• Olivia Collette in Montreal
No wonder so many people thought Jesus was a heretic! All this talk of a kind and forgiving God? I mean, did he skip the bit where God asks Abraham to kill his favourite son? Wasn't flooding the entire world a little rash? Can ordering that hit on Amalekites be classified as reasonable behaviour? Let's face it, Old-Testament God could use a little anger management.
Gnostics had an explanation for God's recklessness: dude isn't the real God. According to them, that deity in the Old Testament is the result of an abomination. Some angelic being - an aeon called Sophia - mated with herself instead of a proper consort, and out came the Demiurge, whom Sophia immediately abandoned upon realizing what a hideous thing she'd done. Because the Demiurge was stuck on a cloud all by itself, it assumed that everything belonged to it, so it started creating things (the world, animals, Adam and Eve) to have stuff to possess and control. The Demiurge was ignorant and selfish, which explains its belligerence and general brattiness towards its own creation.
Unfortunately, this story never made the canonical cut because Gnostics just couldn't get organized. The story also distinguishes between the One True God - who is light and goodness and truth and love - and Creator God, that angry dude from the Old Testament. And if there's any legitimacy to this Gnostic tale, then the God that's been running things around here is full of rage.
If God is there at all in the Coen brothers' "A Serious Man," he's of the unseen, unknown, and scathingly unfair variety. Their plot is rooted in folkloric storytelling, from the tragic hero to the things that happen in threes. If you ask the Coen brothers why they keep torturing poor Larry Gopnik, they'll probably say, "Because we can." And really, isn't that the kind of answer a god might give?
In Larry Gopnik's world, God is not merciful. It's easy to equate Larry with Job, who's being put through the ringer at God's go-ahead. Then again, hasn't a mathematician's faith already been tested? After mapping out the equation of the uncertainty principle to his students, Larry tells the class, "It proves we can't ever really know what's going on."
Larry's perfectly capable of living with that uncertainly until a bunch of certainties take turns taunting him. They don't even beat around the bush about it, either. His wife tells him very plainly that she's met someone else and wants a divorce. In an irritatingly condescending manner, her lover gently muscles his way into the Gopnik home. Larry's anti-social brother has a severe gambling problem. His son's accrued a debt through a Columbia record scam. One of his students is trying to bribe his way into a passing grade. And despite all that, Larry has to keep it together because he's up for tenure.
Seeing how much he's struggling with his life's sudden eventfulness, a friend advises Larry to seek counsel from a Rabbi. There are a few in his congregation, and in the pecking order, the eldest seems to be the least effectual and the youngest is the most idealistic. Each also represents a type of godhood.
Larry's first consultation is with young Rabbi Scott, who advises him to look at things from a fresh perspective, to seek inspiration in the littlest details, which are as great as God is good. Larry gives it an honest shot until his wife's lover dies, which somehow gets him stuck with the funeral bill.
This leads him to Rabbi Nachtner, who tells him the story of a dentist who found Hebrew etchings in his patient's teeth. Trying to understand the mystery, the dentist spends countless nights searching the Kabbalah and the Torah for answers. What does Rabbi Nachtner make of such an oddity? He doesn't know, and besides, God "doesn't owe us an answer. He doesn't owe us anything. The obligation runs the other way." Eventually, he tells Larry, whatever's troubling him will just go away, like it did for the dentist. Larry is willing to entertain this notion until his dreams get unsettlingly immoral.
For problems of this nature, he's told to seek an appointment with Rabbi Marshak. But the elder Marshak can't be bothered. In an unquestionably God-like manner, he refuses to see Larry. The silver lining? Larry finally gets a direct answer.
Maybe it's out of character, but Larry wants to know what it all means. What the Rabbis can't tell Larry - either because it's too simple or too devastating - is that it's all rather meaningless. Case in point: at the end, Larry's doctor wants to speak to him "in person" about the results of his chest x-rays. That's code for "you've got cancer." The kicker, of course, is that Larry doesn't even smoke.
In the unraveling, Larry goes through three lawyers as well. Each is even less helpful than the Rabbis. They also have an interesting way of fitting into Larry's catastrophic narrative. The divorce lawyer can't quite find the legal loophole that would prevent Larry from paying for his wife's lover's funeral. The off-screen criminal lawyer leaves his mark by way of an enormous bill. And the real estate lawyer drops dead in the middle of a meeting.
As though it's for our sake, the movie provides a calm and restful moment when Larry visits his neighbour's wife, whom he covets, and, all told, who's looking to be coveted. They share some marijuana in her viscid living room, and for a blessed instant, his problems disappear. It's when he doesn't make an effort to please anyone else that he pleases himself the most. But as some Jewish folk tales might warn, there's a price to pay for self-satisfaction, especially if you deserve it.
By the Coen brothers' own admission, there's no real significance to the folk tale in the opening scene. It's just there to set the tone, and it does so more skilfully than might be intended. On a cold winter's night, a man comes home and tells his wife he's just been rescued by Treitle Groshkover. His wife's face hardens; Treitle Groshkover's been dead for 3 years (she thinks). This, to her, can only mean one thing: Groshkover is a dybbuk (or a demon, for us "goys"). When Groshkover arrives, she tests his immortality by stabbing him in the heart. He isn't even bleeding, she points out. And it's true. For a few, hair-raising seconds, he doesn't. But then, as if to prove he's human, blood pours out of his wound. He asks, rightly, who the dybbuk really is when a woman stabs an old man in the heart because of a superstition she can't possibly prove. He wobbles out of their home, knowing when he's not wanted.
Was Groshkover a dybbuk or wasn't he? The Coens don't owe us an answer.
In this video, I tell some Jewish folk tales:
Olivia Collette is a writer from Montreal, Canada. She's blissfully agnostic despite - or perhaps because of - her unwavering love of mythology. Read her blog at Livvyjams or follow her on Twitter at @Olivia_Collette.
I find reading your column about "A Serious Man" much more entertaining than the film itself. You have given a great analysis of the film, but I'm left wondering if you liked it or not. I would assume you did because of how you've studied it, but sometimes the movies I like the least are the ones I take my time to study, mostly so I can sufficiently degrade it during conversations with others. My problem is that Larry Gopnik was such a pushover. If he had occasionally stood up for himself he would have far fewer troubles than he does in this film. Credit to the Coens for creating a character I find unrespectable.
Good storytelling, both in the analysis of A SERIOUS MAN and in the folklore. As Rabbi Kushner says, "Sometimes there is no reason."
I love this film. I watched it a few months ago on DVD with the advantage of researching some Jewish folklore on the internet as I watched it. What I really liked about it is that it was a bit of an Odyssey for an everyman but it didn't try to come out with any answers. In that sense it was deeply theological. II loved the opening folk tale, which I understand is a Coen brothers creation. My hope is that this overlooked film will grow in popularity.
DM
Not knowing the dramatic meaning of the film, that seems to be our burden. It feels like a thematic current in the work of the Coen brothers. There's a parallel between Larry Gopnik's uncertainty and our own search of meaning in the film. Even if sometimes life seems poetic, most of the time it feels mostly random and chaotic, and it takes a lot of ourselves to not be negative when it feels like the universe wants to hit us in the mouth. Sometimes, when confronted with confusion and hopelessness, I remember this film, and I think I understand, at least, emotionally what the film is trying to say. But not the plot- that's going to need at least my whole life to understand, as I'll look back one day, at the border of death, and at least see a path which will seem poetic and meaningful for myself.
@Dusty: I enjoyed the movie very much. It had me in stitches. As to whether or not I find Larry "respectable," I can only quote one of my friends, who said this of Aaron Eckhart's character in Thank You for Smoking: "That's the least likeable protagonist I've ever seen, and I like him so much!" Also, a commenter on Twitter proposes that Larry a "lamed vovnik," which has messianic virtues. I can't wait to explore this further.
@Gary: Thanks muchly.
@D Merck: The opening folk tale is my favourite part of the movie. The Coen brothers nailed the folkloric storytelling. Absolutely nailed it. Now I can't help but look for that sort of thing in their other pieces.
@Janet:You're right about the parallel between Larry's experience and ours. The first thing my husband exclaimed when the film was over was, "well, what *did* it all mean?" Also, your comment is kinda poetic. :-)
Great article.
Gotta love the Coens.
Most of their films' plots have a noir-ish quality - more of a convoluted series of misunderstandings than a conventional narrative - things keep going wrong and start to pile up.
What a loaded script! A Serious Man can be enjoyed at face value or every line can be scrutinized (old testament references, physics proofs, musical selection, "i haven't done anything!" etc).
While I've always been impressed by their understanding of genre and enjoyed the quotable, self-referential dialogue, this last run of films has proven the Coens also possess a rather developed interest in morality.
This write-up made me think of an op-ed I read in the NY Times around the time True Grit was released.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/27/narrative-and-the-grace-of-god-the-new-true-grit/
“You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace... You cannot earn that [grace] or deserve it."
While worldly outcomes and the universe’s moral structure no doubt come together in the perspective of eternity, in the eyes of mortals they are entirely disjunct.
A great analysis of yet ANOTHER film that I haven't watched yet. I also love mythology, so I look forward to swapping stories with you at Ebertfest. :-)
Finally, an interesting take on the God of the Old Testament by the Gnostics. It would explain a lot.
This is such a good review of the film. I just watched it a few days ago, and couldn't sympathise with Larry more.
You mentioned God in the Old and the New Testament. So, let me tell you what Islam says about this. After all, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are three legislation that stem from the same one religion. In Islam, it is known that the more you try to accept such terrible conditions in your life, the more chances you have of entering higher levels of paradise. In more simple terms, you study hard (even though you may hate this subject you're studying), you get the highest grades.
As for the spooky opening scene, I understood Groshkover a dybbuk because it seemed like he controlled when the blood could come out. He only did this after the wife explained that the reason why she stabbed him was not because she was, simply, scared of them man, but to see if he was, indeed, a dybbuk.
Ma'am? That's good writin'!
That's my motto. I got it from Eddie Arnold the cowboy star. When he was in his 80s and had had a string of hits for 60 years by then an interviewer asked him what was the secret to success.
"Good songs," Eddie replies.
When you get that old, you have no more time for fancified theory. "Good songs" it is. And "good writin' it is.
Thanks for the bit on the gnostics. I'd never heard of that one. I'm still wondering, periodically, what the Archons were for. But all that has receded some for me, too, since I realized that the difference between us in the past and us in the present is that we think our myths are realer than theirs were.
I watched "A Serious Man" in the local theater, attentively, awhile back. Reading your vivid review it surprised me how much of its episodes I had completely forgotten. It is as though none of them mattered, one uncalled for mishap would have done as well as any other, so long as Larry Gopnik never deserved any of them.
As I understood it, a "gopnik" is a "hapless jerk" in yiddish.
This may provide a clue to the metaphysical mysteries woven into this movie. Tho' I wouldn't know how to explain the tornado.
get a bible. read the book of jobe.
then comment as to whether god taught satan a lesson of if satan made a fool of god.
ready....go
Thanks for a detailed analysis and helpful information. "A Serious Man" is one of the funniest films I saw in last year. Poor Gopnik, it is quite miserable to him, and we feel sorry for that, but we cannot help but laugh for he is getting punched by the world again and again - and again till the end credit. The Coen brothers masterfully orchestrate his ordeal, and, as you said, they wisely do not try to give the answer for that. I have no idea about why all these things happen to Gopnik, but it seems the world goes around like that sometimes, regardless of whether God exists or not.
Just because The Bible is one book doesn't mean any one part of it agrees with any other part of it. The Bible is a compendium of different views and different versions of God. In the end, I think each of us has to find for ourselves who and what God is to us and to the world.
Re: God telling Abraham to kill his own son
The story also says that God had an angel tell Abraham to refrain from going through with the deed. Maybe there's a point to the story that you're missing.
Ebert: Who ya gonna believe? God, or some angel?
@J Bergwell: I love that article. Thank you for sharing it.
@Greg: Look forward to meeting you too.
@Sarah: I appreciate you sharing an Islamic perspective on this story. My father always said, "the harder I work, the luckier I get."
@Tom: Does "gopnik" really mean "hapless jerk?" That's so interesting. And the tornado, by my reckoning, is just another thing that sucks.
@Richard: I've read the Book of Job, and I always felt that humans were being made fools of.
@Seongyong: I know, right? It's such a serious movie and it manages to be so funny.
@John: Fair enough, but my essay isn't really about any of that.
@Bill: If an angel - who's supposed to serve God unflinchingly - tells Abraham not to do what God says, I believe it strongly implies that even by his own angels' standards, God is making an unreasonable demand.
Olivia
This comment is not so much about your review of a serious man, but the theology that you propose. I would like to leave you with a few questions to mull over in your head.
1. Is it possible that gnosticism failed because it is a dualism? Is it also possible that gnosticism failed because it gives such a low view of our physical world, making every beautiful tree, flower, or body you see out to be something wretched created by an angry demi urge?
2. Is it possible that the New Testament does not contradict the Old Testament, but instead explains and fulfills it? If this is so could it lead to a more positive view of God in the OT?
3. Is it possible that God really is answering our question when it comes to evil perfectly in the book of Job? Instead of God playing a big cosmic joke on Job, is it possible that God asks Job all of those questions about the animals, and the origins of the universe to make a grand point: unless you have a full understanding of everything in the world it is impossible to understand your own suffering.
Please reconsider what you have posted in this article. I think that Christianity is very misunderstood, by most Christians, and even more so by those who do not believe. No offense but you sound too comfortable with this faith, as if it was a neighborhood kid you grew up with. I think you need to give it much more thought.
Keep in mind that there are intellectual giants who spent there whole life trying to wrap there minds around the faith. You have not arrived. I hope you do not take my post as disrespectful. I do not mean for it to carry that kind of tone.
Sincerely
Jared
What a sensational, hilarious, deeply thought-provoking and haunting film - my favorite from the Coen brothers and one of the best films of the past decade. For me it is perhaps the ultimate "philosophy" movie, going so far as to investigate the very core, elemental questions man has struggled with since the beginning of time: "What does IT mean? What, ultimately, is the difference between action and inaction, and can we even choose? Does fate exist? Why do things happen in certain patterns?"
The whole story can be seen as a giant Schrodinger's Cat, balancing precariously on the precipice of two options, neither of which can be proven certain. The Coen brothers understand the yin-yang effect of life, and they imbed deep into their script contrasting ideas that reflect life's inherent compromises and dichotomies, the things that simply must be so because their equal opposites couldn't possibly exist otherwise. For happiness there must be sadness; for a good day there must be a bad one; to live, as the complex, thinking human being you are, you must be able to cope with the inevitable burdens of the mind.
Re: the opening scene
I don't think there's a definitive answer here - the scene introduces many of the films themes/ideas, such as their takes on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (the more you look, the less you know) as well as Schrodinger's paradox (is the cat alive or dead or somehow simultaneously both?)
In the hands of the Coens, these proofs provide a mathematical basis for existential dread. Something like:
You can try and make connections between your actions and their consequences but it becomes difficult to gauge - the more you look at something the less you know about it, which is further obfuscated because anything or anyone is capable of being two opposing (even contradictory) things at the same time! Even though you can never truly know or understand the consequences of your actions, you're still responsible for them! (God or no god!)
Re: the Book of Job and the tornado...
The tornado can be taken as something else that sucks (doesn't need to be any more than that), but if you really want to read something into it, when God speaks to Job it is in a whirlwind (and he does make Job look pretty foolish)
Obviously wouldn't be the only Job reference in the movie...
The best advice to the viewer is spelled out at the very beginning of the film:
Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you
(or, "Please, accept the mystery")
Book of Job? Yeah, God does not come off well...
Great review of a great great film. You bring up a lot of points I hadn't considered -- like Rabbi Marshak as a stand-in for god, the supremely wise figurehead who just won't ever bother to talk to you. And then the fact that when Larry's son does get to talk to him for a moment, we get a suggestion that maybe the supremely wise figurehead doesn't have any particular special insight either -- or maybe his wisdom is of the "so profound it's simple" kind. (I'm trying to remember: other than the lines from the Jefferson Airplane song, does he also say "Be a good boy"?)
As for the tornado at the end, my interpretation is this: we've spent the movie trying to get at the idea of some kind of nuanced god: perhaps one who leaves messages in teeth or monitors and punishes academic dishonesty. So maybe at the end, the message is, "Oh, you thought god was that? No no. God's the guy who tears through a group of innocent middle-schoolers with a tornado for no reason. If you're trying to find nuance and purpose in that, you're playing the wrong game." Very Book of Job, as others have mentioned.
I am glad people are talking about this wonderful film that initially came and went with hardly a blip on the radar. If anyone needed proof that the Coens are (still) the best filmmakers currently working, here it is.
The best advice to the viewer is spelled out at the very beginning of the film: Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you
(or, "Please, accept the mystery")
are you equating these two statements? they don't seem synonymous to me. if you ask me to accept the mystery, you're suggesting to suspend belief for the sake of the art, which is fine. however, to receive with simplicity suggests to weed through the extravagance or fringe in order to identify and focus on the theme or message.
i can do the latter with or without doing the former, but i don't know if i should do both.
@Jared: Sorry, dude. I'm not sold. Everything you put out there is “possible,” but none of it is particularly convincing, or, I would argue, even really true. It isn’t wise to assume anything about what I know or don’t know about theology. Indeed, I’m very comfortable with this material and know more about it than what is being implied in your comment. It's true that I have no vested interest in the theological aspects of this essay, but those who do found tongue-in-cheek humour in my interpretation because it’s there to be found. I’m agnostic. I don’t know if God exists or not. If he does, and if what Jesus said was true, then God can take a little joke about his bad temper.
@Jonathan: I’m going to offend some people by saying this, but…Amen!
@J Bergwell: I actually toyed with the title “Accept the Mystery.” Such an apt way to summarize the movie.
Dear Jared,
You missed something.
Sincerely,
Alice
@Billy: Nope, not at all.
@Craig: It's a shame the movie didn't make more noise when it came out. The Coen brothers don't get better and better; they're just consistently excellent. Though this is my new favourite movie of theirs, I tell you what.
@Richard: I dunno. Maybe you should. They're both good exercises.
The movie's about a man, not unlike the rest of us, having to face what he feared his entire life: That there is no actual meaning, and it certainly won't be found in religion.
Larry Gropnik has been compelled to go beyond the wishy-washy approach he (and almost all of us) had taken in regards to what is the actual meaning associated with life. Life's circumstances have finally forced for him to truly look into why things are going the way they are. His entire life he had been comfortable being unsure about the exact nature of the underlying forces responsible for his life's direction, and finally this Physics professor has to find out. I think the following quote illustrates his life-long double standard:
"The Uncertainty Principle. It proves we can't ever really know... what's going on. So it shouldn't bother you. Not being able to figure anything out. Although you will be responsible for this on the mid-term."
As Larry goes from rabbi to rabbi, he realizes that not being able to "know" turns out to be inevitable. The film's final events (cancer and the tornado) are God (or, rather, the lack thereof)'s way of saying "How cute, you seek an explanation. Here, try to explain these very unfortunate and quite likely random events."
Even though the Coens are known for a cynical worldview, I think "A Serious Man" is very much an anti-nihlism film. Notice how stuff only REALLY gets bad for Larry when he starts giving in to temptation. The police arrest his brother when he goes to his sexy neighbor's house and starts smoking weed. The storm, tornado, and cancer isn't revealed until he makes the final decision to take the bribe (AFTER it was revealed he received tenure, no less).
What's the big reveal of Rabbi Marshak's advice to Larry's son? "Be a good boy." Do good, even if you don't feel like you should. That's the most basic moral code out there. To quote another excellent movie, Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima", Do what is right, because it's right. Once you give in to temptation and nihlism, you'll eventually find yourself taken to that viewpoint's logical extreme of despair, death, and pain.
Jonathan: Great analysis/summation
Rich: didn't mean them to be synonymous - they both seem like good advice for viewing the film as well as living your life
Lastly, one aspect of the movie that may seem kind of trivial but has made me wonder:
When Marshak quotes the Jefferson Airplane song, he says "When the truth is found to be lies and all the hope within you dies.... then what?"
He changes the lyric "joy" to "hope."
While this is clearly not an accident and it probably doesn't have that much significance, it does occur during a pivotal scene.
Those Coens always keep you guessing...
Yeah it's a great movie.
I think highly of the Coen's movies yet, with A Serious Man, to my dismay, I could not get into it. I thought that perhaps it was the Jewish theme. Youre right - the folktale at the beginning did set the tone - obscure, alienating, self-referential, self-satisfied (oh, speaking of god...). The effect of the folktale was that of waiting for the other shoe to drop - the revelation, the ah, I see. But of course it doesnt come, nor does it throughout the movie. Which I agree is perhaps the point. But I was not entertained, which is the reason I enter a cinema (and to think, but never without also being entertained), theological insights or not. I think that if one has to do research to "discover" the pertinence of a movie then the experience of the movie is well lost and shall not return, though such research may lead to other worthy things.
Good essay. I suggest, imho, you are agnostic, at least partly, because of your love for mythology.
oh -- I think the god of the new testament is also a dick, for he actually carries out the filicide he tried to push onto Abe earlier, and had actually been planning it for some time. (that is, until we find out that he was only slumming).
In the Beatitudes (Matthew 5), those described as "blessed" share many character traits with Larry Gopnik, and the passage culminates with "great is your reward in heaven". The idea that the wicked unfairly prosper is prevalent throughout the Bible, especially in Psalm 73. But these point out that ultimately the tables are turned as Heaven receives the righteous. I think "A Serious Man" shows us how a preoccupation with our own circumstance can enshroud us in the same clouds that we are destined to rise above. We are not cursed by our circumstance as much as by our perspective, which is shown in the opening scene in which a rescue is reinterpreted as a curse. If our perspective includes Heaven, then there is not such a finality to the things that seem unjust. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."
Two missing elements... the obvious reference to "Fiddler on the Roof." In trying to regain his life/balance, he loses it by what he sees (I don't think dream ideation is equivalent to the actual act, as someone posted).
The second is that the transistor radio actually works like an iPod/Walkman in the movie. This is a serious technological glitch that I don't think a younger person would catch.
I was going through a divorce when this movie came out, and I deeply understand the desperate need to regain love, balance, and a belief. I did find God to be present and a great help. To quote Airplane, "Don't you want somebody to love?" This is actually the hopeful thread in the film. Or if you are a pessimist - the ultimate lie - that there is someone or something to love either on this earth or in eternity. Its what I had to hang on to even when the truth turned out to be a lie.
part II, the dybbuk.
There is great significance to this scene (contrary to the Coen bros "admission"). It highlights the tension between action and in-action in the light of mystery or perhaps moral challenge. Why is the wife able to stab the dybbuk and the husband just an observer? She has a clarity (moral, personal, a faith?) that allows her to act. Larry has no clarity at all, and like many of us, then just cannot act. This may seem an odd comparison, but in "Master and Commander" our good captain has to "cut the rope," that is allow one man to die-- for the sake of the ship. It is an act equal to stabbing the dybbuk. Larry, on the other hand, has to be pounded against the blackboard (in his dream) to even begin to admit to himself what is going on in his personal life. In this light, the entire movie is a challenge to us. Where do we stand in the face of mystery? Do we have a stand/a faith/ a conviction that would allow us to act? Or do we just hope and pine to be rescued, and to "find somebody to love," and make it all better?
With Kevin, I also say that this is not a cynical film. There are no hidden truths, irony or paradox. It is about the purpose of suffering in a world where God is good and men share in God's good nature through suffering and not complaining. Compare the innocent Larry with all the other characters. It is Larry's acceptance of the cruelties visited upon him that endears him. Notice also that the worst of his tormentors gets his punishment in the film as an endorcement of this interpretation of the film.
I see Marshak as wise. His refusal to see Larry reflects the fact that he understands what is going on and realizes that this is between Larry and God. The others think they have the answers and expound.
I understand that the Coens planned this film as a personal statement and it is a serious statement indeed.
RE: richard voza
2 things.
1: It is the book of JOB, not "Jobe." Or course, it's a transliteration, so it's not that important.
2: There is no Satan in the Torah. The being with which Yahweh is arguing is Hebrew for "Adversary." Completely different. Satan as you are thinking of him has nothing to do with Jewish mythology and is in fact based upon Egyptian mythology which was later recodified by Dante in the Divine Comedy.
I recognize you're making an argument for atheism, or at least against Yahweh and "for" Satan, as it were, but your reading of the text is way off because you're misunderstanding, or at best purposefully misrepresenting, the cultural conditions which brought the story forth.
It is not a story about Yahweh being "right" or "wrong" nor is it even about the bet between Yahweh and the Adversary. Rather, it is a story about how things happen for reasons outside of human control and that trying to organize these events by within the constraints of our own limited logic and personal biases is futile and self-destructive.
If Job had been told that all of this had happened so that some other being, a being which Yahweh has specifically created to be an Adversary, could learn a lesson that, by his very natures, said being was incapable of understanding, would it have made more sense? Would it have been better? Would it have solved anything? I think not.
This is why Job is considered the original Existential Hero.
I liked the film and this writing. I look forward to the review of True Grit in 2012?
re: Hunter D.
I've heard it said before that it would make no difference if Job was told why he was being tormented. I don't buy it. He might appreciate at least some explanation instead of God's silence. Even if it is an arguably crummy reason for his pain it is a reason and he isn't forced to accept the mystery..
Olivia, I loved your review, and your video in which you present the kinds of "jokes" perhaps only a Jew can truly get. I grew up, in suburban Cleveland, with that exact same book you showed! Edited by Nathal Ausubel, wasn't it? God, I remember the Chelm stories and the schlemiel and shlemazl stories, and everything else. We are kindred spirits. I look forward to reading -- and seeing -- you again. The Coen Brothers movie had a weird appeal to me, though the meanings kept eluding me. Maybe that inability to peg it down explains its continued reverberation within me. I think I wanna see it again.
Shalom.
I'm glad I came across this, although, it doesn't answer why the Coen's chose to make this. This movie has been on cable and I always watch it. Trying to gleem some sort of meaning from the movie. I loathe most of the characters, in fact all, except Larry Gopnick. And I despise his lack of anger at his situation. He just sits and takes everything thrown at him. But again, why did the Coen's choose to put the movie goer through their film? They know that we'll all try to find meaning, and that we never will. Just like God or the Demiurge you pose in your essay ....because they can.
Firstly, I'm really enjoying the lively discussion that's taking place around this movie. Good job, guys!
@gui: I get the impression that Larry is sometimes looking for meaning, but also looking for someone to confirm that what he's going through is unfair (like the situation with his wife). Nobody does either.
@Kevin: I dunno. I find the movie pretty nihilistic. Its characters may not be, but the way it treats them certainly is. It wouldn't be the first time nihilism makes a cameo in a Coen brothers movie; remember the Kraftwerkesque nihilists in The Big Lebowski?
@JBergwell: They sure do keep us guessing. They always make movies that you *need* to talk about immediately post-viewing.
@Scott: Conversely, the Jewish theme is what *made* me get into it. ;-)
@Dan Mc: It was a Twitter commenter who said that Larry is identified in the movie as a "lamed vovnik," which is kind of a doomed messianic figure. A blessed person who much endure lots of torture during his/her earthly existence.
@Rimas: Great reading of the dybbuk story and how it fits into the rest of the movie.
@Steve: I love your insight on Marshak vs. the other Rabbis. Perhaps that's the key to his wisdom.
@Hunter: I meant to mention that there is no Satan in the Torah in my review, but I just couldn't find an appropriate place for it. I've got to say, as a girl who grew up Catholic, that's my favourite feature of the Torah.
@John: Hah! I'll start working on it next January.
@J: The conversation Job has with God is a lot like how we reason with ourselves once the pain subsides. It doesn't make any more sense why bad things happened, but at least we're at a point where we can accept it.
@Bob: I feel almost ashamed to admit this, but I'm not Jewish. I love myths and folktales, and in studying them, I learned that a lot of the same folktales are told in different ways throughout cultures. I think there's a lot of common ground to be found through those stories, but it's also interesting how the "moral of the story" can also shift based on who's telling it. It's just something that's always interested me, and I've always tried to find out what a certain story or folktale would "mean" to the person telling it, in that cultural undercurrent sort of way. Also, you're completely right about the book. It's Nathan Ausubel's A Treasury of Jewish Folklore. And so many of the stories are so bleepin' funny! :-)
@Thomas: I don't despise any of the characters. They're all so funny, so clueless about their role in this comic tragedy. But I especially love Larry's salacious neighbour. She's the most honest of them all.
Something tells me the Coen brothers can truly relate to the character of Larry Gopnik, so I trust there's even more to the story here. Does appear that one never knows what life is going to throw at you next, thus the common denominator for the film. Yet, in the end, Larry eventually comes out on top for having weathered it all...