Comments on: A SERIOUS MAN

By: Roberto

Roberto — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:03:06 +0000

If you talk about physical qualities Larry, his wife and some other characters weren’t exactly “repulsive”. They were not the average Hollywood good-looking stars, that’s for sure, but I see men like Larry in the street every day and I’m spanish. Yeah, Larry is not the most handsome man in history but I wouldn’t call him “repulsive”.

Most of the characters were flawed in their moral, except the main one, which is the point of the whole movie.

By: Edie

Edie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:21:37 +0000

Ms. Alexander, that was a mezuzah on the “shiksa’s” door. If you had any education at all re: Judaism, you would have spotted that mezuzah right away. By the way, I find shiksa to be quite an inappropriate word to use in a film review. Do you even know what it means?

It’s rare that a film entrenched with such Jewish culture gets made, and I thought it was wonderful to see. The Coens are not self-hating Jews, and people who throw that term around are suspect to me.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:36:02 +0000

#15, James — I’m glad you referred to the various rabbis’ advice as profound. The NY times did a review that was as perplexing to me as this Victoria A.’s review. The NY Times found confirmation and glad tidings for meaninglessness in the movie. They would. I didn’t.

The rabbinical injunction at the beginning of the movie to ‘take your hardships simply’ was the moral platform I saw the film resting upon. I didn’t see Gopnik as Job (although I did see Arthur as Job – as was the rabbi stabbed in the shetle) I saw him as a disengaged schlemiel hoping against hope that a directive from God would replace the necessity of a conversation w/his wife and children. God does speak in mysterious ways and maybe if he’d of had the gumption to be a grown up husband and father, God would have spoken through his family. In this way, Gopnik’s predicament was exactly like my own. Good movie!

By: ER

ER — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:46:04 +0000

“Staying with the Stuhlbargs is Larry’s loser of a brother Arthur”
The actor playing Larry – his last name is Stuhlbarg. The family in the movie – their last name is Gopnik. Take your time with these reviews. People are actually reading them.
It’s a shame you didn’t pick up on any of the wonders depicted in this film: the way a record album (in this case Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane) can mean different things to people, the absence of God in the face of mounting catastrophe, the ethical and moral decisions that we and those we love make, the way water – a lakeshore, for example can set you free. Arthur was most happy when in the water – and was most despondent when sitting in an empty swimming pool. A beautiful film with pathos and humor. And no easy answers. Kind of like life…

By: James

James — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 07:55:21 +0000

I happen to think all the rabbis’ different advice was deeply profound if you think about it a bit. As a Jew, I maybe was just a tad bit insulted by the depiction of Jews in the movie…but I thought we were known for our ability to laugh at ourselves.

By: Miri

Miri — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:54:22 +0000

Victoria Alexander did not understand this movie at all.

By: Mike C.

Mike C. — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:00:26 +0000

“What does this say about the Coen Brothers?” It says that this is a comedy, that’s what it says.

By: Linda P.

Linda P. — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:14:31 +0000

Are there two very different versions of this movie out? Because the movie I saw wasn’t filled with ugly and repulsive characters-except maybe the goy /slash/ deer hunter who lived next door. The sexy siren next door was Jewish. Everyone else looked, well – more or less REAL. The kids were unremarkable, a bit self-absorbed like we all were at that age, and into no more than the ordinary teen mischief. The rabbis didn’t have much in the way insights into the mysteries of the universe, but they were for the most part warm and well-meaning. Even Larry’s brother had an endearing quality underneath all his troubles. And Larry was earnest and decent to a fault.

“Jews without teeth”? Right. Obviously “somebody” has issues they need to deal with over Jews, but it’s not the Coen brothers.

By: Jason S.

Jason S. — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 06:58:16 +0000

I’m a gentile so, maybe I’d need to be Jewish to get what a “self hating Jew” is about.

I’ve heard this term so often and it is truly disturbing, even creepy. What is the origin of this most ugly slur? I find it offensive. Do many Jewish people hate being Jewish? Weird.

I saw the movie and never thought the Coen Brothers hate themselves or Jewish people. Sorry, YOU saw that and I doubt many others will. I certainly hope not. You don’t get their humor. I guess you think the Coens hate people from Texas and Arizona and Fargo too.

By: David Stern

David Stern — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:42:15 +0000

I found the film extremely depressing. Larry has always assumed that if he did nothing wrong or malicious, was a dutiful husband, father, breadwinner, he would be rewarded with a passably good life. And in fact, one horrible thing after another happens to him, for which there is in fact no explanation or accounting. I identified with Larry and was crushed by the final phone call from his doctor, just as some things were looking up in his life. The concluding image of the tornado is an intimation of God’s presence “in the whirlwind”. If a Gentile had made this picture, he would definitely be accused of antiSemitism, but the Coen brothers, as Jews, are simply recreated the suburban Jewish milieu in which they grew up, and creating a compelling story out of elements they encountered there.
I am not sure of the relation of the prologue to the succeeding film, except to depict the enchanted world of East European Jews, which at least provided them with explanations of the disasters that life deals us which today’s secular Jews look for in vain.
Ms. Samsky is not a shiksa, as the conversation with Larry about the Gentile neighbor on the other side of Larry’s house establishes.