Netflix’s ‘Noah Kahan: Out of Body’ Is a Moving Portrait of a Young Jewish Star

In one of the many moving scenes in Netflix’s “Noah Kahan: Out of Body,” singer Noah Kahan sits with his dad, Josh, on the porch of his Nashville home. They each strum a guitar as they play the first song they ever played together (when Noah was just 9!): the 1970 hit “Father & Son” by Cat Stevens.

Here they are, two vulnerable Jewish men, trying to figure each other out.

Since they first played that song together, Noah Kahan has taken the country’s biggest stages, from Fenway Park to Madison Square Garden with his mega hits, “Stick Season,” “You’re Gonna Get Far” and the very Jewishly named “Call Your Mom” (his mom, author and artist Lauri Berkenkamp, is not Jewish). And Josh Kahan suffered a traumatic brain injury that might not make him able to play the song the way he used to when this father-son duo first did.

Still, it’s a gorgeous duet, heartrending and intimate.

Noah he gives his all on the porch of his Nashville home, flanked by a father who he says in the documentary he once feared he would lose. He shares his regrets about being annoyed and frustrated with him. “I feel like a lot of it is because I can’t figure out a way to let my dad be who he is,” Noah says in the documentary.

His father, whom listeners will recognize from his music, was the person from whom he inherited generational trauma and a propensity for mental illness. And also that “Jewish” nose he often jokes about. (“I got a nose job… They made it bigger,” he jokes in another scene.)

Kahan, 29, has never shied away from being Jewish. He’s called himself the Jewish Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi. He told Billboard: “Growing up half Jewish and having this face on me… it has kind of been a big part of my identity.” But he doesn’t talk about it in this documentary (though one can peep a Star of David doodled on his childhood desk in his home in Vermont). Still, the documentary is about a Jewish artist who gets especially vulnerable — in his music and on film — about mental health, about body dysphoria, about family, and that alone makes it worth a watch.

Kahan has compared himself to Larry David in the past, and has taken the stage with his Vermont “cousin” Bernie Sanders. He’s full of self-deprecation and derisive humor just like him on stage, but Kahan also brings with him a kind radical openness, which is what makes his music so healing, so important to its listeners. And just like his music, his openness in this documentary makes one feel so seen, feel a sense of healing — even if it isn’t necessary healing to him.

He knows his fans think that “because I’m able to say something painful, I can get through something painful.” But he says that in his years of therapy, he’s learned that in life “there is no happy ending or like full circle moment. It’s like waking up every day and trying.”

And yet the moment with his dad feels like one of those full-circle moments, still.

“Every parent wants to be a shameless bragging parent, but I’m just so happy for what Noah’s done,” Josh kvells to the the camera after their duet, before getting too overwhelmed with emotion to go on.

In response, Noah says: “I love you, Dad. I missed you.”

“‘Noah Kahan: Out of Body” is now streaming on Netflix.