Shmuel, a Hasidic cantor in Upstate New York, distraught by the untimely death of his wife, struggles to find religious solace, while secretly obsessing over how her body will decay. As a clandestine partnership develops with Albert, a local community college biology professor, the two embark on a darkly comic and increasingly literal undertaking into the underworld.
Starring Géza Röhrig and Matthew Broderick, “To Dust” chronicles the journey of a Hasidic cantor seeking resolution to his wife’s passing. The film offers an unpretentious look at the human condition, albeit from an unconventional perspective.
“To Dust” opens as Shmuel (Röhrig) loses his wife to cancer. Almost immediately, he begins to obsess over how the lifeless body will decay. This preoccupation plagues Shmuel with frequent nightmares, followed by his attempt to come to terms with events.
Shmuel’s mother (Janet Sarno) provides support and counseling for her troubled son. By way of analogy, she relates the death of her own spouse. She explains that by inventorying his possessions, she successfully came to terms with her loss. Similarly, Shmuel gently rummages through his wife’s clothes, even taking a moment to examine a wig she likely wore during chemotherapy treatment. Such catharsis, however, proves too superficial a remedy. Something about his wife’s decaying body still haunts him.
As a first step toward understanding, Shmuel Shmuel seeks out a subject matter expert on organic decomposition to assist his efforts. This brings him into contact with Albert (Broderick), a biology professor at a nearby community college.
Shmuel’s search for spiritual redemption in the form of a scientific approach assumes a somewhat tortured path at first. In a series of scenes, Shmuel pursues Albert – or more accurately, his expertise – in order to gain insight into how best to dispatch the remains of his deceased wife.
Clearly immersed in teaching duties, Albert is initially reluctant to help. Yet gradually intellectual curiosity pulls him into the intrigue. The two men settle on a pig as the most appropriate surrogate for a human body. After learning that Shmuel buried a pig in a meadow, Albert testily agrees to make an assessment.
In what transforms into a most unlikely buddy picture, Albert steadily adopts Shmuel’s concerns regarding the rate of his dead wife’s decomposition. As the two men bury and unearth decomposing pigs, they begin to form a bond – despite the fact that they also acquire the semblance of grave robbers, lurking as they do, in forests at night with shovels in hand.
The largely unknown players support the story nicely. Leo Heller and Sammy Voit are well-cast as Shmuel’s precocious children, desperate to aid their grieving father. The youngsters have become convinced that Shmuel consumed a dybbuk, the malicious soul or spirit of a dead person that in turn consumes the host.
Shawn Snyder co-writes and directs the dark comedy, simultaneously instructive about coming to terms with death. Dedicated to the director’s mother in the closing credits, “To Dust” combines humor and pathos into an examination of issues we mostly prefer to avoid.
Like many independent films, this one takes its time, leisurely following Shmuel in his quest to find peace in the aftermath of the loss of his soulmate. Seemingly absurd aspects of the film furnish an apt metaphor to highlight, as Sartre noted, the corresponding absurdity of human existence. “To Dust” serves as a poignant lesson about not only life and death but also eventual redemption.
Opens in select theaters Friday, March 1st
