A Serious Man

Wow.

Wow.

...

Wow.

So I'm a total Coen Brothers fanboy.  It's cool, I know it's true.  If I watched movies by myself more often, I might need an intervention.  Thankfully, I usually need other people to help fuel my addiction...  Whatever.  The point is that I love their erratic story-telling style in which things often happen for no reason, totally out of the blue.  In which every character is more often than not bat-shit insane in one way or another.  In which we have iPods in the 1960s.  I mean, wait, what?

Doesn't matter.  A Serious Man is a movie about a middle aged Jewish guy in the 60s who just can't keep it together.  Through no fault of his own he just has too many things thrown on to his plate, and all of them just keep dragging him down.  It's horrible to watch, but as someone who is currently experiencing that "too many things" syndrome it was nice to watch this guy be much worse off than myself.  Really just depressing stuff, folks.  And then, in predictable Coen Brothers fashion, everything seems about to get better, then everything gets a lot worse, and then there's a smash cut to credits.  Hilarious.

I don't know, man.  What does it all mean?  I feel like they're almost parodying themselves with the dentist story.  It's this bizarre fable that clearly wants an ending, a lesson, but then provides no such thing.  The story teller just doesn't give his audience what they're looking for; in fact, the teller doesn't give the audience anything.  So what was the freaking point of telling the story?  This is what troubles me about the brothers Coen:  they keep telling these compelling stories, and I keep being unable to make any sense of them.  What were they trying to say?  If they're astute enough to make all the clever jokes that they do and to parody their own story-telling style with the second rabbi, why won't they give us some sort of closure?  "What did we learn, Palmer?"  I don't fuckin' know either.

I guess we can find some sort of moral in that tornado, and the fact that our hero gets that fateful telephone call right as he gives in right at the end of the movie.  But is it enough?  And what was the deal with the opening fable?  Why was that included?

I think I'm not Jewish enough to get all of this movie.  Still loved it a lot, though.  I'm intentionally keeping this short because this is one of the places where I actually care about spoilers (and I have to go to bed).  I'm still kind of just in awe.  If you've got stuff you want to talk about from the movie, though, let me know.  I'd love to talk about more specific stuff.