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THE HANDSTAND |
FEBRUARY2010
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Monday, December 28, 2009
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 is deftly balancing 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 films
metaphysics, they refrain from touching its meaning and
cowardly avoid pointing to its message.
To watch the Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FYtprwg1As&feature=fvst
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. It instead 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 civilised 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 school yard. Paralysed by awe, 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 some 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
(ADL, AJC, BOD 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 Larrys 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 pretty
obvious. Once captured by Coens 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. Larrys daughter is
horrified by the nose given by her creator and wants a
manmade one. Larrys 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 Coens world, even the
television aerial is incapable of picking up on the
surrounding signals. But it isnt 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 realises that he is
subject to a bribery attempt. Initially, Larry is
devastated by it all, he grasps 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 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 being 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 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 amongst Jews after the Shoa. Jews both
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 pretence 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
Coens film the Rabbis are there to evoke a false
impression of wisdom.
Interestingly enough, the Coens
present an answer of their own to question to do with
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 intelligible 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 Voices
film critic Ella Taylor was rather concerned of 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,
andpassing as sagesa 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 a pretty 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 themselves, were
motivated by some form of self hate. The first names that
come to mind are 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 doesnt just stop there,
thanks to some great creative minds that are
involved in this emerging discourse; 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 others
peoples work as an opportunity to self reflect. But
in fact, this is what Coens film is all about.
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