Movie Review - A Serious Man - Calls to God: Always a Busy Signal - NYTimes.com to God: Always a Busy Signal
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: October 2, 2009
Did you hear the one about the guy who lived in the land of Uz, who was perfect and upright and feared God? His name was Job. In the new movie version, ?A Serious Man,? some details have been changed. He?s called Larry Gopnik and he lives in Minnesota, where he teaches physics at a university. When we first meet Larry, in the spring of 1967, his tenure case is pending, his son?s bar mitzvah is approaching, and, as in the original, a lot of bad stuff is about to happen, for no apparent reason.
More About This Movie
At work, Larry specializes in topics like Schr?dinger?s Paradox and the Heisenberg Principle ? complex and esoteric ideas that can be summarized by the layman, more or less, as ?God knows.? Because we can?t. Though if he does, he isn?t saying much.
Larry, played with poignant, brow-furrowed deadpan by Michael Stuhlbarg, does not exactly fear the divinity whom he, like other devout Jews, calls Hashem (?the name? in Hebrew). It?s more that he?s puzzled, beleaguered, perplexed. What does God want from us? What should we expect from him? As weird inconveniences spiral into operatic miseries, Larry dutifully searches for clues, answers, signs. He talks to learned rabbis and listens to recordings of famous cantors. What he encounters, apart from haunting music and drab suburban sacred architecture, is silence, nonsense and ? from that metaphysical zone beyond the screen, where the rest of us sit and watch ? laughter.
By A. O. SCOTT
Published: October 2, 2009
Did you hear the one about the guy who lived in the land of Uz, who was perfect and upright and feared God? His name was Job. In the new movie version, ?A Serious Man,? some details have been changed. He?s called Larry Gopnik and he lives in Minnesota, where he teaches physics at a university. When we first meet Larry, in the spring of 1967, his tenure case is pending, his son?s bar mitzvah is approaching, and, as in the original, a lot of bad stuff is about to happen, for no apparent reason.
More About This Movie
At work, Larry specializes in topics like Schr?dinger?s Paradox and the Heisenberg Principle ? complex and esoteric ideas that can be summarized by the layman, more or less, as ?God knows.? Because we can?t. Though if he does, he isn?t saying much.
Larry, played with poignant, brow-furrowed deadpan by Michael Stuhlbarg, does not exactly fear the divinity whom he, like other devout Jews, calls Hashem (?the name? in Hebrew). It?s more that he?s puzzled, beleaguered, perplexed. What does God want from us? What should we expect from him? As weird inconveniences spiral into operatic miseries, Larry dutifully searches for clues, answers, signs. He talks to learned rabbis and listens to recordings of famous cantors. What he encounters, apart from haunting music and drab suburban sacred architecture, is silence, nonsense and ? from that metaphysical zone beyond the screen, where the rest of us sit and watch ? laughter.
. Thanks for the post