‘Succession’ is over. But have you seen Jesse Armstrong’s Woody Allen-inspired short?
Well before he took on the Murdochs, Armstrong chronicled the life of a misfit Welsh pseudo-Jew
Jeremy Strong in the Succession finale “With Open Eyes.” Photo by HBO
By PJ Grisar May 30, 2023
Spoilers for the finale of HBO’s Succession lie ahead.
We’re all sitting shiva for Shiv and saying Kaddish for Kendall.
The Roy family epic is over with a Davidic twist. An in-law took the throne (with a Swede pulling his strings) and the heir apparent spent the final moments gazing at Lady Liberty and, perhaps, considering a highly poetic suicide attempt a few hundred feet from the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
By now you’re likely feeling withdrawal, hoping to fill your Sunday nights with something approaching the urbane, Shakespearean backbiting brought to us by Jesse Armstrong. For that, there is some good news and bad news. On the good: Armstrong was a prolific writer before Succession, and, while lacking the high stakes and polish of an HBO dramedy, his series Peep Show is a triumph. I was familiar with it — as well Armstrong’s contributions to Armando Ianucci’s In the Loop and the film Four Lions — but I only just learned yesterday that Armstrong made a 2013 short film called “No Kaddish in Carmarthen.”
The 13-minute short, Armstrong’s directorial debut, is a semi-autobiographical look at an awkward Welsh teenager, Gwyn, who styles himself after Woody Allen and refers to himself as Jewish. (He isn’t really — he tells a classmate, “Mum’s a Methodist, but it’s the same thing.”)
To complete Gwyn’s transformation into a Woody Allen-esque Methodist Jew, he steals some Allen-esque non-prescription glasses. As per an interview in Wales Online, Armstrong said the title of the film was pulled from the Allen short story No Kaddish for Weinstein. I was able to find a clip of the short, but not the full film.
“Gwyn really doesn’t have a clue about the finer points of the Jewish faith,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong may know a bit more, showcasing a mezuzah on the home of Jewish character Josh Aaronson (Adrien Brody) on Succession. The home was owned by actual Jewish millionaires and the mezuzah was theirs. Certainly Armstrong has an ear for antisemitic dog whistles from the mouths of ATN anchors and their preferred presidential candidate, Jeryd Mencken, probably named for the antisemitic writer, H.L.
But if Gwyn uses Allen as a touchpoint, Armstrong’s biting satire of the disgustingly wealthy feels decidedly unlike the work of the Jewish filmmaker, whose non-Jewish fare (remember Interiors?) was never this funny or unforced.
That said, the Heimlich maneuver theatrics of last week, in which Allen saved the life of a friend in the presence of Allen’s May-December bride and Alan Dershowitz, could seem like less of a Succession plot point.
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