***½/****
starring Ewen Leslie, Naomi Wilson, Saskia Burmeister, Leah Vandenburg
written and directed by Tony Krawitz
by Alex Jackson Following his father's death, Orthodox Jew Yuri quits his rabbinical training and applies for a job as a taxi driver. He's mad at God, mad at his Jewish faith, and eager to experience a world that has been denied him all his life. Jewboy is perhaps the best Martin Scorsese film Martin Scorsese never made–and by that I mean, of course, the Scorsese of Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and The Last Temptation of Christ rather than the more imitated (and imitable) Scorsese of Goodfellas or Casino. This is a serious film about existential despair obviously borne of a deep religious conviction, though whatever his similarities to the prototypical Scorsese-ian protagonist, Yuri's angst is a distinctly Jewish one. With his dead father a rabbi and his grandmother a Holocaust survivor, the weight of keeping the tradition is far too heavy a burden for Yuri to carry, particularly since his Jewish identity now only touches dead nerve-endings–he no longer finds any solace in the old rituals–and is retained (as illustrated in a scene where he pulls a prostitute out of his cab while covering his hands with his coat, careful not to violate Jewish law) solely by honed instinct and a fear of the unknown. Particularly remarkable–and a testament to the talent of Aussie writer-director Tony Krawitz–is that while the 52-minute film maintains a perpetually subjective perspective, Yuri's mindset is never externalized onto his surrounding environment: Yuri's Sydney is far from the Hell on Earth of Travis Bickle's New York. It's banal and ordinary, of particular interest to Yuri and Yuri alone. When he goes into a pornography store, the sex worker is breastfeeding under a blanket; it's just an ordinary workday. Hardly a Scorsese wannabe, Krawitz proves himself a kindred spirit working in the same key.
