A Serious Man: Jew Coen Brother Film

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Looks like a Jew'd Over Drama...kind of shows the umbrage of the Jews these days --CSR

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[youtube:1ajffqjj]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iggyFPls4w[/youtube]1ajffqjj]

A Serious Man

A Serious Man is a 2009 black comedy film written, produced, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film stars Michael Stuhlbarg, Sari Lennick, Fred Melamed, Richard Kind, and Aaron Wolff and tells the story of an ordinary man who has to cope with undeserved trials that challenge his acceptance of an orderly universe overseen by an attentive deity. The film has attracted a highly positive critical response, including a Golden Globe nomination for Stuhlbarg, a place on both the American Film Institute's and National Board of Review's Top 10 Film Lists of 2009, and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Plot

In a Polish shtetl in the early 20th century, a Jewish man, Velvel (Allen Lewis Rickman), tells his wife Dora (Yelena Shmuelenson) that he had been helped on his way home by Reb Groshkover, whom he has invited in for soup. Dora objects, saying Groshkover is dead, and that this visitor must be a dybbuk. When he arrives, Groshkover (Fyvush Finkel) laughs off the accusation, but Dora plunges an icepick into his chest. Bleeding, he exits into the snowy night.

In Minnesota in 1967,[2][3] Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a Jewish professor of physics. His wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), informs him that she needs a get (a Jewish divorce document), so she can marry widower Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed).

Three other people reside at Larry and Judith's house. Their son Danny (Aaron Wolff) owes twenty dollars for marijuana to an intimidating Hebrew school classmate, but the bill is hidden in a transistor radio since confiscated by his teacher. Daughter Sarah is always doing her hair. Larry's brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), sleeps on the couch and spends his free time filling a notebook with an extravagant theory that will, he claims, tie together all natural laws.

Larry faces an impending vote on his application for tenure, and his department head lets slip that anonymous letters have urged the committee to deny him. A Korean student, Clive Park, about to flunk Larry's class and lose his scholarship, plants in Larry's office an envelope stuffed with cash. When Larry attempts to return it, the student and his father bridle at the suggestion of bribery, but they threaten to sue for defamation if he does not give a passing grade.

At the insistence of Judith and Sy, Larry and Arthur move into the nearby Jolly Roger Motel. Judith has emptied the couple's accounts, leaving Larry penniless, so he enlists the services of a sympathetic divorce attorney (Adam Arkin). Larry learns Arthur faces charges of solicitation and sodomy, despite his previous attendance at "mixers."

To cope with his streak of unfortunate circumstances, Larry turns to his faith. The two rabbis he consults are either obtuse, oblivious or obscure. His synagogue's senior rabbi is never available. Larry's mental state reaches a breaking point when he and Sy are involved in seemingly simultaneous, but separate, car crashes. Larry is unharmed, but Sy is killed. At Judith's insistence, Larry pays for Sy's funeral.

Larry is proud and moved by Danny's bar mitzvah, unaware of his son's distractions from bad nerves and the effects of cannabis use. During the service, Judith apologizes to Larry for all the recent trouble, and informs him that Sy liked him so much that he even wrote letters to the tenure committee. Danny meets with the senior rabbi in his office, where the old man — who has had Danny's transistor radio in his desk — quotes verbatim from the psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane's song "Somebody To Love". When he returns the radio, he counsels Danny to "be a good boy."

Larry's department head compliments him on Danny's bar mitzvah and hints that he will win tenure. Upon receiving the bill for Arthur's criminal lawyer, Larry decides to pass Clive. Larry's doctor calls, asking to see him immediately to talk about the results of a chest X-ray. At the same moment, Danny's teacher struggles to open the school's shelter door as a massive tornado bears down on them.

Production

Considerable attention was paid to the setting; it was important to the Coens to find a neighborhood of original-looking suburban rambler homes as they would have appeared in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, in the late 1960s. Locations were scouted in nearby communities Edina, Richfield, Brooklyn Center, and Hopkins[5] before a suitable location was found in Bloomington.[6] The look of the film is partly based on the Brad Zellar book Suburban World: The Norling Photographs, a collection of photographs of Bloomington in the 1950s and 60s.[7]

Longtime collaborator Roger Deakins rejoined the Coen brothers as cinematographer, following his absence from Burn After Reading. This is the tenth film he has worked on with the Coen brothers.[8] Costume designer Mary Zophres returns for her ninth collaboration with the directors.[8]

The Yiddish story that introduces the film was created by the Coen Brothers, as they did not find any folk tales they thought were suitable. They claim the story has no developmental relationship to what follows other than to set the tone.[2] Roger Ebert interpreted the faux folk tale at the beginning of the movie as the couple seen in the folk tale are Larry's ancestors and may through their action toward the Visitor have introduced a curse or a strain of sin into the family tree, as Yiddish folk belief would have construed the story.[9] A portrait of Reb Groshkover is glimpsed on the wall outside the Rabbi Marshak's office later in the film.

The tornado seen bearing down on Minneapolis at the film's climax was inspired by the 1967 Southern Minnesota tornado outbreak.

Location filming began on September 8, 2008, in Minnesota. An office scene was shot at Normandale Community College in Bloomington. The film also used a set built in the school's library, as well as a small section of the second floor science building hallway. The synagogue is the B'nai Emet Synagogue in St. Louis Park. The Coen brothers also shot some scenes in St. Olaf College's old science building because of its similar period architecture.[10][11] Scenes were also shot at the Minneapolis legal offices of Meshbesher & Spence, with founder and president Ronald I. Meshbesher being mentioned as the criminal lawyer hired by Larry in the film.[12] Filming wrapped on November 6, 2008, after 44 days, ahead of schedule and within budget.[13]

Anachronisms are evident in the film with references to two albums, Carlos Santana's Abraxas and Creedence Clearwater Revival's Cosmo's Factory, both of which were released in 1970.

The ending credits contain an Easter egg: "No Jews were harmed in the making of this motion picture."[14]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Serious_Man

[Whaler]

These guys are pure Jew corruptors. Although I have enjoyed some of thier movies.


Barton Fink

Go to 3.22   :roll:  

[youtube:3caw4p1d]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pN-0kKzah4[/youtube]3caw4p1d]

[kolnidre]

I don't think I could take all that self-loathing and self-worship at the same time in A Serious Man. However, as a student of photography and cinematography, I must admit the Coens are outstanding filmmakers. Blood Simple and Barton Fink were brilliantly done.

[Rockclimber]

Here is a much more accurate review and I actually gained a little respect for the Coen brothers after reading it:

"A serious man": the poetic side of self-hatred
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By Gilad Atzmon

29 December 2009

Gilad Atzmon views Joel and Ethan Coen's film "A serious man" as "a cinematic allegory of Jewish cultural detachment from nature" and "a masterpiece that elaborates on the abnormalities of the Jewish tribal existence". It "reflects on Jewish Diaspora life, Jewish segregation and the misery of operating within the kosher tribal template".

"A serious man" does not explicitly touch upon issues related to Israel, Zionism, occupation, organ harvesting or anything distinctly identified with the Jewish state... Yet, [it] portrays a clear message regarding Israel and Zionism, for Israel is the Jewish state and, in spite of the Zionist promise to erect a civilized nation, Israel functions as a Jewish ghetto and is subject to all the symptoms of abnormality conveyed by the Coens.

It is pretty embarrassing to discover that not a single Western film critic is courageous enough to tell us what the latest Coen Brothers' film is all about. Those who reviewed "A serious man" inform us that this film is the Coen Brothers' most autobiographical to date, drawing on their upbringing. They assert that "A serious man" is the film many Jewish fans of the Coen brothers have always wanted them to make. One film critic also maintains that the film deftly balances bright comedy and bitter darkness. Some critics are genuine enough to confess that it is slightly anti-Semitic but for some reason they all fail to tell us what the film is about. What is the ideology, philosophy and symbolism behind it? They are shy of analysing the film's metaphysics, they refrain from touching its meaning and, lacking courage, they avoid pointing to its message.


A cinematic allegory of Jewish cultural detachment from nature
 
 

"A serious man" is a cinematic allegory of Jewish cultural detachment from nature. It is a masterpiece that elaborates on the abnormalities of the Jewish tribal existence.
"A serious man" does not explicitly touch upon issues related to Israel, Zionism, occupation, organ harvesting or anything distinctly identified with the Jewish state. Instead, it reflects on Jewish Diaspora life, Jewish segregation and the misery of operating within the kosher tribal template. It is about Jewish alienation both natural and human. Yet, "A serious man" also portrays a clear message regarding Israel and Zionism, for Israel is the Jewish state and, in spite of the Zionist promise to erect a civilized nation, Israel functions as a Jewish ghetto and is subject to all the symptoms of abnormality conveyed by the Coens.

The Coen film ends with a chain of scenes initiated by a tornado alert given during a Hebrew class in a Jewish orthodox school. The young Bar Mitzvah kids are ordered to evacuate the class immediately. Next, we see the storm rapidly encroaching towards the boys and girls who are now standing in the open schoolyard. Paralysed by awe and perplexed, they gaze towards their own inevitable disaster. They stare at it, they are hopeless on the verge of impotence. Their elder teacher is right behind them, frantically struggling to find the right key for the synagogue shelter. The key to life should be in his hands, but he is obviously not going to find it. At the same cinematic time Larry Gopnik, the protagonist of the film, receives an urgent call from his doctor, his X-ray diagnosis is back. Apparently, something is horribly wrong with his body. Prior to the call, Larry was obviously totally unaware of his affliction and is thrown into a state of profound shock. Allegorically, this is the meaning of Jewish detachment and alienation, according to the Coens. The "People of the Book" consistently fail to detect when something is going horribly wrong. They somehow fail to anticipate the storm that is coming or brace themselves for its devastating impact. They fail to interpret minor signs of resentment before it turns into a tide of hatred. And even when they do manage to notice a rise in antagonism, they somehow employ the wrong strategy to placate it. As we often read, Jewish ethnic campaigners and institutions (the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, etc.) are always flagging up statistics; they prefer to present numbers of "anti Semitic" incidents instead of wondering why these incidents occur in the first place.

Set in 1967 Minneapolis, no doubt a very significant year in Jewish history, "A serious man" is a story about one Larry Gopnik, a Jewish professor of physics and a family man. In a matter of two cinematic hours we watch Larry's life collapse. His son Danny, a Bar Mitzvah boy, habitually smokes marijuana. His wife Judith is dating another man who is physically no less than repugnant. She wants a divorce, she orders him to move out of the house. His daughter Sarah appears to be stealing money from his wallet so she can have a nose job. His brother Arthur has been crashing on his couch for several months, when he is not imposing himself he either drains his spinal cyst or lands himself into trouble with the law.

Larry is in a total mess. He faces financial ruin, yet his disastrous life is just a cinematic glimpse into a morbid tribal society he is inherently associated with.

The meaning of the above is obvious. Once captured by Coen's cinematic realm, we bare witness to an outstanding form of alienation. Larry is totally detached from his surrounding environment. He fails to notice that his wife is cheating on him. His wife seems to be libidinally overwhelmed by Sy Ableman, a greasy, fat, patronizing stuffed-shirt widower who hugs those he screws over. Larry's daughter is horrified by the nose given by her creator and wants a synthetic one. Larry's son cannot cope at all. He spends the best part of his time smoking his brains out while trying to consume American culture via an incurably fuzzy TV. In Coen's world, even the television aerial is incapable of picking up on the surrounding signals. But it isn't just nature Larry fails to cope with.

Along the film, we follow an evolving ethical saga. Larry is put under some severe pressure by one of his South Korean students who deposits an envelope loaded with cash on his desk to prompt Larry into granting him a pass mark. Larry is fully aware of the moral complexity. He clearly realizes that he is the subject of a bribery attempt. Initially, Larry is devastated by it all; he understands that he must report it to the academic authorities. But as the film evolves, first in a dream he has and later in reality, Larry ends up pocketing the money and passing the student.

The dream has a crucial role in the Coens' allegory. In the dream Larry meets his true nature, his fears, his desires and his non-ethical self. While in life Larry is an innocent, castrated, dysfunctional family man, in his dream he somehow overcomes it all. He makes love to his friendly, stoned Jewess neighbour. He brings his troubled brother to the river and fearlessly sends him to Canada in a canoe. In the dream Larry is ethically corrupted. He  donates the bribery money to his brother so he can have a fresh start. Yet, in the same dream, both he and his brother are punished immediately. The "anti-Semite" next-door neighbour hunts them both with the rifle he normally saves for animals. "Kill the Jew," the goy [gentile]  orders his son. This is when Larry wakes up.

"Unconsciousness is the discourse of the other," says the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. In the dream, Larry is confronted with his guilt through his goy neighbour. As soon as Larry accomplishes his crime, the goy sees through him and executes him. Rather than just "being non-ethical", it is the fear of "being caught out non-ethical" that torments Larry. It is the discourse of the (next-door goy) other that introduces Larry unconsciously to the sense of guilt.

"A serious man" opens with a quote taken from Rashi. "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you". Rashi is a medieval French rabbi who offers an eloquent interpretation that is rather similar to the one given by the biblical Job. The Book of Job is seen by most commentators as an attempt to reconcile evil with the existence of God. Such an attempt was very common among Jews after the Shoa [Holocaust]. Jews, religious and orthodox, repeatedly asked: If there is a God out there, how did God let Auschwitz happen? To a certain extent, Larry is asking his local rabbis a very similar question: "What is the Shem [God] trying to tell me?" The rabbis are left with no answer to offer. Just like Job and Rashi, they have nothing concrete to suggest other than "acceptance". In Coens' latest film the rabbis are there to spin, to convey a pretense of "logos'". They are there to cover a "black hole". In the Coens' allegory, the rabbis, cannot reconcile evil and God, nor can they explain Jewish suffering. In the Coens' film the rabbis are there to evoke a false impression of wisdom.

Interestingly enough, the Coens present an answer of their own to the question of Jewish suffering. It has nothing to do with the Shem, God or Yehovah. It is actually the morbidity inherent in the Jewish tribal setting that is the root cause of Jewish suffering. While in the film it is the goy neighbour who initially leads Larry to face his guilt through self-contempt, in reality it is the goy spectator who is being exposed to Jewish secrecy via the Hollywood big screen. Thanks to the Coens, we are confronted with that which the Jews would prefer to disguise. To a certain extent the Coens are adopting the role of the whistleblower. They bring to light the notion of the Lacanian "discourse of the other"; the Coens' Jewish tribal cinematic reality is the Jewish unconsciousness. It is that which the Jews are far from being proud of. It would be reasonable to argue that, like Al-Jazeera and Press TV who transmitted the true Israeli brutality throughout Operation Cast Lead, the Coens are exposing the Jewish ghetto malaise to an audience of millions.

The New York Village Voice's film critic Ella Taylor was rather concerned at the possible anti-Semitic interpretations of the film. She eloquently described the cinematic reality. "'A serious man' is crowded with fat Jews, aggressive Jews, passive-aggressive Jews, traitor Jews, loser Jews, shyster-Jews, emo-Jews, Jews who slurp their chicken soup, and – passing as sages – a clutch of yellow-teethed, know-nothing rabbis". We are subject, she continues, to the "visual impact of all these warty, unappetizing Jews". Taylor is indeed correct. The Coens seem to have gone to some considerable effort to pick some of the most unpleasing looking characters around. Taylor is very wary about the film and its current success. "I worry," she says "about what ancient anxieties lie behind the endorsement of a movie that dumps on Jews and Judaism with such ferocity."

It is rather obvious that the Coens are not longing for their Jewish past in Minneapolis Jewish ghetto. For good reason, the film is seen by some as a crude manifestation of self-loathing. Yet, it is hardly surprising that intelligent and creative assimilated Jews indulge in self-hatred. History teaches us that the most universally inspiring Jews, I mean those who contributed something to humanity rather than merely to their own people or even just to themselves, were motivated by some form of self-hate. The first names that come to mind are Jesus Christ, Spinoza and Marx.

In the last two decades, due to Israeli barbarism, an influx of Jewish lobbying together with a growing opportunity for Jews to depart from their tribal setting, Jewish self-loathing is becoming an intellectual tide. But it doesn't just stop there. Thanks to some great creative minds that are involved in this emerging discourse,a Jewish self-loathing is also a poetic universal and ethical humanist message.

It is no doubt a great shame that people who are subject to the Judeo centric tribal setting fail to regard the Coen brothers and other people's work as an opportunity to self-reflect. But, in fact, this is what Coen's film is all about.

http://www.redress.cc/zionism/gatzmon20091229

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Here is a much more accurate review and I actually gained a little respect for the Coen brothers after reading it:
....

It is no doubt a great shame that people who are subject to the Judeo centric tribal setting fail to regard the Coen brothers and other people's work as an opportunity to self-reflect. But, in fact, this is what Coen's film is all about.

http://www.redress.cc/zionism/gatzmon20091229

[/quote]

Thanks for posting this R.C..

After thinking about this and all the Coen shows I watched (and enjoyed for the most part) over the years before I got J-wise, this phrase "Coen's cinematic realm" really captures it.  The movies basically show a Jewish view of reality... with color and context.  The shading and lighting in the Coen movies is quite excellent, but like "Fargo" or "Barton Fink" or even "No Country for Old Men"... the shows with their characters, smoke, street lamps or headlights of a car... give a slowly developing but completely "sinister" POV in my opinion. They like to put clearly innocent people right next to developing psychos and psycho situations. They do this better than anyone and that's why I think it is, at root, a Jewish POV.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Here's their "eye" for the shot...

Roger Deakins' first feature film in America as a cinematographer was Mountains of the Moon (1990). He began his collaboration with the Coen brothers in 1991 on the film Barton Fink. Since then, Deakins has been the Coens' main cinematic collaborator and has been their principal cinematographer.

Deakins received his first major award from the American Society of Cinematographers for his outstanding achievement in cinematography for the internationally praised major motion picture, The Shawshank Redemption. The ASC continued to honour Deakins with outstanding achievement nominations for his later works, including Fargo, Kundun, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and The Man Who Wasn't There, for which he won his second ASC Award. In 2008, Deakins became the first cinematographer in history to receive dual ASC nominations for his works, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and No Country for Old Men. The latter won the BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography and he received Academy Award nominations for both films. In 2009, he was double-nominated for the ASC Award again for Revolutionary Road and The Reader (with Chris Menges).[3] Deakins also worked as one of the visual consultants for the Pixar animated feature WALL-E and How to Train Your Dragon from DreamWorks Animation.

Roger Deakins has received eight Academy Award nominations for the previously mentioned films, in addition to high praise from critic associations in both America and Britain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Deakins

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Some quotes:

Themes and style

While No Country for Old Men is a "doggedly faithful" adaptation of McCarthy's 2005 novel and its themes, the film also revisits themes which the Coens had explored in their earlier movies Blood Simple and Fargo. The three films' themes focus on points of view, such as pessimism, nihilism in common. The novel's motifs of chance, free-will, and predestination are familiar territory for the Coen brothers, who presented similar threads and tapestries of "fate [and] circumstance" in earlier works including Raising Arizona, which featured another hitman, albeit less serious in tone. Numerous critics cited the importance of chance to both the novel and the film, focusing on Chigurh's fate-deciding coin flipping, but noted that the nature of the film medium made it difficult to include the "self-reflective qualities of McCarthy's novel."

In The Village Voice, Scott Foundas writes that "Like McCarthy, the Coens are markedly less interested in who (if anyone) gets away with the loot than in the primal forces that urge the characters forward... In the end, everyone in No Country for Old Men is both hunter and hunted, members of some endangered species trying to forestall their extinction." Roger Ebert writes that "the movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary human feelings are in the face of implacable injustice."

New York Times critic A. O. Scott says that Chigurh, Moss, and Bell each "occupy the screen one at a time, almost never appearing in the frame together, even as their fates become ever more intimately entwined."

Variety critic Todd McCarthy describes Chigurh's modus operandi:
"    Death walks hand in hand with Chigurh wherever he goes, unless he decides otherwise .... f everything you've done in your life has led you to him, he may explain to his about-to-be victims, your time might just have come. 'You don't have to do this,' the innocent invariably insist to a man whose murderous code dictates otherwise. Occasionally, however, he will allow someone to decide his own fate by coin toss, notably in a tense early scene in an old filling station marbled with nervous humor.    "

[Whaler]

I don't think I could take all that self-loathing and self-worship at the same time in A Serious Man. However, as a student of photography and cinematography, I must admit the Coens are outstanding filmmakers. Blood Simple and Barton Fink were brilliantly done.

Yeah, they are outstanding.

The Big Lebowski... one of my favorites.

Here is a reference to Theodor Herzl by the Dude's nutty Jewish buddy.

[youtube:15n98afs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiQmQhA-OrM[/youtube]15n98afs]

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

No Country for Old Men

[youtube:1g5a9rzx]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBqmKSAHc6w[/youtube]1g5a9rzx]