europe. Yentl Mendel (Barbra Streisand) lives alone with her father Rebbe Mendel who teaches her the Talmud despite the disapproval of traditions and the general society. She refuses to look for a husband. After her father's death, she decides to pretend to be a boy to continue her education. She befriends fellow student Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin) who falls for Hadass (Amy Irving).

At over two hours, it's too long. When Avigdor gets rejected for marriage, it would be easier for Yentl to figure out some legal argument to save Avigdor's relationship. That's the better way to go with this plot. Instead, there is a lot of backbreaking bending of these relationships and it's uncomfortable. I like some of it but others push the wrong way. It's a bad love triangle and it causes bad turns. It would be so much more compelling for Yentl to talk to Hadass like an actual person and thereby disproving everything in society. She should work out a better scheme to unite them.

"Yentl" is a British/American co-production from 1983, so this one is already over 35 years old and here we have the first directorial effort by Oscar-winning actress Barbra Streisand, who was around the age of 40 at that point. More should follow. And she also plays the main character in here. Streisand is also credited as one of two writers who adapted the original story into a screenplay, so it is really her movie, also because she is literally in every scene of this film. Now as for the awards recognition, this is where it gets really interesting. The film won Best Comedy/Musical at the Golden Globes. And Streisand won Best Director too and there were more nominations, for three cast members in total. The Oscars then did not like it as much. No Best Picture nomination, no Best Director nomination, but still a win for the score that was nominated at the Globes too, but did not manage the win. For Legrand and the two Bergmans (not Ingmar and Ingrid),it was the third Oscar win in total and also their final. So sounds all rock-solid when it comes to awards recognition, doesn't it. Well, the movie also got in comfortably at the Razzies, the anti-Oscars, so there was not just love for this film. Not at all. Streisand, Irving and the score were nominated there too, which probably makes it almost as divided as The Shining from three years earlier that was really hated back then, maybe because it was not really too close to the book. But lets not get into detail about that and instead focus on "Yentl".

Overall, I would say it was an okay movie. Streisand is solid overall, even if there were some cringeworthy moments like when somebody says something incorrect and she knows the mistake and corrects it and her face afterwards... tough to stomach. I guess it was an attempt at quirkiness that went really wrong. More flaws out there for sure. I must say the score really sometimes goes too much over the top, especially when it sounds dramatic. One example is when she cuts her hair. There are many others. But also at times in the lighter sequences when the music just tries to be too wild and funny and innocent. Sure it is also good at times, but as much as I love Legrand, I thought his work here is nowhere near Oscar-worthy. As for the songs, it is very difficult to describe them. I think Streisand's singing manages to save them a bit and some are catchy even, but it's difficult to accept them as anything other than guilty pleasure music for the most part. The first, maybe the first two even were decent, but everything that followed afterwards song-wise was not on a high level. And come on, rhyming delicious with dishes? You sure can do better than that. Just one example of general weakness here.

The performances weren't too bad I would say, even if Streisand was not at her best here for sure. I really liked Patinkin though. And as for Irving: Well, tough to judge her performance neutrally here I would say. I think she must be one of the most beautiful women of the 1980s. Seeing her here, she is downright stunning and I think her amazing looks really resulted in perhaps too much attention for her performance, for the positive and negative side both because some mistake her great looks for a great performance, while others automatically say that she is overrated because of her looks and in fact sucks. I think neither is the case. But for me, she sure was among the better components of the film. As for the story, I struggled with it a lot on all kinds of occasions, most of all the romance parts. The fact that (s)he marries his love interest, so they can be together was truly absurd and I also found it unrealistic that she actually falls for Streisand's character at some point, not only because he looked totally different than Patinkin. But maybe that was just me because I always saw Streisand in her character and despite the hair and clothes I never really believed people could really believe she was a man. I don't know. Probably tough to make a judgment this way compared to what I would have thought had I never seen Streisand before. And if we are talking already about recognizing actors/characters, then let me add that I totally did not recognize Patinkin here. Pretty surprised when I read at home it was him.

But the worst and most unrealistic for me about these over 2 hours was when really Patinkin tells Yentl that he loves her too. Now that came out of nowhere. He was full of rage before that and there were zero indicators that he has feelings for her. And then boom all of a sudden, we are supposed to believe it is true love? Like come on. The explanation with him touching her frequently and also that he thought he had sick thoughts because he felt attraction before that were really not good enough to justify such a major plot twist. And not much later, as if nothing happened, he is with Irving's character despite his newly-found interest in Yentl and also Irving's character seemed to have no feelings anymore for Patinkin's as we found out and still these two end up as a couple. I just did not like it a lot what they did with this film towards the end. Streisand on the boat then was still one of the better moments admittedly, but not really because it was too great, just because the film really struggled with realism in the final half hour. Also Yentl fought so long for Avigdor and then, when she can have him, she realizes it's better to give him up right away because of how he sees women, wifes in particular. Really difficult to comprehend too like many other story parts. The way they emphasized Streisand's independence and talk about women being equal, especially in her "wedding night", felt also forced frequently and just for the sake of it. Disappointing. I think that, had this film been handled better script-wise, it could have been a much better outcome. I was ready to give it 3 stars out of 5 (6 out of 10) until almost the very end, but I have to take 1 (2) more away because of Patinkin's complete nonsense love confession. I wonder how this was handled in the original story. I somehow think they did not mess it up this much there and the flaws came mostly with the film adaptation. So, to finish the review on a more positive note, let me say that Streisand's singing was really good and elevated the songs for sure and also again that Amy Irving is really beauty personified. But aside from these pros, the cons are more frequent and more dominant too. Not a quality film. I suggest you skip.