![](\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_dmDaLWNETzg\/SuRQxDYVvZI\/AAAAAAAAAa4\/pONK5Y44400\/s320\/SeriousMan\")
<\/a>Spoiler alert: It\u2019s hard to talk about this film without discussing the ending, exactly the way you can\u2019t look seriously at your life without thinking about how it will end. <\/p>\nCatholic alert: This is a Jewish movie, which may be why it has received scant mention in the Catholic press. This is a pity, because this is a serious movie about religious faith and culture. The filmmaking brothers Coen are children of Abraham. Whether they are in any sense observant Jews today would be hard to say, judging by the movie. Yet from the opening scene\u2014a prologue in Yiddish, involving a dybbuk who appears in an Eastern European shtetl of a previous century\u2014we are clearly dealing with a film made by Jews about Jewish culture.<\/p>\n
Then why did it hit so close to home for me, a Catholic convert?<\/p>\n
From the shtetl of the prologue we move to the suburbs of America circa 1967, or shortly after Jefferson Airplane released their first major hit, \u201cSomebody to Love,\u201d which has a pivotal place in the film. The serious man is Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a college physics professor teaching Heisenberg\u2019s uncertainty priniciple, whom we first see undergoing a chest x-ray. We soon learn that Larry is coming up on both his tenure hearing and his son\u2019s bar mitzvah. Meanwhile, Larry\u2019s life is falling apart. His wife has announced that she is leaving him for another man, Sy Ableman. Sy Ableman?! he asks. We\u2019ve been having problems, you and I, his wife says. Yeah, but Sy Ableman?!<\/p>\n
Sy is a newly sensitized modern man, sporting a full beard, a natty tam o\u2019shanter, and powder-blue sportswear. He arrives at Larry\u2019s house for a man-to-man talk bearing the anesthetics of contemporary life: good wine and psychobabble. His first gesture is to hug Larry. In a later scene, where Larry\u2019s wife is present, Sy places his hairy hand thoughtfully on Larry\u2019s folded fists, while offering self-help pablum about the impending divorce. Larry is too kind, too confused to do what he obviously wants to do: lay Sy out flat.<\/p>\n
Larry moves out while waiting for the divorce proceedings, which means moving into the Jolly Roger Motel with his troubled brother Arthur. From this point on, Larry is looking for understanding, clarity, certainty<\/i>, and he looks to his religion in the form of a succession of rabbis, working his way up the ladder from a clueless junior rabbi through a self-important CEO type toward the ultimate soothsayer, Rabbi Marshak, an old bearded sage reminiscent of the dybbuk of the prologue.\u00a0 Larry never gets in to see Rabbi Marshak, who is too important or just too old to see anyone but the newly bar-mitzvahed.<\/p>\n
So Larry\u2019s religious culture gives him no answers; even his son\u2019s bar mitzvah will be a travesty, when the son shows up stoned. And yet. Circumstances alone start working in Larry\u2019s favor again: Sy Ableman is killed in a car accident; Larry gets tenure after days of nail-biting; and it seems that with Sy out of the way, Larry\u2019s marriage may even be salvageable. And yet. The wheel turns again, and in the penultimate scene, Larry gets an urgent call from his doctor asking him to come in right now<\/i> to talk about the results of that chest x-ray. In the final scene, Larry\u2019s son\u2019s Hebrew class is alerted to an approaching tornado. As the tornado bears down and the students watch helplessly from the schoolyard, the Hebrew teacher fumbles with the keys to the storm shelter. It is uncertain whether he can save the class from violent death.<\/p>\n
Recently I have been hit with uncertainty. A situation that I thought was ideal has begun showing cracks. It\u2019s nothing as serious as my health or Katie\u2019s, but it\u2019s something deeply unsettling. I thought<\/i> everything was going so well.<\/i> And yet. Perhaps not. Watching Larry Gropnik react fearfully to the changing circumstances of his life, I was reminded uncomfortably of my own. I squirmed in my seat at the cinema. I do not doubt that many Jews are buoyed by their faith. Larry, however, was not, and in that wonderfully symbolic final scene, I saw that the teacher who appeared to have the keys to salvation was, in fact, unable to lead his students to safety.<\/p>\n
A tornado is coming. Probably it will arrive unannounced, much like the urgent call from Larry\u2019s doctor, or like my father\u2019s diagnosis of melanoma last year. Who will be holding the keys to the shelter when that storm hits, when that phone call comes? In my tradition, St. Peter holds the key: to the Church, to the Kingdom. But will the door open for me?<\/p>\n
That depends, I believe, on faith, on the grace of faith. Is my faith strong enough to stand in the winds that will blow? Is it even strong enough today, in the mild breeze that ruffles my hair?<\/p>\n
\u201cA Serious Man\u201d is a serious movie, and I would recommend it for any Jew or Catholic with serious questions, or any atheist for that matter. Just don\u2019t expect to hear the answer from the lips of Rabbi Marshak.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie and I rarely go to the movies, so when I proposed a movie date Saturday night and she counterproposed the new Coen Brothers movie, \u201cA Serious Man,\u201d I jumped at the chance. I know it\u2019s hardly the latest film to open, but I no longer imagine I\u2019m in the cultural avant garde. Thank God. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n