A Serious Man by the Coen Brothers Reviewed
Another Reason to Love the Directors of Big Lebowski
Oct 20, 2009
A Serious Man opens with a married couple living in a Jewish stetl over a hundred years ago. The husband invites an elderly man to his home because the man helped the husband on his way back from the market. His wife realizes that the elderly man is a dybbuk and stabs him. Thus introducing a story of a Jewish man whose wife invites evil into their home. Once Larry Gopnik's wife invites Sy Abelman to live in her their house, Larry is bombarded with evil like a modern day Job. Like the Jewish man in the stetl, Larry, a rational man, unwittingly brings hardship on himself by allowing Sy Abelman to move in; thus, bringing on his own existential crisis.
The Dybbuk
Sy Abelman lost his wife three years ago (like the dybbuk who had been dead three years) before he begins his relationship with Larry's wife, Judith. Though others voice their concern that "Sy's wife is barely cold", Judith is convinced that she wants to marry him. Judith forces Larry to move into the Jolly Rancher so that Sy Abelman can move in. Since Larry does nothing to stop the evil that has entered their house his life becomes unbearable; he lives at the Jolly Rancher, he spends all his money on lawyers, he nearly loses his tenure, he has a car accident, he has to pay for Sy's funeral, he witnesses the death of a lawyer and finally he breaks down and has an existential crisis in time for his son's bar mitzvah.
Existentialism
"Is Hashem telling me that Sy Abelman is me? Or we are all one or something?" Larry asks Rabbi Nachtner after explaining that he had his car accident the same time Sy Abelman did. The rabbi tells him a story of a goy's teeth to which there is no resolution. In reaction to Larry's frustration, the rabbi confesses that "we can't know everything". Now for a physicist, a rational man, this is unacceptable. Larry has a meltdown because he cannot accept that there is no explanation; there must be a reason these things are happening to him. But no matter how hard Larry tries, there is no meaning to be found. Rabbi Minda asks Larry's son, "when the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies, then what? " (quoting Jefferson Airplane). This elevated spiritual leader knows, like the apparition of Sy Abelman in the classroom, that there is no answer.
Mathematical Certainty
There are several examples of mathematical certainty at odds with the unpredictable and incomprehensible nature of life. Larry is a Physics professor who believes that mathematics is solid and serves to explain things, even the Uncertainty Principle which he writes the proof for on three large chalkboards for his class. Also his brother, Arthur's Mentaculus, which is his calculation of the probability of the universe, suggests that man can explain the universe. Yet, despite his mastery of mathematics, Arthur claims, "Hashem hasn't given me shit."
Larry Gopnik's rational mind proves incapable of comprehending that which one cannot know with one's mind. As Larry's life falls apart before him, he comes to realize that everything he believed and depended upon is unreal. Thus, he succumbs to an existentialist crisis, which allows him to begin to "receive with simplicity everything that happens to you".
 |
