Tevye the milkman has to marry off five daughters in the small Jewish town of Anatevka during tsarist Russia at the turn of the 20th century. What could possibly go wrong?
When I was a child, my aunt knew I loved musicals and bought me a CD of Fiddler on the Roof. I didn’t have context for any of the songs at the time, so after a while I lost interest in it. Apparently I listened to it enough, because when I watched this movie for the first time for this project, I was surprised that I knew literally all the songs. “Tradition” and “If I Were a Rich Man”, even “Matchmaker” – they’ve had a large cultural impact, so even if I didn’t know the musical itself, Gwen Stefani would have made me aware of it later. But like, “Miracle of Miracles”? How the fuck else would I know that?
The songs have stuck in my head for like 25 years unconsciously because they are absolute bangers. Our narrator, Tevye, kicks things off with “Tradition”, a fire piece of music that explains the antiquated gender roles that everyone abides by.
THE PATRIARCHYYYYYY, THE PATRIARCHY. THE PATRIARCHY!
Their oldest, Tzeitel, is almost 20 and unmarried, which her mother, Godel is particularly vexed by. Tzeitel is in love with a poor tailor, Motel, but the matchmaker wants to set her up with a 60-something butcher named Lazar Wolf. He is very wealthy and has the most excellent name to ever grace a musical cast list, but he is also older than her father, so she isn’t particularly excited about the prospect. Tzeitel warns her sisters that their futures also hold dubious exchanges of their persons to other men in the village, which rightfully terrifies them.
Golde is aware of her husband’s respect and coveting of wealth, so she sends him to Lazar Wolf to marry-off Tzeitel. He gets so excited at the prospect of selling his daughter to someone with lots of money, they celebrate by drinking, dancing, and telling the whole town about the arrangement before even cluing in Tzeitel.
Sometimes I watch these movies while drinking, which makes my unhinged notes um… interesting to decipher afterward.
She appropriately reacts in horror, and begs her father not to force her to marry him. He reluctantly agrees, and Motel stands up to Tevye to officially ask to marry Tzeitel. Tevye agrees once Motel vows to take good care of her, and he sees how much Tzeitel loves him. The pair is surprised and ecstatic and frolics in the woods to celebrate.
Instead of telling his wife straight up he agreed to another match for Tzeitel, Tevye makes up a truly ridiculous and hilarious dream where Lazar Wolf’s dead wife curses the pairing of her husband with Tzeitel, and Golde’s grandmother suggests she marry Motel instead. Golde agrees to the match and Tzeitel and Motel get married, to the chagrin of the butcher.
Their wedding ceremony is where I will take a moment to talk about how much I love the director, Norman Jewison. Moonstruck is one of my favorite movies, so I was excited to see how he interpreted this musical. First of all, it’s beautiful and sweepingly cinematic. The beginning credits when the fiddler is playing on the roof during sunrise, how every time Tevye speaks with God he is close to the camera while everyone else is yards away, and the up-close glamour shots are all great.
The musical numbers, as well, are energetic and engaging. The dream sequence adds nothing to the story so I rolled my eyes at it at first, but by the end of it when Lazar Wolf’s departed wife is pulled from the grave suspended on wires while the rest of the cast waves their hands behind the gravestones… I was completely sold. 10/10, best choregraphed musical number of this movie and all other movies. Pearls, PEARLS, PEARLSSSSS!!
The best example of this is the bottle dance, where I got absolutely HYPED when they knelt down and started sliding across the dirt. Sure, it’s inherently impressive, but how it’s framed with the dirt kicked up every time they switched legs, it looks so fucking cool.
Back to the story, during the wedding ceremony, the judge and a bunch of his minions attack the village as a warning, because the government told them to. This sets up the downer second act of this movie, which could just be subtitled “Things Get Progressively Worse for Tevye”.
First, his daughter Hodel falls in love with her communist teacher and ships herself off to the land of an exiled Lenin, Siberia. Second, his daughter Chava marries a Catholic boy and Tevye disowns her.
Third, and the deepest cut of all, the government forces all the citizens of Anatevka out of their village. The family takes the few belonging they can and decide to travel to America. The credits come in hot, coaxing the audience to get out of their seats and not overwhelm themselves with what a downer ending this is.
I haven’t really processed that so many musicals are about intense, communal pain. Les Miserables, The Sound of Music, Cabaret, Miss Saigon… there has got to be an art to ending shows like this and making sure the audience still claps at the end and doesn’t feel like they want to die. Les Miserables at least has the triumphant anthem of “Do You Hear the People Sing?”, The Sound of Music has “Climb Every Mountain”, and Cabaret has “Willkommen”. Fiddler on the Roof ends on a quiet moment of the fiddler playing off the roof. With traditions broken and the village sent to all corners of the earth, it hints at a unstable and traumatic future to come.