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Emma Seligman’s Shiva Baby is full of essential themes that perfectly blend into an anxiety-inducing thriller. This subgenre has become a popular storytelling vehicle to capture a range of self-destructive moments and journeys. These self-destructive plot points often force audiences to question the reliability and morality of the protagonist. For example, when a titular character finds themselves compromised and then explodes, how much of their destruction is blamed on the individual versus their environment? It’s likely the protagonist will have a tragic fall arc where they decline into immortality or even death, so it greatly matters who the audience criticizes and why.
The most nihilistic, delusional, and elevated example of Shiva Baby’s subgenre is 2019s Uncut Gems. This Safdie brothers‘ film straps you in for a disturbing ride that contains a rise, fall, and fatal end for its protagonist Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler). The story has a calm-to-chaos cycle, all carried by the incredible script, cast, crew, and most importantly, the frantic score by Daniel Lopatin who creates a uniquely dreadful atmosphere in an already bleak New York City. The motif of jewelry, diamonds, and gems scattered throughout the film represents the shallow and inflated value that privileged societies demand in their lives, all at the cost of exploited workers’ (Ethiopian miners in the film). Howard spends his life as the financial mediator between the impoverished and wealthy. He corrupts lives in order to deliver superficial goods, all because he believes he and his family can ascend through life with materialism. Everything is for sale to Howard, even the greatest risks in life. These are the disgusting symptoms of his greatest addiction: capitalism.
Shiva Baby shares much in common with Uncut Gems in the way it traps you in the trunk of its story. From its conflicting tones, distressing edits, anarchic score, and agonizing endings, both films are similarly claustrophobic and may induce a panic attack in its audience. However, in its essential themes and protagonist’s journey, Shiva Baby might be more unique in what it explores about identity, guilt, generational differences, and who is at fault for the chaos that unfolds in life.
Danielle (Rachel Sennott) faces societal pressures that force her to negotiate her identity to withstand her worst nightmare: Not being accepted. In only a few hours at a Shiva (Jewish funeral), people confront Danielle about future career prospects and even critique her sexuality as she is pressured to hide truths about her life from those who want to put her identity in a box. As a Queer Jewish millennial (or, at least, a child of Gen X parents), she’s forced to navigate obstacles that come with her multi-faceted identity. Seligman and her women-led crew employ these interpersonal tensions with anxious dialogue, fidgety camerawork (Maria Rusche), snappy edits (Hanna A. Park), and disturbing score (Ariel Marx) that all result in a traumatic experience for Danielle and the audience.
Beneath the surface of this genre-merging story, Shiva Baby separates itself from its subgenre as it has something insightful to say about what and who is creating these tighter spaces for marginalized identities. As we watch Danielle unravel, it’s easy to criticize her. In fact, the subgenre sometimes requires you to dislike the main character, as it wants you to examine their shameless intentions and flaws. However, Seligman juggles Danielle’s psyche not so that an audience can dislike her, but so they can reflect on her environment and possibly their own judgment. Lack of acceptance around her generation, religion, family, sexuality, and even career aspirations all collide in an awful and unfair way. The tensions amount to a paradox of feeling validated as a “sugar baby” but having to be silent about her job because of boomer-millennial differences. This is aggravated even more by her parents’ high expectations juxtaposed with their active disregard for her sexuality, as they believe being bisexual is just a “phase.” And finally, she has to maneuver between an overly-opinionated family at the Shiva, Maya (Molly Gordon) the ex-girlfriend who represents Danielle’s true self, her “sugar daddy” (Danny Deferrari), and his “girl boss” wife (Dianna Agron), and the mental health crisis she has as a result of all these barriers.
Shiva Baby chooses to expose the disapproval of Danielle’s identity every time she turns a corner, which causes her to have a panic attack. Whereas Uncut Gems’ Howard, a seemingly well-intended father, and obsessed gambler, is manipulated by the fallacy of an American dream that causes him to self-destruct and is killed. Both films can have similar productions and tones, but ultimately after analysis of their protagonists’ journeys, the challenge to get an audience to self-reflect about Shiva Baby’s Danielle is much greater than what Uncut Gems asks of its audience with Howard. Seligman might just have this subgenre’s panic-attack-inducing trophy.
