Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
2014 · Ronit Elkabetz
For when you want to be gripped and outraged in equal measure — a film to argue about over dinner afterward. Demanding but never dull; the anger it stirs is the point.
What it's about
In Israel, a religious divorce can only be granted by rabbinical courts — and only with the husband's consent. Viviane Amsalem wants out of her marriage; her husband won't say yes; and the film watches five years of hearings compressed into a single courtroom the camera never leaves. It's a legal battle in which the case on trial is, really, one woman's right to her own life.
The experience
Claustrophobic, infuriating, and riveting — absurd enough to make you laugh, maddening enough to make you want to shout at the screen. The single room becomes a pressure cooker, and the tension never lets up.
Performances
Ronit Elkabetz, one of Israeli cinema's defining actresses, plays Viviane herself and co-directed — years of contained fury living in her posture and silences until the moments she finally lets it out.
The craft
The formal scheme is rigorous and quietly radical: every shot is framed from the point of view of whoever is judging or being judged, so you're forever seated in the dock or on the bench, never neutral. Out of dry procedure the Elkabetz siblings wring almost unbearable drama, proving one room and a handful of faces are all a great film needs.
Why it matters
It landed in the middle of a live debate over religious divorce law in Israel and stands as the culmination of the trilogy Ronit Elkabetz made with her brother before her death — her defining testament.
In Israel, a religious divorce — a gett — can only be granted by rabbinical courts, and only with the husband's consent. From that legal fact, Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz built one of the great courtroom films: five years of hearings compressed into a single room the camera never leaves. Ronit Elkabetz, the magnetic star of Late Marriage and one of Israeli cinema's defining actresses, plays Viviane herself, and co-directed with her brother; the film completes a trilogy they began with To Take a Wife and 7 Days, following one Mizrahi woman's long war for autonomy. The formal scheme is rigorous and quietly radical — shots are framed from the point of view of whoever is being judged or judging, so the viewer is forever seated in the dock or on the bench, never neutral. Out of procedure the Elkabetzes wring fury, absurdist comedy, and a portrait of institutional stonewalling as vivid as any thriller. It swept Israel's Ophir Awards and screened worldwide as both drama and de facto advocacy. Ronit Elkabetz died in 2016; this stands as the summit of her extraordinary double career.
Lines of influence
- The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) — A lone woman interrogated by a male ecclesiastical tribunal is rendered through relentless facial close-ups and disorienting eyeline/POV cuts that visually isolate her from her clerical judges — the template Gett inherits for filming institutional persecution as an assault of faces.
- 12 Angry Men (1957) — Single-room, quasi-real-time procedural where drama is built entirely from argument, reaction shots and tightening lenses that shrink the space around faces as tension mounts — Gett's confined-room grammar.
- The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) — Austere, transcript-faithful courtroom staging built on flat reverse-shot cutting between the accused and her interrogators, dialogue-driven and scoreless — the same evidentiary minimalism Gett uses for its rabbinical hearings.
- Rashomon (1950) — Testimony delivered frontally toward an unseen tribunal, with witnesses addressing the camera as if the viewer were the judge — the POV-into-the-bench framing Gett adopts to implicate the audience.
- Scenes from a Marriage (1973) — Chamber-drama anatomy of a marriage's collapse conducted in confined interiors through sustained two-shots and close-ups, treating a couple's talk as forensic combat — Gett's dramaturgical model.
- Divorce Italian Style (1961) — Tragicomic indictment of a legal-religious order that traps spouses because divorce is unavailable, weaponizing satire against marriage law — Gett's blend of institutional critique and dark comedy.
- To Take a Wife (2004) — The trilogy's first film, which establishes Viviane in the confined domestic frame and the sibling-directors' method of staging marriage as a besieged interior.
- Shiva (7 Days) (2008) — The middle film that perfects the single-location, compressed-time ensemble and confined cutting within one apartment during a mourning week — the immediate formal precursor to Gett's courtroom.
- A Separation (2011) — A Middle Eastern domestic conflict adjudicated inside religious-legal chambers, with characters delivering pleas nearly into the lens as though addressing the magistrate — the same juridical POV framing and moral proceduralism.
- Fill the Void (2012) — An Israeli religious-community drama about a woman's marital fate governed by halakha, shot in tight interiors from within the community's own gaze — a parallel study of female autonomy under Jewish law.
- Late Marriage (2001) — An Israeli ethnic-minority film built on long, confined domestic scenes where patriarchal marriage custom overrides individual will — kindred in staging autonomy against communal-legal pressure within Israeli cinema.
- Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) — Turns family life into a courtroom procedural where advocates litigate intimacy and a spouse is cross-examined about their private conduct — the de-facto-advocacy structure Gett reworks.
- The Insult (2017) — A Middle Eastern courtroom drama where a personal grievance escalates into an indictment of sectarian and institutional identity, staging the tribunal as a battleground for communal belonging as Gett does with Mizrahi identity.
- Custody (2017) — Opens on a static, near-real-time custody hearing filmed as a pressure chamber of testimony before the drama spirals outward — inheriting Gett's use of the institutional room as compressed dramatic engine.
- Saint Omer (2022) — Static, frontal courtroom framing that holds on a woman's testimony as she is judged by institutional language, letting personal truth strain against legal procedure exactly as Gett frames Viviane before the rabbis.
- Anatomy of a Fall (2023) — A marriage litigated in court, with extended courtroom argument scenes turning the trial into a forensic dissection of a relationship — the same procedural-as-marital-autopsy device Gett pioneered a decade earlier.