Russia Ukraine war: 53 years on, The Fiddler On The Roof has new resonance

I must have been in my early teens sometime in the 1970s when my father took me to watch The Fiddler On The Roof. I remember enjoying it thoroughly, but over the years, most of the film faded from memory, except for a couple of songs. So when I noticed that it was available on a streaming service, I watched it again.

And then it struck me. Fiddler is set in Ukraine in the last days of czarist Russia and tells the story of a Jewish family. Ukraine, Russia and Israel are involved in the two bloodiest wars going on right now. Suddenly, the film had an extra resonance.

Fiddler is one of the most popular Broadway musicals in history—it was the first show ever to cross 3,000 performances. Over the last six decades, it has been staged all across the world, in dozens of languages, from Dutch to Chinese. Its universality can be gauged from the fact that 56 years after the Japanese version debuted in Tokyo, it remains a huge hit with audiences, who believe that it perfectly captures the Japanese way of life.

On screen, it is a grand spectacle with beautiful cinematography and big dance numbers. But then most movie musicals are grand spectacles. They are supposed to be that. Yet, Fiddler’s subject matter has no inherent grandeur in it at all. All the characters are ordinary people, most of them poverty-stricken. This is what makes Fiddler special.

The story revolves around Tevye, a poor Jewish dairyman who lives in a small village with his wife and five daughters, three of them of marriageable age. He is honest and hard-working, believes strongly in Jewish tradition (the song “Tradition!”), wishes he had more money (“If I were a rich man, all day long I’d biddy biddy bum”) and worries about getting his daughters married because he cannot afford a dowry. When in doubt, he talks to God as if that entity were his older brother.

The close-knit Jewish community is watched over by a Russian police force. The winds of the Communist revolution of 1917 are getting stronger and Moscow is planning fresh Jewish pogroms. But in the village of Anatevka, the Jews are happy with their mundane lives. They are not concerned about the wider world. Only one man in Anatevka buys a newspaper regularly.

The three daughters’ choices of husbands do not go according to Tevye’s hopes. This is a time when anything other than a marriage arranged by the parents is unthinkable. But his eldest daughter, whom the wealthiest man in the village is keen on, insists on marrying a poor tailor whose dreams are limited to being able to save enough money to buy a second-hand sewing machine.

The second daughter falls in love with a Communist who is arrested and exiled to Siberia. She follows him there. The third daughter’s sweetheart is Christian. In all three cases, Tevye objects vehemently. He finally accepts the choices of the two older ones, but cannot come to terms with a daughter marrying outside the Jewish faith. She elopes and gets married.

(Photo courtesy Otterbein University Theatre & Dance from USA via Wikimedia Commons 2.0)

Then one day, the government orders all the Jews of Anatevka to leave. The villagers become homeless refugees overnight. The film’s last sequence has Tevye and his family trudging away with their meagre moveable assets, hoping to reach America. It is a downbeat ending, yet strangely heart-warming. Like Harihar in Pather Panchali or Antonio in Bicycle Thieves, Tevye accepts his cruel fate but remains optimistic.

It may seem odd that I was reminded of the endings of two films made on shoestring budgets to that of an expensive Hollywood production, but if you watch Fiddler, it will not be surprising.

The fiddler—a mysterious man who stands precariously on a narrow roof and plays the violin in the dead of night—is a metaphor for life itself. As Tevye puts it, it is about balance—how to play your tune without falling and breaking your neck. As he leaves his village forever, he motions to the fiddler to come along with him.

This big-budget film about little people is fundamentally about family and tradition in changing times. Tevye cannot believe that his beloved daughters would defy him and choose their husbands on their own. The young Communist creates a watershed moment for the orthodox community when he gets men and women, who have always had separate seating spaces at weddings, to break down the barrier—literally a thick rope—and dance with one another in public. Tevye and his family move on to a new life in an unknown land thousands of miles away. Perhaps, as in the case of so many immigrants to America in the early 20th century, some of his grandchildren will be millionaires or renowned scientists.

Jews, Russians, Ukrainians—all have tragic histories, of terrible warfare, mass murder, persecution and pogroms. That continues even now and no solution seems to be in sight. In both the current wars, all parties involved appear to have dug themselves into positions that are difficult to retreat from. And as it has been throughout history across the planet, it is the poor Tevyes who are the worst sufferers.

The Fiddler On The Roof is far bigger than a story about what the Jews have undergone for millennia. It is about the voiceless but resilient underdog anywhere on earth anytime. I remember my father, a 1947 Partition refugee, being deeply moved by the film. That is why the play and the film keep touching the hearts of millions of people, irrespective of geography, language and faith. And have them humming: “Sunrise sunset/
Sunrise sunset/ Swiftly fly the years/ One season following another/ Laden with happiness and tears/ Sunrise sunset/ Sunrise sunset.”