[... twenty bucks, you little s***!]
[don't worry about it]
[you brat] [I'm gonna get it] [f***er]
Larry: "What's going on?"
"Tell me what's going on here"
"What's going on?"
That's the question that Larry Gopnik, the ill-fated protagonist of the Coen brothers' dark comedy
'A Serious Man' keeps asking.
It's a reflexive and, sort of stupid question.
One in response to a series of unfortunate events that seem to be tearing Larry's quiet, contented,
suburban life apart without cause.
First his wife demands divorce, then his student tries to blackmail him for a passing grade,
then his neighbour infringes on his property, then his wife's lover dies and he's forced to pay for it,
then his brother gets in trouble with the law and he has to pay for that too,
then his chance at tenure is threatened by anonymous hate mail.
He also gets into a car accident, witnesses the death of his lawyer,
and is forced to pay for a record subscription even though...
Larry: "I didn't DO. ANYTHING."
Being a Coen brothers movie, each of these situations compound and unfold into one another
with surgical precision. And they are each, individually, illustrative of their own batch of themes,
which, taken together, sort of shape out the central message of the movie like one of those optical illusions
that demonstrate closure.
Of course, there is no real closure in 'A Serious Man', just as there's not really a shape in the illusion.
That doesn't stop Larry from *seeking* it, though: he wants to understand what he's done to deserve
such misfortune, seemingly unaware of what the audience could see clear as day:
that it's Larry's inaction, his constant refrain of "I haven't done anything" that causes so many of his problems.
Larry knows that "Actions have consequences" but inaction has consequences too.
Instead of grappling with this fact, Larry looks for a way to interpret his suffering,
seeking out the counsel of three rabbis. The first, a junior rabbi, lectures Larry on the importance of...
Rabbi: "Perspective. That's what it is, Larry."
The second tells a convoluted parable about a dentist who finds a message in a patient's teeth,
that never resolves itself, illustrating the inscrutability of God's plan.
And the third rabbi, the elderly, wise rabbi Marshak, refuses to see him altogether,
literalising the heavenly silence in the face of big questions
that prompted Larry's search for advice in the first place.
A lot of the things that Larry hears are clichés, like the need to change your perspective.
Rabbi: "Look at the parking lot, Larry!"
And yet many of them are true. Of course, cliché and parable are two devises that people use
to understand what's going on. And they're not the only that 'A Serious Man' has to offer.
Larry's son Danny uses music and drugs, so does their next-door neighbour Mrs. Samski,
Larry's brother uses a complex probability map of the universe called 'The Mentaculous',
and Larry himself teaches the theories of physics and mathematics,
namely, an equation that seems to definitively prove the underriding uncertainty of all things.
"So I can see that it's subtle, it's clever. But at the end of the day, is it convincing?"
At its core, this film questions the persuasiveness of every interpretive device.
By placing them side by side and showing how they fail to work together
and form any kind of semblance of coherence, the Coens communicate the real dread of a world
that's become unreadable.
And they take this failure down to the most basic form of interpretation: the use of language.
A lot of attention is payed to the language of Hebrew, an ancient language
that's lost much of its force in the modern world. Indeed, even in the 1960s,
young Danny Gobnik was doing exactly what I did when faced with the Thora portion to learn for my bar mitswa.
He had vinyls, he had tapes, but neither of us learned to read or understand the Hebrew.
Instead, we memorised the sounds that, to us, remain gibberish.
Danny: [sings in Hebrew]
Danny can't find his place when the time comes because those symbols are as incomprehensible
as 'The Mentaculous' is. And even in English, several times in the film, people are asked to repeat things,
or just hear them as nonsense.
Larry: "Me sir my sir?"
Interpretation is how we nail down the world around us. Word by word, fable by fable, equation by equation,
we secure the storm of experience onto fixed points. And when these start to come undone,
and unforeseen circumstances are always threatening to do that, it can be very traumatic.
We, like Larry, reach for anything that can orient us. Explains the appeal of religion,
yet 'A Serious Man' documents its ever decreasing usefulness in the modern age.
Of course, this criticism of interpretive methods ought to make us realise
that we're watching a form of interpretation: the cinematic narrative.
'A Serious Man', a film in which every element is ambiguous, in which cause and effect,
the engine of any narrative, is wilfully disregarded, suggests that film and story
are plagued by the same problems as all the other devises, despite what Hollywood would have you believe
One of the most confounding things about the film is its opening prologue, a short fable,
filmed in a different aspect ratio, about a Jewish couple in the old country who stab and maybe kill
either a good Samaritan or a demon. The prologue's meaning and its relationship to the rest of the film
are totally nebulous. There's just enough thematic similarity to prompt interpretation.
But once you try, the only outcome can be frustration.
Moving the viewer into a head-space like that is neither pretentious, nor unwieldy.
It's the effect of a subtle, experienced and masterful craftsmanship.
The Coen brothers have been doing this for years
[I just don't understand it]
But 'A Serious Man' is their most explicit account of a bleak, but unflinching philosophy.
Larry: "I don't understand"
One that remains sceptical about the things we believe, film, story and interpretation can do.
It understands that the big, philosophical truths about human life are devastatingly simple.
There is no God, there is no objective or cosmic purpose for us. People experience joy to varying degrees
but everybody suffers. Anyone can figure these things out with a small amount of observation, introspection
and study. And once you do, that dim feeling of disappointment will always be there.
But there should also be relief, the kind of relief you can only get
when putting aside questions that are really a waste of time.
Because only when the reflexive and sort of stupid questions are dropped,
can the better questions be asked.
Better questions like whether or not the mind [noise of antenna]
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