A Serious Man -What A Laugh!
By Saul Landau
Landau's ZSpace: Nov 14, 2009
Over decades of movie addiction, I know after depositing my fee for
entrance, somewhere between the candy counter and the seat, I lose my
critical sensibilities by putting on a pair of invisible (virtual) glasses,
instruments of optical delusion that allow me to see almost anything I want
in any movie.
Through their films, the Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan) especially have spun
cinema narratives to provoke maximum flexibility so that audiences can
identify with warped people and idiotic problems in their own lives.
Their new film, "A Serious Man," recreates Satan's brutalizing of Job, with
caricature theologians opining in bromides on the source of his suffering.
The Coen brothers' protagonist, however, can't bring himself to challenge
God or even ask the obvious question: How could God permit so much misery
and horror? God of course responds anyway, cinematically, at the film's end.
But unlike the Job story, "A Serious Man" adds humor to the perennial
attempt to reconcile evil with total faith in God. This film induced me to
ponder the irrational power wielded by orthodoxy in our world, extending
from the Middle East to the Republican Party.
Like tens of millions of people then and now, my grandparents practiced
rituals of Orthodoxy. By following the "laws" (no matter how irrational),
they showed faith in God. Those questioning such absurd practices
demonstrated a lack of faith. Like me - as a kid and an adult. Faith led my
grandmother to refuse to eat even an apple in our non kosher house. When
nuns in habit walked by she covered my eyes and muttered Yiddish hexes to
protect me from the dybbuk, an evil spirit escaped from a Jewish version of
Hell that inhabits living flesh to accomplish what it failed to do when
alive.
The film begins with a scene of such mystical twaddle - set in the 19th
Century featuring a nebbish (pitifully ineffectual, luckless, and timid
person), his no-nonsense wife and an old, sweet looking rabbi, who died
three years earlier, in whom lives this dybbuk. Cut from ice pick in chest
of Rabbi (put there by the nebbish's wife) to 1967.
Meet nebbish 2, Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg), a logical, and
faith-based physics professor at a Midwestern university whose mind refuses
to calculate his own chaos. His life sucks, but he has erected a cloud of
denial to keep from acknowledging it. Has the 19th Century ghoul from Poland
somehow crept inside Larry to torment him?
Larry explains math equations to his uninterested students. A rabbi
explicates Torah passages in Hebrew school while Larry's 12 year old son,
Danny (Aaron Wolff), listens to Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane on
his pocket tape deck. "When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy
within you dies, don't you want somebody to love?" The indignant rabbi
confiscates the radio where Danny has hidden the $20 he stole from his older
sister to pay the weed dealer, also the Hebrew School bully.
Gopnick's family from Hell also includes an older teenager, Sarah (Jessica
McManus), who steals from Larry's wallet to pay for a nose job and is
obsessed with washing her hair, and his wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), who
announces she loves Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed) -- a pompous hypocrite known
in the faith-based Jewish community as "a serious man."
Larry's problems include his gun-loving, Jew-hating neighbor who encroaches
on Larry's property, bill collectors trying to make him pay debts he doesn't
owe and his neurotic brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), who crashes on the
couch and spends hours in the bathroom draining a neck boil--thus preventing
Sarah from washing her hair. Larry's mounting stress and agony pushes him to
seek help and wisdom, but not complain.
The rabbis -like priests, ministers or imams - offer Larry platitudes. Tens
of millions of Americans, for example place their faith in such pomposity
posing as religious wisdom. The youngest rabbi tells Larry: "Look outside.
Life is like that parking lot." Larry looks. He sees parked cars.
Like the rabbis, Larry's family also remains oblivious to his vicissitudes.
They fixate on their own needs: pot, a nose job, and marrying Sy. But Larry
can't even pity himself because his self-doubt and inner guilt have
possessed him. Is this the real dybbuk?
Larry never questions his faith, and begins to face his problems. God has
answered him. Or has he? His doctor phones about prostate cancer test
results, and a tornado twists toward the synagogue. Larry's stoned son
stares in awe. Will the nebbish gene not get passed on?
One movie-goer worried "this film will foment anti-Semitism." By laughing at
fools, we laugh at ourselves. Has orthodoxy - of whatever religion or
political sect -- made a sense of humor suspect, if not down-right
subversive?
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and filmmaker (dvds through
roundworldproductions.com). His book, A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD was published
by Counterpunch.
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/commentaries/4043
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***
From: Sid Shniad
Sent: Friday, November 13, 2009 10:23 AM
Subject: The Daily Show: the fall of the Berlin Wall and circumcision
[Most of this sketch poked fun at the media's coverage of the anniversary,
centered largely on recalling what a splendid job the media itself did
covering the event in 1989. It was, however, capped with this exchange.]
Jon Stewart. Also now, I'm finally joined by John Oliver, who is now our
senior agricultural correspondent, but who was, at the time, our Berlin
bureau chief. . . . Let's talk about the historical significance of not
just covering the falling of the wall, but of the wall itself falling.
John Oliver. Okay. That's a fresh angle. The wall falling represented the
fall of the Soviet empire, a superpower, literally crumbling in front of us.
Stewart. It was an incredible moment. Do you think something like that
could happen again?
Oliver. No, no. John, this was a unique set of circumstances. A perfect
storm not likely to be repeated. You have to remember. Their economy was
in tatters.
Stewart. True, I remember.
Oliver. And looking abroad, they had very few real friends left.
Stewart. They had behaved incredibly arrogantly on the world stage.
Oliver. Absolutely.
Stewart. There's no question the world had turned their backs on them.
Oliver. Together, Jon, those wouldn't have counted for much, if not for
their disastrous decision to invade and occupy Afghanistan.
Stewart. That's right. That's all . . . .
[Awkward pause.]
Stewart. Uh. But . . . but, of course, our situation is not analogous.
Oliver. It's totally different.
Stewart. Yeah, okay. Yes, yes, the economy's in tatters.
Oliver. Sure.
Stewart. . . . Yes, yes, we've been a little arrogant on the world stage.
Oliver. Everyone's agreed.
Stewart. . . . And, we've been in Afghanistan now for six years
Oliver. That's nothing.
Stewart. . . . and it doesn't look like we're ever going to get out. But
the Soviet Union, at that time, had an inexperienced charismatic leader . .
.
Oliver. Came out of nowhere.
Stewart. . . . promised change and reform. .
Oliver. I remember.
Stewart. Yeah, so that was completely . . .
Oliver. He even won the Nobel Peace Prize.
[Awkward pause.]
Stewart. (quietly) John?
Oliver. Yes.
Stewart. When your empire falls, does it hurt?
Oliver. A little bit at first. It pinches a little bit. But it's just like
getting circumcised.
Stewart. That's not so bad.
Oliver. . . . if you happen to be 90% foreskin.
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