Accept the Mystery

I love it when the Coen Brothers play in the wisdom end of the pool.

I finally got to see A Serious Man when I was on vacation in MN. I went to see it with Dad and Brenda, who were kind of disappointed any scenes with their Chevelle were left on the cutting room floor (according to Dad, the car was "just to the right of the frame" in the final shot of the whirlwind).

They also found it a little confusing (especially the beginning and ending), as did I - but I think that was the point. The movie is inspired by the book of Job, it's a study on suffering, and just like the book of Job, the movie offers no clear cut resolution or answers to any of the questions it raises. Readers/viewers can only live the question and accept the mystery.

So, in that spirit, I'm not going to try to unpack a lot of it either. . .but I did find it interesting the way "I haven't done anything" becomes a kind of refrain for Larry Gopnik. It's true - he hasn't done anything to deserve any of the troubles that keep coming his way, and that's consistent with Job's story. But that's kind of a radical departure for Coen Bros leads - often their films contain a rather Lutheran understanding of the bondage of the will, often they document how one poor choice leads to another, and to another, until you are trapped by your choices (or are in bondage to sin, as we like to say) and can now only choose between the lesser of two evils.

Gopnik is a stark contrast to this - he hasn't done anything, he hasn't chosen anything, good or bad. Yet all this bad keeps happening to him, forcing him into impossible choices between the lesser of two evils anyway.

And then, at the very end, when he finally does do something ethically questionable, when he chooses, perhaps, the greater evil - then the phone call from the doctor comes, and the whirlwind shows up.

So - is he now being punished for finally doing something because what he did was wrong? Is he about to get his comeuppance from God?

The movie doesn't tell us.


Live the question. Accept the mystery.