Re uncut gems and jewishness:
I think what safdies do with their jewishness is make it a part of things, as a storytelling advantage. But they dont lean on it too much or make it a ‘jewish story’ or similar. It is their reality and they know it well enough to own it, in a way that they cant really be challenged in. To me this is like a holy grail way to deal with issues of race, religion, identity. Its there, you acknowledge, but it slots in line with a load of other important things that make up lived reality eg job you do, your family dynamics, your other interests like basketball, whatever. Some of the best bits of UG for me are just when hes watching the games on telly, shouting at it and so on.
So to me this is a real achievement on their part, how they fold the jewishness into everything else, it makes it so much richer. Theres so few films, plays, books like this, which examine an identity and say a lot about it, whilst also not telegraphing or putting too much pressure on it. The only thing i can think of is the play ‘the arbor’ by andrea dunbar, where she goes out with a pakistani guy and her family are racially abusing him. She defends him as a human being, but he turns out to be abusive towards her. So it basically is real: the pakistani guy doesnt get a pass cos hes pakistani. But its so heavy, never really gets performed, not been made into a film. The film that did get made (‘rita, sue and bob too’) has race as a sort of side plot, which is another way to deal with these things. Anyway, well done these lads for what theyve done here.