An excellent Netflix series on a young woman's break from an ultra-orthodox Jewish community

Anna Winger's 4-part Netflix series Unorthodox (2020), based (loosely, I think) on the memoir by Deborah Feldman, depicts the bravery and the struggle of the 19-year-old Etsy Shapiro (Shira Haas), who flees from the ultra-orthodox community in Brooklyn for freedom and a new life in, of all places, Berlin. She leaves behind her husband of one year - their marriage was completely devoid of feeling or sentiment or love of any sort - shortly after learning she's pregnant. The dogmatic and paternalistic, to put it mildly, community sends the abandoned husband, a generally timid and introspective young man, along with his much more boisterous and worldly cousin, to find Etsy and bring her back into the fold. This series has just enough action and tension to keep it moving, but the main reason to watch is for Haas's terrific performance, in which she conveys a huge range of emotion. The film also provides a vivid depiction of the culture and mores of the orthodox community, with its cult-like insularity and removal from the contemporary world. Of course part of the edge of the series is that we know it's at least to a degree true to life - though I suspect that Etsy's assimilation into Berlin culture was far more bumptious and extended than depicted in the show, with its inevitable time compression. There are many ways in which the series could have gone off the rails, but, without my giving anything away, I was really pleased that the movie at the end steered away from the unlikely and improbable. In fact, the end is left somewhat open to interpretation, which seemed to strike the right note: We don't need to know everything about Etsy's fate, and this series gives just just enough.