Live From SXSW's Screening Room
By Michael May, Fri., March 14, 2003
THE BURIAL SOCIETY
D: Nicholas Racz; with Rob LaBelle, Jan Rube, David Paymer, Seymour Cassell, Allan Richbill Meilen.Narrative Feature First Films Following in the grand tradition of edgy thrillers featuring mousy Jewish accountants and old orthodox men comes The Burial Society. We meet Sheldon Kasner just as his day job at the Hebrew Savings and Loan goes south -- he is being dangled upside-down off a bridge by his money-laundering bosses. Sheldon leaves town to seek refuge in a small-town Chevrah Kadisha, the titular society that ritually prepares the dead for burial. As Sheldon becomes initiated into their shadowy world between life and death, his past begins to catch up with him. What follows has more twists and turns than a rabbi's beard, and isn't nearly as clean and tidy as you would hope. (Millennium, 3/15, 8:30pm)
