D'jew eat?

Without getting into spoilers, I have the pleasure of recommending the new Coen Bros movie, A Serious Man. It's clearly their most personal film, and not just because it's about growing up Jewish in the the late 1960's in suburban Minneapolis, but because with God as a theme and the commensurate inability to discern his or her plan, it's the most clear utterance yet of the theme that runs through all their work: there is no justice.

What makes the Coens so unusual is their success with that theme. They still get to make the movies they want to make after all these years, and the box office clunkers here and there don't slow them down, usually because they bring their movies in on time and budget (thanks to their end-to-end storyboarding process). While virtually every other fictional film and about 99.9% of all Hollywood movies revolve around a morality where, no matter the second act obstacles, good is somehow rewarded and evil punished, in the Coen's world (or their take on our world) the only time that happens is by absurd accident, and usually followed by some ironic reversal, even if small.

What drew them to Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men besides the massive opportunity for suspense was undoubtedly this premise, leading to the part that seems to even disappoint some of the movie's fans, the ending with Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff recalling a dream that might as well be his fantasy of an ultimately just afterworld, but which ends with the Coen's leaving him hanging, i.e. him and the belief he clings to hung out to dry.

Likewise, in A Serious Man, for pre-tenure professor Larry Gopnick, no good deed goes unpunished. Taking their cue for centuries of internecine Jewish persecution, the Coens have even incorporated classic themes of Yiddish drama in s movie that I've already heard one non-Jew viewer refer to as "anti-Semitic," and it's easy to understand why. This film makes the Jewish satires of Woody Allen appear benign and playful. With freakish recall they paint perfectly cast pictures of the various characters reminiscent of those from my own youth in the Albany, NY Jewish community, giving the film a kind of ethnic specificity that often leads to successful crossover of an ethnic family comedy -- think Moonlighting or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The Coens, however, have little interest in cute or endearing. I mean, has there ever been a villain as terrifyingly unctuous as Sy Adelman in movie history?

A line often repeated in our faith when faced with personal trauma: "It could be worse." In A Serious Man, it always is, hilariously so. Larry is on the verge of losing his wife, his job, his home, his sanity. Larry's narrative counterpart is his pot-smoking son, preparing for his Bar Mitzvah while trying to avoid the big kid down the street to whom he owes $20 for weed. But it's Larry who awakes from the routine of his life as he's forced to look for answers, most specifically to the meaning of God's will. And one wonders by the end if God is, in fact, a serious being, or perhaps enjoys screwing around with us.

While The Book of Job from the Torah may be seen as the inspiration for the tale, this is also a classic tale of a modern (1967) day schlimazel, i.e. born loser. This is as distinct for a schlemiel, which is a bumbling or inept person. The best way to understand the relationship between the two terms:

A schlemiel is one who always spills his soup, schlimazel is the one on whom it always lands.

Don't worry, there's a schlemiel pouring it on Larry in the form of his crackpot genius brother, but I'll leave that discovery for you to see for yourself.

In the meantime, enjoy the trailer, which gives a sense of Larry's journey and quest for understanding, if not justice:



Apocalypse coming.

It's God's will.