Plot
Barbra Streisand portrays Yentl Mendel, a girl living in an Ashkenazi shtetl named Pechev in Poland in the early 20th century. Yentl's father, Rebbe Mendel (Nehemiah Persoff), secretly instructs her in the Talmud despite the proscription of such study by women according to the custom of her community.
After the death of her father, Yentl decides to dress like a man, take her late brother's name, Anshel, and enter a Jewish religious school. Upon entering the yeshiva, Yentl befriends a fellow student, Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), and meets his fiancée, Hadass (Amy Irving). The story is complicated as Hadass's family cancels her wedding to Avigdor over fears that his family is tainted with insanity, and decides that she should marry Anshel instead. Meanwhile, Hadass develops romantic feelings for Yentl (as Anshel), while Yentl herself is falling in love with Avigdor. After much turmoil, Avigdor and Hadass are reunited, while Yentl leaves Europe to go to the United States, where she hopes to lead a life with more freedom.
Read more about this topic: Yentl (film)
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“But, when to Sin our byast Nature leans,
The careful Devil is still at hand with means;
And providently Pimps for ill desires:
The Good Old Cause, reviv’d, a Plot requires,
Plots, true or false, are necessary things,
To raise up Common-wealths and ruine Kings.”
—John Dryden (1631–1700)
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)