Rock and roll is not dead. This was the good news I received in 2008 when I first heard the Parlor Mob's debut album And You Were a Crow. The Parlor Mob is a New Jersey-based rock band, and their sound hearkens back to the sound of Led Zeppelin while also reminding me of newer artists such as Jack White and the Black Keys. The songs are guitar-driven with incredibly likable melodies.
Last year, the Parlor Mob released their newest album, Dogs. As someone who was quickly exposed to And You Were a Crow, it seemed like this new album had taken forever to release. In fact, I remember checking in at the band's website several times only to be met with vague statements about writing songs, getting ready to record, and other such things that bands say when they are nowhere near actually putting out a new album. That said, I have really enjoyed Dogs, which has been a perfectly suitable follow-up to And You Were a Crow.
The standout tracks on the first album are the songs "Everything You're Breathing For," "When I Was an Orphan," and "Can't Keep No Good Boy Down." The new album also has several songs that I have latched onto such as "Hard Enough" and "Slip Through My Hands."
The Parlor Mob is a good band with a promising future. As someone who mostly enjoys music with a pure sound, throwing back to a time before the music world was dominated by artists who are more known for their dance numbers than for their melodies, I appreciate the Parlor Mob's contribution to the world of music. We seem to be living in a time in which older styles are experience a revival, and I think the Parlor Mob may be positioned to help lead the way.
In 2010, I found a copy of Cathleen Falsani's The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers as I was browsing my local bookstore. Being a fan of Joel and Ethan Coen's films and a lover of books that find deeper insight in film, I bought this book immediately. I assumed I would love it. For the next two years, The Dude Abides sat idly on my shelf, waiting for me to find the time to watch each of the Coen films and follow along with the insight in Falsani's book (you don't actually have to watch all of the movies in order to read the book, it's just something I wanted to do). Finally, back in January I added the book to my 2012 reading list and pledged to watch all of these movies before my next child was born (I made it with at least seven weeks to spare). I was excited for the exploration, looking forward to developing a sort of dialog with Falsani's book.
It did not take long for me to realize that The Dude Abides was going to be a major disappointment. After watching the Coens' first film, Blood Simple, I read the first chapter of the book (the book's chapters are organized chronologically according to the Coen brothers' film releases) and found that Falsani's analysis was not only lacking in substance but actually seemed to display a lack of understanding of this film. This continued to be my experience with this book, with two exceptions. The chapters on Fargo and The Ladykillers were actually somewhat insightful although still not too terribly engaging. Also, the illustrations by artist Erik Rose are very good and increase the value of the book by at least a couple of points.
The chapters are poorly structured: The first section of each chapter is a very brief summary of the film, and the second section of each chapter is a longer summary of the film. So, the vast majority of each chapter is devoted to not one but two summaries of the movies that most readers of this book would have already seen. Having just watched each movie before reading the chapters, I found this book to be incredibly dull and unnecessary. Each chapter closes with a brief (one or two paragraphs at most) theological summary of each film. These theological summaries seemed as if they had been written without the author having actually seen the films in their entirety.
I don't mean to be unnecessarily snarky about this book. In general, I think Falsani is a pretty good writer (I've read a couple of her articles, and I am told that I would enjoy her other books more than this one). In fact, I would be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt by assuming that Zondervan may have approached her with the idea for this book before she had actually seen most of the movies. Maybe she watched each Coen brothers film only once while simultaneously checking her email or writing another book that she was more interested in.
I am not suggesting that anyone who has an opinion that is different than mine is wrong or that their thoughts are not fully formed. In fact, I think most of the Coen films are intentionally ambiguous, leaving room for disagreement and discussion. My issue with The Dude Abides is not that Falsani has different opinions than I do about these films. My issue is that she seems to have devoted very little time to thinking about them at all.
My reading of this book was not a completely wasted exercise. It did, after all, compel me to watch each of the Coen films and spend time considering their themes and motifs. I really love their movies, and this was a fun journey for me. As I have watched each film, I have learned two things about Joel and Ethan Coen:
1) They are brilliant. Every word spoken in their films is intentional, and every single choice they make is given an exorbitant amount of thought. They love language, and their dialog is as good as any I can imagine. They are visionary, and they know exactly what kinds of movies they are trying to make.
2) They have never made the same movie twice. You can expect only two things from a Coen film: strong dialog and strange characters. Other than that, each movie provides a unique experience to its viewers. Only Joel and Ethan Coen could make a film as dark as Blood Simple and then two years later make Raising Arizona. They have made screwball comedies, dark murder stories, a Western, a musical, a "stoner movie," a film noir, and a Frank Capra throwback. Just when you think you have them figured out, think again.
While I cannot endorse The Dude Abides*, I can (mostly) endorse the Coen brothers filmography. In a world where people are making movies that are derivative and shallow, they are constantly striving to be better than the norm.
(*Side note: If you want to read a good book about the Coen brothers, you should check out The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers. This is a much more well thought-out and insightful book.)
My Top 5 Favorite Coen Films:
1. Fargo 2. No Country for Old Men 3. The Big Lebowski 4. True Grit 5. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Well, this is it. Back in January, I set out to watch every Coen brothers film and blog about each one. 2010's True Grit is the final installment of this series, at least until Joel and Ethan Coen release another film (their next project, Inside Llewyn Davis, is due out next year).
I could not ask for a more satisfying conclusion to this journey than True Grit, which was nominated for ten Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor (Jeff Bridges), and Best Supporting Actress (Hailee Steinfeld). This is a straightforward Western -- a story of two men and a young girl on the trail of a murderer whom they intend to bring to justice. It is exciting, engaging, and surprisingly funny.
Joel and Ethan Coen were crystal clear about from where they drew their inspiration for this film. While many people assumed 2010's True Grit was a remake of the 1969 John Wayne film, both movies were actually based on a novel by Charles Portis. Apparently, from all accounts, this newer version is a much more faithful adaptation of the book.
SPOILERS BELOW
We love stories of revenge. It is deeply satisfying to see comeuppance delivered to someone we feel deserves it. In fact, some of the more exciting movies to rewatch are films involving a revenge fantasy of some kind (e.g., Gladiator and Kill Bill). The revenge motif is prominent in the Western genre of film possibly more than in any other. True Grit is the Coen brothers' take on the revenge-centered Western. In fact, this is what makes True Grit different than all other Coen films -- it is a fairly straightforward genre piece, although it does still possess the unique Coen touch.
Justice and Revenge
As with many Coen brothers movies, True Grit opens with a title card containing a quote. The quote here is from Proverbs 28:1 - "The wicked flee when none pursueth." This text is closely followed by a voiceover narration from a grown-up Mattie Ross (the film's main character) who tells the story of how a man named Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) brutally murdered her father and rode away under cover of night. The voiceover is accompanied by a well-shot image of a lifeless body laying on the ground underneath a spotlight as the shadow of the murderer rides past. The implications of the scene accompanied by the Proverb seem clear: A man has been murdered, but nobody seems to care. The wicked man flees, but nobody is interested in pursuing justice. The burden of justice, then, falls to fourteen-year-old Mattie (played masterfully by Hailee Steinfeld).
Mattie sees the world in black-and-white terms. She sees right and wrong, just and unjust. This is evident in every scene she appears in, particularly one very funny scene involving a horse trader. She will not abide shady dealings and, more than once, threatens legal action against anyone who would even think of giving her anything other than straightforward fairness.
There is a difference between justice and revenge, although this difference is often difficult to discern. Justice, ideally, serves the good of everyone while revenge only serves the interest of the person exacting it. Justice is meant to set things right while revenge only seeks to do harm to those who have previously done wrong. While Mattie appears to believe that she is only interested in justice, some of her choices betray her as one secretly interested in revenge. Early in the film, when she is given her choices of U.S. Marshalls to recruit for her cause, she does not choose the man who always brings his fugitives back alive but rather opts for Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), who is best known for killing men rather than capturing them. Mattie claims that she wants to see Chaney brought back to be tried in a court of law, but one cannot help but wonder if she hopes Chaney will resist, forcing Rooster or (even better) her to kill him on sight. She is interested in justice, but her sense of justice is quietly mutating into a thirst for revenge.
The injustice within this story is that Mattie's father was not a person of any social significance. He was murdered, and "none pursueth." This reality is heightened when Texas Ranger LeBoeuf (Matt Damon) shows up with his own agenda to capture Chaney, not for the murder of Mattie's father but for the murder of a Texas state senator. When a senator is slain, the cavalry is called. When a nameless everyman is killed, nobody makes a sound. This, it would seem, is the primary source of Mattie's outrage. "If nobody else will bring Chaney to justice," she reasons, "the burden falls to me." Mattie harbors a fear that justice will go unserved because nobody cares about her father, and the very notion of justice not being served is unacceptable to Mattie Ross. When LeBoeuf assures Mattie that he will take Chaney back to Texas where he will hang for the murder of the senator, she is unappeased. It is not enough that Chaney be punished, he must be punished for the right reasons. She wants him to know that he did not get away with the crime against her father. Justice must be served with a correct set of principles.
When Mattie finally catches up with Chaney, she tries to place him under arrest and shoots him only as a last resort of self-defense. However, later on, Mattie will again have the upper hand against Chaney, but this time she does not attempt to arrest him. She grins with glee, cocks the shotgun in her hands, and fires directly into Chaney's chest, killing him. The first encounter was motivated by justice, but the second (and much more effective) encounter was pure revenge. However, this moment does not occur without tragic consequence. The recoil from the shotgun blast knocks Mattie backward into a deep pit filled with venomous snakes. Before Rooster can reach her, she is bitten on the hand by one of the snakes.
The snake bite is not fatal, but it does cause Mattie to lose her arm. The act of revenge has given her a momentary rush of satisfaction followed by a lifetime of pain. She has also been left alone and embittered, largely defined by the experiences depicted in the film. As an older woman, we see that Mattie is alone, only able to relate to the memories of Cogburn and LeBoeuf. Revenge, in many ways, has hollowed her and made her incapable of living her life with any sort of fullness. The girl who was still a child when we first met her lost all of her joy and innocence in the act of taking her revenge.
One could even argue that Mattie has been condemned to the same kind of fate as Rooster Cogburn. He has lived a life of violence, and he wears an eyepatch, implying that the loss of his eye is the natural result of his life's path. In many films (non-Coen films), we meet the drunken, down-on-his luck would-be hero and, as a result of a new adventure and prolonged time spent with a lovable child, he becomes the hero we hoped he would be. Rather than this happening, True Grit takes the story in the opposite direction. Rather than Rooster becoming more like Mattie, Mattie has become more like Rooster. The loss of her arm, like the undiscussed loss of Rooster's eye, is the result of her choice to relentlessly pursue revenge through violence.
Reliance and Sacrifice
A recurring piece of music in True Grit is the hymn "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." This is actually the music that is played as Rooster rushes Mattie to find medical attention after being bitten by the snake as well as over the final credits as the one-armed older Mattie walks alone into the sunset. The juxtaposition of these two scenes covered by this song is fascinating. In the first scene, Mattie is literally leaning on Rooster for support -- she cannot save herself, so he must intervene. In the second scene, she is isolated and alone. She no longer has "arms" on which to lean, neither figuratively (in the form of relationships) nor literally (in the form of her lost limb).
In that same line of thought, there is a brutal moment in which Rooster and Mattie are riding Mattie's horse, Little Blackie, as fast as possible to attempt to save Mattie's life. After hours and hours of riding, the horse begins to give out. Rooster, in a moment of desperation, repeatedly stabs Little Blackie in the hindquarters, urging the horse to run faster. Eventually, the horse collapses from exhaustion, forcing Rooster to put the horse out of its misery. For Mattie to live, Little Blackie must die. This is the nature of any meaningful sacrifice -- life must be given through a death. This is a representation of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross -- a necessary sacrifice of death leads to the possibility of restored life.
In 1975, Bruce Springsteen released his runaway hit record Born to Run. Up to this point, Springsteen had established himself as a songwriter, but Born to Run made him a rock star. The next question, of course, soon became, "What will Springsteen do next?" The answer to this question was a three-year journey of songwriting and recording that all culminated in the release of the 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town.
In the fall of 2010, HBO released a documentary entitled The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, which, as the title suggests, is an in-depth exploration of how this record came to be. I have always known that Springsteen was an artist and a visionary, but I never understood to what extent until I watched The Promise. There is an entire segment in which the members of the E Street Band discuss how Springsteen and drummer Max Weinberg labored for days -- days -- trying to make the snare drum sound exactly right on one of the album's tracks. Clarence Clemons's saxophone solos were recorded and re-recorded time and again. For Springsteen, everything had to be perfect.
What interested me most, however, was not the labor that went into the sound perfection (although that was fascinating) but the tracks that were left on the cutting room floor. This is actually the main subject matter of the documentary and the box set that was released in connection with it. There were some truly great songs that were recorded and eventually abandoned not because they lacked quality but because they did not perfectly fit within the theme of the album overall. While it is not structured in the traditional "concept album" kind of way with seamless transitions and such (a la Dark Side of the Moon), the album carries an intentional theme and unified concept. This is not merely a collection of rock songs -- it is a structured narrative meant to evoke a specific emotional response from its listeners. Even songs that would have been destined to be big hits were omitted from the record because of their lack of continuity (the big example of this was the song "Because the Night," which Springsteen famously gave to Patti Smith who then went on to have a tremendous hit with the song). Some of these songs, such as "Sherry Darling," would later appear on Springsteen's next record, The River.
The songs on Darkness on the Edge of Town live in a very intentional state of tension between hope and despair. Springsteen uses his trademark storytelling technique to articulate the sorrow of financial destitution, relational decay, and the deep inner longing to get something more out of life. Springsteen has been quoted as saying, "I'm not writing songs to tell you about me. I write songs to tell you about you." He does not simply tap into his own experiences as much as he relies on the experiences as the mythical American "everyman." This has always been his mode of operation, but Darkness takes this method to a whole new level. On the previous album, Born to Run, Springsteen's stories mainly took place in a territory with which he is intimately familiar -- namely, New Jersey. Darkness attempts to explore other places as well ("the heartland," Utah). As Sprinsgteen explores this tension between hope and despair, his perspective gets much bigger, and the stories become more universally human.
(This post is based on the title of the 22nd episode of This American Life)
There is an interesting dynamic that occurs in our relationships with our parents: We grow up, and we remain someone's child. This relational phenomenon is an odd paradox that almost all people have had to bump up against at one point or another in their lives.
I have recently had an interesting parent/adult child set of experiences. Four years ago, my father and stepmother had a baby boy named Mac. So, I have a four-year-old brother. Two and-a-half years ago, my wife and I had our first child. So, my father and I are -- in the context of parenting -- peers. We both have kids who are roughly the same age. In watching my dad parent his four-year-old, it is a fascinating thing to then turn around and simultaneously parent my own son. What is also interesting to see how differently Mac is parented than I was. Clearly thirty years can make a person change the way he makes decisions and the battles he chooses to fight.
So, in many ways my dad is still my dad. In other -- more bizarre -- ways, he is also my peer. We are both experiencing similar things in life more than ever before. We are both asking questions about the future educational options of our young children; we are both dealing with pediatricians, Halloween costumes, trips to Toys R' Us, vaccinations, birthday parties, and toilet training.
Next month, after our new baby is born, we will spend some time with my parents in Oklahoma City so my kids can play with their uncle.
There are books out there that I have always thought I would someday read. Among these books was, until two weeks ago, C.S. Lewis's 1945 work, The Great Divorce. I've always been a fan of Lewis's writing, but this (among a few others) was one book that I had never actually gotten around to reading.
I am glad that I finally spent some time with The Great Divorce. The imagery, the characters, and the overarching metaphors all leave quite a powerful impression. In his exploration of the concepts of heaven and hell, Lewis appeals first not to our intellect, but to our imagination. The narrator begins his journey in a place referred to as "The Town," a bleak place that is clearly meant to represent hell (or, as some suggest, purgatory). He boards a bus that is populated with souls ("ghosts") from the Town in order to travel on a brief holiday to the place we will think of as heaven. Most of the book takes place in a beautiful landscape, exploring the relationships between those who inhabit heaven and those who inhabit the Town. I simply cannot explain or summarize beyond this point. I would not do it justice. I can merely say that you should read this book for yourself.
While the imagery of the setting is described with such care and beauty, the most powerful chapters, in my mind, were those involving conversations between the inhabitants of heaven and hell. What I found most thought-provoking was the fact that the ghosts from the Town were afraid to stay in heaven. While they did not enjoy their life in the Town, they had no desire to stay in heaven. The suggestion, of course, being that we choose hell before we die and then, even in hell, we still continue to choose it. This was one of the more controversial elements in Rob Bell's Love Wins -- the idea that, even after the point of death, hell continues to be a choice for those who live there. In fact, it is fairly easy to find nearly all of the controversial elements from Bell's book here in The Great Divorce. Of course, what separates Bell from Lewis is that The Great Divorce is presented as an allegory of sorts -- a fictional story that presents ideas, not necessarily about what happens after we die, but who we are becoming in this life. Heaven and hell, in this book, are direct reflections of a life already lived.
Another striking element to The Great Divorce is how the ghosts interact with the landscape of heaven. It is too real for them to fully inhabit. We often think of heaven as a place filled with disembodied souls, a less real, less physical reality. However, Lewis gives us something to think about. What if heaven is the most real place imaginable? For the ghosts, it is more than they can handle. The apples weigh too much for them to carry, the grass feels like sharp needles to their feet, and one ghost speculates that a single drop of rain would brutally penetrate their bodies. Again, C.S. Lewis allows the imagination to take over where human intellect cannot go.
I really enjoyed The Great Divorce, if you could not already have figured that out. I enjoy a book that calls my imagination to do the heavy lifting and invites me to think of something very old in a different sort of way.
More than any other movie in their filmography, 2009's A Serious Man is supposedly the most personal film the Coens have ever made. Taking place in their childhood setting -- Minnesota, circa 1967 -- A Serious Man is a story about Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg in a performance that, in my opinion, should have received much more attention during that year's awards season), a Jewish man trying to make sense of the recent chaos that has entered his life. His wife is leaving him for another man, and he is fearful that he won't receive tenure from the university where he teaches. The film unfolds much like a Jewish parable, sending Gopnik on a spiritual quest for answers.
Call me crazy, but I really love this movie. In fact, one of my fondest memories from my time in seminary is loosely connected with it. I was on a preaching retreat that was co-led by one of my favorite professors, Dr. Hulitt Gloer, and the president of Calvin Seminary, Dr. Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. One day between sessions, Dr. Plantinga and I began talking about movies, and we both had recently seen A Serious Man. I was thrilled, because my first viewing of the film left me completely stupefied. I asked Dr. Plantinga what he thought of it and how he processed its meaning. He articulated exactly the same impression that I had eventually formed for myself, which absolutely made my day. In the paragraphs that follow, I will share my impression of this film from my first viewing in 2009 as well as my new impressions from my latest viewing of the movie less than a week ago.
A Serious Man Trailer-
SPOILERS BELOW
I cannot imagine anyone viewing A Serious Man and claiming that there is another film in the Coen body of work that exudes more spirituality and theological exploration. The entire film is structured in the same fashion as a Jewish parable and there are constant questions about what God is trying to tell us. Not only is this the most spiritual Coen brothers film, it is one of the most spiritually-toned films that I have ever seen.
To Receive with Simplicity
The film opens with a title card before the opening scene. The text is a quote from the eleventh-century French rabbi Rashi: "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." After my first viewing of this film, I had forgotten about this quote, which, in hindsight, could have greatly helped me in deciphering the meaning of the film.
Our protagonist -- Larry Gopnik -- is a 1967-era Job. Early in the film he finds himself being confronted by several external forces that seem to be acting against him. His wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), asks him for a divorce so that she can be married to another man -- Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed), who is an obnoxious, manipulative know-it-all -- and he learns that he may not be awarded tenure at the university where he teaches physics. As the film unfolds, Larry continues to be brutalized by his circumstances. He is in a car accident, his son has fraudulently joined a mail-in record club under his name, and his neighbor seems to be encroaching on his property with his lawnmower. When his nemesis, Sy Abelman, dies in a car accident, Larry ends up paying for the funeral. Larry's brother, Arthur, is also having a hard time and is living with Larry and his family, constantly draining a cyst on the back of his neck. As the film progresses, Larry finds himself coming increasingly unglued.
As Larry struggles, he seeks out advice from the spiritual figures in his community. In true Jewish-parable fashion, Larry visits three rabbis. The first rabbi is the junior rabbi at his synagogue, Rabbi Scott (Simon Helberg). Scott tells Larry that he needs to learn to look at the world through fresh eyes, citing the mundane parking lot outside as a potential subject of newfound marvel ("Just look at that parking lot"). Scott is, in a way, trying to help Larry receive with simplicity and wonder the reality in which he is currently dwelling, which harkens back to the opening quote in the film.
The second rabbi Larry visits is the Rabbi Nachtner (George Wyner), a more senior leader in the community. Nachtner tells Larry the story of the Goy's Teeth (a goy is a non-Jewish person) in which a local Jewish dentist found Hebrew writing on the inside of a patient's lower front teeth. The writing translated, "Help me." The dentist becomes obsessed with discovering the meaning of this cryptic message found in the goy's teeth, but no meaning is ever given. Eventually, the dentist accepts the mystery of the event and that Hashem (a Jewish way of referring to God) may have been telling him to help other people. The dentist finds peace with this conclusion and his obsession is put to rest. After hearing this parable, Larry is more frustrated than ever. He wants to know what it all means -- he wants an explanation for his own suffering. After all, he is continuing to seek help from the rabbis -- he needs his faith to provide answers to his struggles. After hearing the story of the Goy's Teeth, a deeply disturbed Larry asks Rabbi Nachtner, "Why does he [God] give us the questions if he won't give us the answers?" Nachtner gives the perfect reply:
"He hasn't told me."
In my opinion, the parable of the Goy's Teeth is a microcosm of A Serious Man, at least in some aspects. Larry is the dentist, tormented by a new set of circumstances, and he is on a journey in which he must either accept the questions and learn to accept them with a certain level of simplicity, or he must continue to be tormented. Clearly, this is an unsatisfactory proposition for Larry who is a physics professor -- a man who has devoted his life to finding the answers to the great questions of existence. So, in a way, the Goy's Teeth story is a parable within a parable. The larger parable, of course, is this entire film itself. In fact, early in the film, Larry is talking to a student named Clive who is complaining that Larry has unfairly given him a failing grade. Clive protests that he understands the story of Schrodinger's Cat (a famous story in the world of physics). Larry says to Clive: "You can't really understand the physics without understanding the math. The math tells you how it really works. That's the real thing. The stories I give you in class are just illustrative. They're like fables, say, to help give you a picture." Larry is explaining to all of us that what we are seeing in this film is a fable -- a story meant to help us get a picture of how the world works and, subsequently, how we should (or should not) respond to the our circumstances.
Dissatisfied with the insights provided by the previous two rabbis, Larry attempts to see the great Rabbi Marshak, who is ultimately unreachable. It is almost as if Larry has placed Marshak in the place of God himself, as if Marshak were the earthly avatar of Hashem. When Marshak refuses to see Larry, he is distraught and defeated, as if God has officially turned his back on him.
Throughout A Serious Man, there is a single recurring question: "What is Hashem trying to tell me?" This question is uttered a several points in the film, and seems to be the dominant question of the story and, in some ways, of all of life itself. And with every utterance of this question, there is a reminder that we must accept our circumstances without demanding answers from God. When Larry articulates his disorientation at life ("Everything I thought was one way turns out to be another"), his friend Mimi tells him, "It's not always easy deciphering what God is trying to tell you." As has already been pointed out, both of the rabbis that Larry speaks with instruct him to accept what God has placed in his path. In fact, Larry himself adopts this mantra when his brother Arthur expresses his own distress and anger that Hashem has abandoned him. Larry tells Arthur, ""It's not fair to blame Hashem, Arthur. Sometimes you have to help yourself." Apparently, as with many people within religious traditions, it is much easier to give the advice than to receive it.
It should be said that Larry's son Danny also endures his own struggles, in some way mirroring his father's journey. Early in the film, Danny's radio is confiscated by a teacher. The radio's case also contained a twenty dollar bill that Danny was supposed to use to pay the kid who gave him marijuana. Without the money, the other kid is threatening to beat up Danny. Also, to add insult to injury, the television reception in the house is constantly fuzzy, which is preventing Danny from fully experiencing F-Troop (This is a recurring joke in the movie. At one point, Danny calls Larry during a meeting with his divorce attorney to tell his father that F-Troop is fuzzy again). Danny's struggles and Larry's struggles work in concert with one another. As Larry's struggles begin to subside, so do Danny's. Danny's radio is returned, he successfully completes his bar-mitzvah, and he has the twenty dollars needed to pay the other kid. In turn, Larry and his wife reconcile, and he is tipped off that he will be awarded tenure after all. However, the reprieve is short-lived, and the film does not end in a happy place. In pure Coen fashion, the filmmakers choose instead to introduce a whole new set of complications just before the film concludes. If the screen had gone black only five minutes earlier, it would have been a perfect Hollywood ending with everyone getting what they wanted. Instead, Larry receives an ominous phone call from his doctor, and Danny is standing outside watching a massive tornado move directly toward him and his classmates. As one set of problems concludes, another enters the story.
The Sacredness of Questions
Within the recurring claim that we must accept what God has placed in our lives, there is also a seemingly paradoxical theme presenting us with the idea that questions are healthy. In fact, the film seems to be suggesting that the questions are ultimately more important and more instructive than the answers ever could be. The paradoxical joy and struggle of faith lies in its labyrinth of unanswerable questions. There is an enigmatic dream sequence in which Larry is seen doing an impossibly long math problem, at the end of which he declares: "It proves we can't ever really know what's going on!" It seems as if the more we know, the more we understand how little we actually know (you know?). As we surrender our need to understand and explain everything, we free ourselves to truly dwell within the questions.
The film is bookended by the Jefferson Airplane song "Somebody to Love." In fact, when Larry's son Danny goes to see Rabbi Marshak after he is bar-mitzvahed, he awaits the rabbi's sage words of eternal wisdom. Rather than quoting from the Torah or the Talmud, Marshak solemnly says to Danny: "When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope in you dies... What then?" (the actual lyric of the song uses the word "joy" instead of "hope," but this is how Marshak quotes the song). Of course, we know that he is paraphrasing the Jefferson Airplane song, which serves as the unofficial theme music for this entire film. And, of course, this song is written the form of a question.
To Be Acknowledged and Remembered
We must devote some time to the meaning of the film's title. There is often a sense that Larry is alone in his struggle -- that nobody takes him seriously. This insecurity is heightened at Sy Abelman's funeral where Rabbi Nachtner says in his eulogy, "Could such a serious man just disappear? ... A frivolous man may vanish without a ripple, but Sy Ableman? Sy Ableman was a serious man." We know that these words haunt Larry, because later he has a dream in which Sy appears to him and repeats, "I'm a serious man, Larry." Sy is Larry's rival, his nemesis, and Larry wants to know why everyone takes Sy so seriously while thinking of Larry as a bit of a joke or an afterthought. Does Larry fear that he is vanishing from his own life? Is this the symbolic significance of the neighbor slowly encroaching on his property?
Actions Have Consequences
In the second scene in which Larry is visited in his office by Clive, the failing student, he tries to explain to Clive the reality of consequences. It is almost as if he is attempting to teach Clive a sort of physics lesson about all of life. Larry believes Clive has attempted to bribe him for a better grade (an accusation that Clive neither confirms nor denies). Larry explains to Clive that he cannot do such things and expect there to be no repercussions: "Actions have consequences."
Clive responds: "Yes, often."
With increasing frustration, Larry replies, "No, Clive. Not often. Always."
We have to admire Larry for taking such a positioned stance, clinging to his principles in spite of everything that is happening in his life. It is not during the turmoil that Larry slips. Rather, his moral decline occurs after the proverbial storm has subsided. When everything seems to be back to normal, Larry is opening his mail and discovers a bill from his divorce attorney, whose services he ended up not even needing. Larry remembers the large bribe that Clive (and Clive's father) had offered in exchange for a passing grade. Larry opens his grade book, looks at Clive's F in the ledger, thinks for a moment, and then changes the F to a C-. Just as Larry finishes drawing the minus sign next to the C, his office phone rings. It is his doctor who, in the opening scene of the film, had told him that everything seemed normal. Now, however, the doctor wants Larry to come in and talk about his x-rays -- immediately. While there may be no discernible reason for Larry's earlier struggles, this new element seems to be a direct result of Larry's momentary lapse in integrity. After all, actions always have consequences.
