It would be a disservice to “Coexistence, My Ass” to describe it merely as a “standup special,” but there’s something unexpectedly moving about the fact that Amber Fares’ profile of the comedian Noam Shuster-Eliassi inevitably takes a similar shape to the kind of show you’d watch late on a Friday night on HBO. Built around a polished set with Shuster-Eliassi strutting around a black backdrop with cutbacks to her past, the format itself suggests something normal when the Israeli’s life and act is anything but, as if taking the stage has created a safe, familiar space when for most it would seem like the most dangerous place to be.
Usually the power of comedy is measured in its efficacy as a coping mechanism, but “Coexistence, My Ass” is engaging because of how Shuster-Eliassi sees it in slightly different terms, already a good perspective for doing standup. However, it wasn’t the career she always intended to pursue, only realizing that it could lead to her ultimate goal of being a peacemaker when seeing the comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy ascend to the presidency of Ukraine after playing such a role on TV. The product of an unusual upbringing in co-existence village where Israelis and Palestinians were raised not to notice any religious differences, Shuster-Eliassi plotted out a path in diplomacy through the typical government channels before deciding to see if her quick wit could translate into playing comedy festivals.
Although there isn’t a single frame of “Coexistence, My Ass” that doesn’t feature Shuster-Eliassi, the film intrigues as it seems to become less about her than her audience. Surely welcoming a fellowship at Harvard at the university’s Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative to develop her act, it’s a mixed blessing when Shuster-Eliassi ultimately aims for greater reach beyond an academic crowd and she can likewise be dismayed when sets exclusively dedicated to Israeli-Palestinian relations don’t seem to fly with more conventional crowds. She’s clearly uncomfortable spending 10 minutes on material about laser hair removal that she does simply to entertain, but has to wonder what the return on investment is when working in bolder political material that there’s little reception for at all. A job filming “Daily Show”-esque segments for an Israeli television show would seem to be where she’s most at home highlighting hypocrisy, but answering to others within the production proves not to be a great fit either.
In this sense, there’s something grimly appropriate that a slight disconnect exists between an audience watching “Coexistence, My Ass” and Shuster-Eliassi when knowing this is all leading up to October 7, 2023, but that event comes with the context from the interspersed concert footage that even though she couldn’t predict the degree of the war ahead, she could speak to how difficult a resolution would be to come by when meaningful engagement seems so elusive right in front of her. The provocation of the film doesn’t lie in the punchlines when her sense of humor is more saucy than edgy, but instead in her giving up on the idea that there’s a fixed path to success, either for herself or for her homeland. When Shuster-Eliassi grew up without thinking about people around her in rigid terms, it is amusing that she sees vocational goals so starkly, having to loosen up her own approach to encourage others to do the same and her willingness to do so making it seem as if she’ll have the last laugh.
“Coexistence, My Ass!” will screen again at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27th at 9:40 am at the Megaplex Redstone, January 29th at 12:15 pm at the Broadway Centre Cinemas in Salt Lake City, January 31st at 1:30 pm at the Holiday Village Cinemas and February 2nd at 9:40 am at Megaplex Redstone. It will also be available online from January 30th through February 2nd via the Sundance virtual platform.