In “Midas Man,” the new film out this month in the United States about the late Beatles manager Brian Epstein, an early, pivotal scene is set in a synagogue.
In it, Brian (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) sits with his parents, Harry and Malka (Eddie Marsan and Emily Watson), as they sit in the pews together as the only people in a Liverpool synagogue after services are over, each man wearing a kippah and tallit. Malka, who was called Queenie, says to her son, “It seems like only yesterday you and your brother were up there.”
They discuss Brian’s future and his desire to be in the music business, leading an initially skeptical Harry to allow Brian to sell rock and pop records as an annex to the family’s furniture and retail business. The success of this side venture ultimately propelled him to become the manager of an exciting new band — The Beatles — and the Jew most associated with Beatlemania.
Over the years, Epstein — sometimes considered the “Fifth Beatle” — has been the subject of multiple books and, more recently, a statue in Liverpool. “Midas Man,” now streaming on the platform Olyn, represents the first film that makes him the center of attention.
While the movie spent the last several months on the Jewish film festival circuit, including a spot at the New York Jewish Film Festival earlier this month, Epstein’s Jewishness is not its focus. It deals more with Epstein being a closeted gay man, his music career and his relationships with the Beatles and his family.
But there are snippets of Epstein’s Jewish story in addition to the synagogue scene. In another scene, a heart-to-heart during the wedding of Epstein’s brother, singer Cilla Black (Darci Shaw) praises the “food and dancing” at the event and suggests that for that reason, she’d like to have a Jewish wedding herself.
Later, we see Harry’s funeral, where the cantor sings the prayers and they do the traditional rending of garments, and at another point in the film, Epstein meets future business partner Nat Weiss (played by James Corrigan), they say “L’chaim” as they toast, and Weiss addresses him as “boychick.”
The notes are the only ones the film hits about Epstein’s Jewish upbringing and identity, which were so prominent that Beatles frontman John Lennon routinely invoked them while poking fun at his friend. (Lennon quipped that Epstein’s biography ought to be called “Queer Jew,” according to a biographer who traveled with the band.)
Brigit Grant, the film’s co-screenwriter, wrote for the British publication The Jewish News last fall about how Epstein was born on Yom Kippur, how Epstein’s grandfather was a Yiddish-speaking refugee from Lithuania, and how she learned from an uncle that when Epstein studied for his bar mitzvah he initially learned the wrong Torah portion but learned quickly enough to give a “very competent” reading of the correct one. Epstein also sought out Yom Kippur services while on the road with the band and resisted entreaties to change his surname, she wrote.
The synagogue scenes, Grant wrote, were shot at Liverpool’s Princes Road Synagogue, as the actual Greenbank synagogue that hosted both Epstein’s bar mitzvah and funeral no longer exists, and Marsan wore Grant’s late father’s tallit in the film.
Fortune-Lloyd, who plays Epstein, is Jewish. Watson is not and neither is Marsan, although he’s played several Jewish characters in his career, including the father of Amy Winehouse in last year’s biopic “Back to Black.” In 2021, Marsan played an anti-fascist Jewish character in a BBC series called “Ridley Road” and faced what he called “relentless” abuse as a result.
“All I did was play a Jew, I dread to think what would’ve happened if I was actually Jewish,” he tweeted at the time, according to contemporaneous reports. (He has since deleted his account on the social network X.)
Despite the omissions, the Jewish elements of Epstein’s biography are more present in “Midas Man” than music composed by the band Epstein managed. Variety recently covered what it called the “nightmare production” of the film, which dragged on for years, had three different directors at different times, and was plagued by long-term uncertainty over whether the film would be allowed to use the Beatles’ music.
It ended up being able to use covers the band performed, like “”Money (That’s What I Want),” “Please, Mr. Postman,” and “Besame Mucho.” There are no original Lennon-McCartney compositions, although there are a couple of scenes where a character mentions that a certain song just hit #1.
The movie depicts the scenes before and after the Beatles’ famous 1964 debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” with Jay Leno playing Sullivan, but not the performance. Instead, the famous “All You Need is Love” live broadcast is cut off before the song starts.
Epstein died not long after his father of an accidental overdose at age 32 in 1967. He had both a funeral in Liverpool — famously officiated by a rabbi who didn’t know him — and a London memorial service attended by the Beatles and officiated by a different rabbi, but the film shows neither. The last we see of Epstein is him walking symbolically across Abbey Road before a title informs viewers of his death.
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