A Serious Man

This long weekend, I 'stumbled' across a movie that will probably be misunderstood by our non-Jewish culture but may be insightful for Christians.  A Serious Man by Joel and Ethan Coen is a slice of Americana most of us have been oblivious of, weaved into the dark humor of the newest Coen brothers film.  Understood to be loosely a modern parallel to the Biblical book of Job, the world falls apart around the protagonist, a presumably righteous man, and is pushed at times to the edge of his sanity while three Rabbis (friends) are of no help.

The spiritual key to understanding the film in my opinion is the desire of those that love God (Hashem) to know His leading in their lives.  We follow Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) through his humorously bad string of circumstances in a quest to find out what it all means for him and we're left with the epitaph "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you."(Rashi) 

Larry fumbles his way through long enough it seems to have passed the test of a Serious Man (mensch) and then lets his guard down and takes the monetary bribe from one of his students to pay an expensive retainer fee from his attorney.  Immediately he receives a call from his doctor with bad news about a recent x-ray and the film ends at his son's school where an approaching tornado is bearing down on them while the schoolmaster fumbles with the keys to the basement door. This is not good. 

The film is rated R for language and some brief nudity but I fast forwarded and still enjoyed most of it without too much offensive content.

Link to trailer here.

A really well written and comprehensive review here.