The Chosen

Director Kagan and writer Gordon do wonders with the poignant material. Despite the obvious ethnic slant this is a picture which communicates universally.

These are small subjects here, and intimate ones, and they are handled with great warmth. [27 May 1982, p.B5]

What destinguishes the film is the intensity of the performances, with Steiger giving one of his perhaps over-familiar but still compulsive portrayals of an obstinate man beset by problems which render him almost but not quite paralysed. Those who admired him in The Pawnbroker will do so again in full measure. [27 Jun 1982]

Certainly, this is a gently evocative movie, with its glimpses of a strict and self-contained culture, and its memories of a time gone by.

Considered as a whole, The Chosen is indeed a maverick movie, depicting its characters and their milieu with restraint and respect. Yet it doesn't measure up to the fine Chaim Potok novel it takes its story from.

Potent and simmering if sometimes a little overstated, THE CHOSEN manages to elicit a tolerable and appropriate performance from the generally emetic Benson.

A worthy but irretrievably dull homily (based on the novel by Chaim Potok) about the conflict between adolescent friendship - two Jewish boys, one orthodox and Zionist, the other a Hasidic - and filial devotion within the demands of the faith.