New York Jews in a Pickle: “Shiva Baby” and “An American Pickle”

 

For those who’ve been desperately waiting for the return of Mrs. Maisel, have I got a movie (or two) for you? Mrs. Maisel, of course, is the much-honored TV sitcom involving the adventures, romantic and otherwise, of an upscale New York Jewish family. Set in the youthful, idealistic, and all-too-brief Kennedy era, it focuses on an affluent young wife and mother struggling to make her way as a stand-up comedian.

 On a recent much-delayed flight (don’t ask!), I watched two movie comedies that make full use of Jewish gallows humor. The first features the sort of kvetchy, semi-stereotypical New York Jewish mamas of whom Mrs. Maisel makes full use. But Shiva Baby, written and directed by a young woman not long out of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, unfolds very much in the present day. A shiva, the traditional gathering following a Jewish funeral, is generally a place where long-lost friends and relatives re-connect in an atmosphere of familial warmth. But the shiva at the heart of this film contains more than a few outrageous surprises. Its protagonist is Danielle, an appealing but clearly unmoored recent college graduate, who has found a rather unsavory way to get by in life. Urged by her parents to show up out of respect for the family of the deceased, she’s shocked to encounter, over a plate of gefilte fish, the person she least wants to see. And he turns out to be an old friend of her father too! It’s basically an oddball comedy of manners, with such issues as gender identity and eating disorders thrown into the mix. (The implications of the title only become fully clear at the film’s tail-end.)  A small indie, well-cast and well-filmed, of the sort that promises big careers down the line.

 Then there’s An American Pickle, another 2020 movie (this one an HBO production) that didn’t make much of a splash. It contains some of the outrageousness of Borat, along with an underlying sweetness that has stayed with me. Yes, the star is perennial bad boy Seth Rogen, but sex and weed don’t make an appearance. Rogen first appears as Herschel Greenbaum, an old-world ditch-digger with a big beard and a Tevye-type accent. When Cossacks destroy his shtetl on the night of his wedding to his beloved Sarah, the two of them boldly set out for New York, where he finds work in a pickle factory. But his life in America will soon be changed forever, once he falls into a vat of pickle brine that will preserve him for a century.

 Discovered and resuscitated in 2019, Herschel learns that his only living relative is a great-grandson. Ben, also played by Rogen, is a bit of a geek, a good-hearted but rather wimpy computer nerd working on an app with which he hopes to make his fortune. Ben welcomes Herschel into his life, but their differences create a strain between them. The mild-mannered Ben finds it hard to handle Herschel’s emotional nature, which includes a fondness for making “big violence” whenever his highly non-PC opinions are challenged. Once Herschel starts producing and bottling scrounged Kosher dills in a way that the nation’s foodies regard as “artisanal,” Ben can’t contain his jealousy. Hilarity ensues. I realize that critics have been hard on this film, and it’s true that its silliness is sometimes overplayed. But I’ll remember the genuine schmaltz of the moments when family feelings win out. And when was the last time you saw a film that sincerely exalts the power of prayer as a way to cope with tragedy?