Movie About a Rabbi Whose Family Gets Killed
The pleasure of reviewing a Coen brothers movie is also the horror: so much to consider; where to begin? Of all of my pop-civilisation interests, Joel and Ethan Coen take managed to accomplish the greatest of heights by making accessible films (more or less) in terms of their national distribution while delivering what I call film as literature, films that warrant repeated viewing, layered with allusive content that offers viewers much to ponder and discover. While some accept fabricated bookish careers reflecting on the Coen brothers' work, I hope only to scratch the surface and offer a few different ways of reading and enjoying their most recent film, A Serious Man (2009).
The title may seem like a pedestrian manner to begin discussing this moving-picture show, nevertheless every bit nosotros ask what indeed is a serious man and who is the serious man in this story, we are already sucked into the fascinating complexities of the Coens' shared genius. While they claim that this film is not autobiographical, A Serious Human being is clearly their most personal movie to date. The movie and their ain childhood share the same setting and fourth dimension period, a Jewish suburb of Minneapolis in the late 1960s. The Coens' films ever have explored the quirks and charms of various corners of America: O Brother Where Art One thousand?—the deep S; Raising Arizona—the Southwest; Fargo —another take on a more than contempo portrait of Minnesota; The Big Lebowski—Los Angeles. In this sense they accept served as our most populist regionalist documentarians, reminding us, refreshingly, that America is more vast and interesting than the nowhere-ville, stripmalled, chain-restauranted redundant version of America that well-nigh of u.s.a. know all too well. Even so here in A Serious Man, nosotros are led to wonder if maybe their previous regional surveys have, more importantly, been an investigation into sections of America that are every bit particular and bizarre as the Coens' own hometown. It is as if they have used their whole career to await through unlike family photograph albums just to prove that, yes, it is true: nosotros all have weird aunts and uncles. Yes, indeed, all our families are laughable and strange. With the lens turned inwards instead of outward, they unflinchingly portray the Jewish customs with the aforementioned biting wit every bit whatsoever of their other films, and they ask this question: who and what is a serious homo? It is a question that cuts to the cadre of what it ways to be a Bar Mitzvah.
(Alert: spoilers ahead.) At get-go we might assume the "serious man" is the main character, Larry Gopnik, a physics professor up for tenure, male parent of two teenagers, Sarah and Danny, married to Judith, who, as it turns out, has decided to leave Larry for a recent widower, Cy Abelman. Judith pressures Larry to agree to a become, a Jewish ritual divorce that will allow her and Cy to remarry within the faith. In a severe plow of events, Cy is killed in a car accident. Information technology is at his funeral that nosotros hear the start specific employ of the phrase, "a serious homo" to draw Cy. Rabbi Nachtner says of him, "Cy Ableman was a serious man. Cy Abelman was a homo devoted to his customs, to Torah study, to his love married woman Esther, until 3 years agone she passed, and to his duty, as he saw information technology. Where does such a homo go? A tzadik? Who knows? Perchance even a Lamed-Vovnik? A human being beloved by all. A man who despised the frivolous. Could such a serious human being simply… disappear? We speak of 'olam ha-ba, the world to come." For those of us not familiar with these terms, information technology is helpful to know that a tzadik is a completely sinless rabbi, and the Lamed-Vovnik is an especially righteous human, someone and then righteous that he holds back the wrath of God from destroying the world; 'olam ha-ba is the Jewish idea of the afterlife, the place all Bar or Bat Mitzvahs seek. A serious man, and so, is a colloquial reference to a devout, respectable Jew.
Larry's world, though, is falling apart in Job-like proportions. His simple, foursquare suburban life—seemingly platonic—unravels at every seam. Not only is his marriage revealed to be a sham, merely he is forced to vacate his house and live in the Jolly Roger, a local motel. His blood brother Arthur, ailing from a weeping sebaceous cyst, is get-go in trouble with the police for gambling and and so later on for solicitation of sodomy. At the university, Clive, an Asian educatee, is attempting to bribe him for a passing class on an exam. Larry'due south department chair informs him that someone has been writing slanderous letters urging the department not to grant him tenure. His daughter steals $20 bills out of his wallet to save up for plastic surgery to adjust the very Jewish bridge of her nose. His son is supposed to be preparing for his Bar Mitzvah, simply is more likely to be smoking marijuana with his foul-mouthed friends. Larry wrecks his car, and Judith insists that he pay for Cy'southward funeral, adding to the mounting legal fees for the divorce, his brother'due south defense, and a property line dispute with his neighbor. Maybe more grave is a question most Larry's own wellness: early we see Larry undergoing what might seem like a routine medical exam, but at the cease of the film his physician calls him back in to presumably give him some very bad news. Larry'due south life is anything but respectable, serious.
Nevertheless neither was Cy Ableman, a man who, it turns out, didn't have the coin to pay for his own funeral. We also find out Cy was the mysterious letter writer, plotting Larry'southward demise both maritally and professionally. In fact, no one in the moving-picture show is a serious human being. The Coens' patent dark humor exaggerates each character into a caricature of themselves. Their vision of the late 1960s Minneapolis Jewish customs is a dreamlike drawing, a very dry out, restrained carnival. It is as if they have inverted Camus'southward The Stranger. Larry Gopnik's existential journey is fabricated all the more palpable, all the more visceral, because it seems as if he is the but sane person; anybody else has lost their minds.
A Serious Human offers, and so, an exposition of the possibilities of hermeneutics. Who indeed is sane? It depends on perspective, on what viewers chose to interpret equally truthful. The prologue to the movie is an eight-minute short that reads like an anile rabbinic tale. A human coming home from selling geese at the market loses a wheel off his cart. A rabbi happens along and helps repair the cart, and the man invites him for some soup in thanks. The man arrives home to tell his wife of his good fortune in receiving the rabbi's help, even so the married woman is convinced that God has cursed them. She insists that said rabbi died three years prior. She concludes that this rabbi must instead be a dyybuk, a wandering, restless spirit and when the rabbi arrives at the dwelling, the woman stabs him in the chest with an ice pick. So, who is insane hither? If i believes it is possible for a restless spirit to inhabit a human body, so the husband is deluded; he has brought danger into the house. If one doesn't believe spirits can do such things, then the married woman is insane for murdering the rabbi. This lilliputian tale is the whole motion-picture show in a nutshell. Who is a serious man? It depends on your interpretation.
Larry seeks counsel from 3 different rabbis. The counsel he receives from the commencement human, a inferior rabbi, ironically haunts him the most. Rabbi Scott listens to Larry's predicament and and so launches into a monologue while looking out the window of his office: "The parking lot here. Not much to see. Just if you imagine yourself a visitor, somebody who isn't familiar with these autos and such, somebody still with the capacity for wonder. Someone with a fresh perspective. That'southward what it is, Larry. Because with the right perspective, you can come across Hashem, you know, reaching into the world. He is in the world, not just in shul. It sounds to me like you're looking at the world, looking at your wife, through tired eyes. It sounds like she'due south go a sort of thing... A trouble. A thing."
The Coen brothers are not depicting a cold, businesslike hermeneutic. Larry's existential crisis is personal, raw, and engrossing. Michael Stuhlbarg, an actor known more often than not for his theater work, plays Larry Gopnik with stunning desolation. When he finally breaks down in tears in his lawyer's role, it is a pitiable groan, one each of usa no dubiousness have either made ourselves or heard from someone we love. His performance effectively reminds united states of america that just for the grace of God we could exist in his Job-like circumstances. When suffering rains downwards, as the onetime precept goes, it as well often pours. Larry, similar the rest of u.s.a., wants to know why. Why do these things happen to the states? What does God want to teach us? What does God desire from us? In Larry's session with the second rabbi, Rabbi Nachnter explains, "Sure, we all want the answer. Hashem doesn't owe us the answer, Larry. Hashem doesn't owe us anything. The obligation runs the other manner." For many, this kind of blunt appeal to the supreme Otherness of God—this mysteriousness, this required surrender of rational explanation—is a deal breaker. Larry'southward last question to Rabbi Nachnter brings united states of america to the eye of his hurting and, likewise, the center of the film: "Why does he make us feel the questions… if he'due south not going to give us whatsoever answers?" Nachnter's response—"He hasn't told me"—keeps u.s.a. restrained on the sparse edge of faith.
Ironically, information technology's Danny, Larry's son, and non Larry, who meets with the third Rabbi, Rabbi Marshak. Larry had tried badly to become an audition. He pleads with Marshak's secretary, "I've had quite a bit of tsuris lately. Marital problems, professional, you name it. This is not a frivolous request. This is a... I'm a... I've tried to exist a serious man, you lot know?" Marshak, however, is plain busy. "He doesn't wait busy," says Larry. "He'due south thinking," says the secretarial assistant. These days the elder Marshak but meets with Bar Mitzvahs, so after his ceremony Danny goes directly to Marshak'south part. He walks into the ominous room chaotic with relics of various sorts, trembling as he sits in front of this aboriginal man, the near serious of all. In this scene nosotros become with Danny behind the curtain to run across the grand sorcerer. Perhaps here, finally a discussion of consolation, a ray of light and promise might exist pronounced from the oral fissure of Marshak? In a motion just made believable by the comic prowess of the Coen brothers, Marshak quotes the opening lyrics from Jefferson Aeroplane's "Somebody to Love" as a question. Marshak's voice is barely aural, almost a whisper. His recitation makes the words cryptic and sage. "When the truth... is establish... to exist lies... and all the hope... within yous dies.... So what?" This delightfully unexpected utterance further punctuates the question of perspective. How does 1 interpret life, suffering, meaning? How does ane attain to a serious life? We render to the film'southward epigraph, from the eleventh-century medieval French rabbi Rashi who encourages an optimistic, fresh view: "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to yous."
A Serious Man is not but the Coens' most personal motion picture; it may exist their near of import. I say important, not best. We may disagree on which of their movies has the best characters, dialogue, and plot, only none of their movies so deftly grips the jugular of our existence. This judgment is no pocket-sized thing when considering their weighty oeuvre. I fear that A Serious Human has been disregarded, hidden in the shadow of its Academy-Award-winning predecessor, No Country for Old Men. This film, though, is as ideologically dumbo and smart every bit it is well-crafted, as awkwardly painful as it is comical. Hire information technology. Watch information technology and talk over it and so scout it once more.
Joshua Banner is Government minister of Music and Art at Promise College. He is a correspondent to the recently released For the Beauty of the Church building: Casting a Vision for the Arts (Baker Books).
Source: http://thecresset.org/2010/Trinity/banner_T10.html
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