Carol Kane reveals the ‘unexpected emotions’ involved in the largely improvised ‘Between the Temples’
“I have to say I’m stunned. I haven’t been able to make it real in my mind yet,” reflects Carol Kane on her recent awards nominations and wins for the film “Between the Temples.” The veteran star received the Supporting Actress prize from the New York Film Critics Circle and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Supporting Performance for her turn in the Nathan Silver movie, on which she also serves as executive producer. The recognition comes as a welcome surprise because, as she says, “It’s a unique experience at my age to get re-noticed, as it were.” Though she would prefer that she and her co-star Jason Schwartzman “were nominated for things together,” she remains “extremely grateful” and thinks the citations are “like a miracle.” Watch our complete video interview above.
Kane stars in “Between the Temples” as Carla, a woman who, following the death of her husband, decides that she wants to have the bat mitzvah that she never had when she was 13 years old. She prepares for the religious custom with the mentorship of cantor Ben (Schwartzman), who was once her elementary school student when she was a music teacher. Ben and Carla reunite by chance, when she comes to his aid after he is punched at a bar. “We understood that we were safe together, Jason and me, that we could count on each other,” recollects the actress about shooting her first scene.
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Her partnership with Schwartzman was all the more important because filmmaker Silver and co-writer C. Mason Wells did not write a full script for the film, occasionally writing dialogue but mostly relying on a film treatment. Kane shares, “There was not a solid script, so take to take a lot of the dialogue would be different. The essence and the structure of the scene would be the same, but we could improvise the dialogue as we went along.”
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Kane has played many memorable characters in her career on the large and small screens. She received an Oscar nomination in 1976 for her leading role in “Hester Street” and won two Emmys for her scene-stealing recurring role on “Taxi.” But “Between The Temples” afforded her an opportunity as an actress that she has not had before. As she explains, “I’ve been very luck to have worked with many of the greatest directors that there are. I worked with Hal Ashby, I worked with Mike Nichols, my first director, I worked with Sidney Lumet, Jacques Audiard… Always a great director will mine your feelings and help you mine your feelings to help you flesh our our character, but this is the first time I not only got to do that, but also frequently put it in my own words.”
The story of the film takes off because of the recent death of Carla’s husband, which is a facet of the character that Kane discussed with Silver and Schwartzman. “I know that he was largely in control in my marriage, so I have been subservient to someone else all my life until now,” says the actress about how the relationship affected the version of Carla that we see on screen. The actress has an emotional understanding of that marital dynamic, particularly because of how prominent that type of gender imbalance was in the 1950s, when she was a child. She says Carla’s son makes her return to that dynamic, too. “You can see in the restaurant scene… when I’m with my son, it’s almost like I’m back in my marriage, that I give up control.”
Speaking of dinner scenes, “Between The Temples” sets its emotional climax at the dinner the night before Carla’s bat mitzvah. Ben has invited her to share dinner with his mothers, played by Caroline Aaron and Dolly de Leon, and the rabbi and his family. While gathered around the table, Ben decides to declare his love for Carla, which shocks everyone because of their age difference. Kane says the pivotal scene took two nights and three cameras to shoot and was particularly complex because the characters all have “strong personalities” and “each of the actors began really standing up for their character’s point of view and fighting for it.” Silver captured as much as he could and turned it over to editor John Magary. She says he treated it like a “three-act play” to capture the different character perspectives on the major emotional reveal.
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Kane attributes the unique visual style of the film to not just director Silver, but also cinematographer Sean Price Williams. She refers to him as “a character in the film” because of his presence capturing the improvised performances. “There are frequently unexpected moves and unexpected emotions, and Sean had to just be in there with us… he had to be in the scene with us in order to know where to be.”
“Between The Temples” concludes on an ambiguous note. Not comfortable returning to the temple, Carla has her bat mitzvah in her backyard with Ben presiding. As to what will happen to the duo after the film concludes, Kane muses, “I think they love each other and in some ways are in love with each other, but they’re certainly from different times of life and different worlds… What the long range future will be, I don’t know, except that I know they’ll be in each other’s lives.”
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