Saint Pauly

Exceptionally, I won''t be giving this film a numerical ranking as I don''t feel comfortable quantifying this man''s pain. Because, essentially that''s what _M_ is: The story of one man''s pain and how he comes to terms with it. M is Menahem who, when he was the Jewish version of a choir boy in the ultra religious Israeli town of Bnei Brak, was raped repeatedly by different Rabbis and members of his yeshiva. While I personally would''ve appreciated seeing this film attempt to give an overall snapshot of how prevalent this is (the film gives the impression that it is frighteningly wide-spread) and what is being done to address this crisis (the film gives only a few pithy sentences of reassurance at the end), I''m obviously happy that the documentary helped Menahem confront and even slay several of his demons.