Keeping the Faith with the Coens

In “The Big Picture,” his column for the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstien wonders: “The Coen brothers' A Serious Man: More Jewish than matzo balls?” But the answer is complicated. While the movie is certainly about growing up Jewish, it’s theology seems more universal:

In "A Serious Man," we learn -- and I suppose you could call this one of the fundamental tenets of alienation -- that if you desperately look to wise men, in this case your local rabbis, for answers to the big questions in life, you're bound to be disappointed. It's a lesson the Beatles discovered at nearly the same time as this movie occurs, when they went to India to study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who ended up being such a disappointment that he was roundly mocked in the White Album's song, "Sexy Sadie."

In the New York Times, Frank Lidz registered a similar appreciation in his piece “Biblical Adversity in a ’60s Suburb.” After looking at the various biographical similarities between the characters in the film and the people in the Coen’s family, Lidz quotes Rabbi Sklar on the Coens as “modern-day Jewish prophets.” As the good Rabbi explains:

The role of the prophet is to speak truth to power and to speak truth to the people…The Coens see right through the foibles of our humanity. They turn their lens on ‘normalcy’ and make the mundane at once abnormal, beautiful and terrifying.

And very funny.