The Malice God

I have an older relative, an uncle once removed, who was diagnosed in the 1960s as paranoid schizophrenic, and during my most recent visit with him in NW Arkansas a couple of weeks ago, he told me about the malice god.  This has something to do with Jesus being sexually molested by the Romans.  (My twice-removed uncle was sexually molested by a neighborhood kid when he was young.) What the connection is with God and the Devil, I don't know, but in my cousin's mind, the malice god has something to do with why he is mistreated and conspired against by other people--they are operating under the orders of the malice god.

The subject came up because we were talking about the recent amputation of my cousin's left foot, and the effort by those responsible for his medical care to prevent amputation of his right foot.  He has numerous health problems and adult diabetes is now added to the list.  He didn't seek treatment for the problems he was having with his left foot until it was too late, and now he blames the attempted treatment to save his foot for actually causing the foot to have to be amputated.  So he wanted a wound on his right foot to be left untreated.  It took an appearance in court before a judge to get the wound treated without his, my cousin's, consent.  When I visited him in the Senior Care section of Sparks Medical Center in Fort Smith, the wound was dressed and he was not in a bad mood, considering.  But he did in passing mention the malice god.

Which naturally lead me, later on, to think that the malice god is the one calling the shots--you might call them pot shots--taken at Professor Larry Gopnick in A Serious Man.  And you might call the enjoyment of the movie by people like me schadenfreude.  But you'd be missing the intended intellectual slapstick aspect of the movie if you did that.

The end of the movie leaves two questions hovering:  is there something really wrong with Larry's x-rays or has the doctor got them mixed up with someone else's (the doctor, not a technician, took the x-rays, which seems odd even for 1967), and will Danny and his fellow students make it into the basement of the synagogue (will the teacher find the right key) before the arrival of the tornado?

I watched Then She Found Me again, and added it to my list of favorite movies.  So much good dialogue is in there!  That includes this exchange between April (adopted) and her brother (not adopted), although don't quote me on the exact dialogue:

"Trust me, you have no idea what it's like to be adopted." 

"And you have no idea what it's like to not be adopted. Right?"

"So, what's it like?" 
 
(there's a brief pause before he answers)

"It was exhausting. It was embarassing, sometimes." 

Oh, yeh, and one more thing about A Serious Man, from the shtetl scene at the beginning.  The dybbuk?, upon entering the home of Dora and Velvel, after Velvel, standing at the door, tells him he's welcome there, says: "You're too kind, Velvel, too kind."  Apparently so!  And that might be seen to apply to Larry also.

"Listen, O Israel..."

"Listen, O Israel, the God of Love and the God of Fear are one."  I like Then She Found Me, the Helen Hunt movie that, like A Serious Man, involves things Jewish, and from which this quotation comes.  It has some very funny parts but is quite serious overall, unlike A Serious Man.  But it's not a movie I've listed as one of my favorites, although that could change.  I keep updating the list as I remember movies I've seen and also as I see new ones or re-see old ones.  I saw Grand Hotel last night, for the first time, and it's now one of my favorites.

I also edit previous posts, such as I did to the January 5th one when I found the Laura Cunningham story that I'd actually cut out of the July 17, 1989 issue of The New Yorker. 

And on the subject of fear and love, and this being MLK's birthday, I recommend reading about Dr. King's visit to the 1958 Central High School graduation ceremony, as discussed in the book My Father Said Yes: A White Pastor in Little Rock School Integration, by Dunbar H. Ogden (Vanderbuilt U. Press, 2008).  Google Books' online preview provides instant access to most of the story.  MLK probably would not have come to Arkansas just to go to that ceremony, but he had come to Pine Bluff, 50 miles southeast of Little Rock, to give the commencement speech that year at the historically black college then called Agricultural, Mechanical, & Normal college, and now called the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

More cussin'

Well, there I go again.  In my last post, how could I have forgotten Uncle Arthur's cussing like a sailor, sitting on the steps of the dried up Jolly Roger motel pool, while Larry is trying to minister to him--at first just trying to get him not to cuss?

When Larry requests that Arthur not use the word "shit" ("Arthur, don't use that word!") Arthur, who is having an emotional breakdown, then says "fucking shit," as in "It's all fucking shit!"  If you've ever been in a similar situation with a relative or friend, you may have felt like just fleeing, or hiding, or leaving him or her alone and trying to go back to bed. Or just starting to cuss right back at 'em.  I've felt that way, all those ways.  So I was quite emotionally moved by Larry hanging in there and talking to Arthur and finally putting his arms around him after he, Arthur, goes from profane shouting to crying ("Now, I can't even play cards.").

Two previous scenes related to this one come to mind.  First, when he is talking with the woman in leg braces at the lake about Arthur, Larry says "He never complains, unlike me."  Whoops. Beware of freeloaders who never complain? Second, Sy, in the three-way meeting at Embers restaurant (where the non-beautiful people apparently gather), in telling Larry of the advantages of the Jolly Roger, mentions that it has a pool.  There we have another example of how Sy's words don't match up too well with reality:  yes, the Jolly Roger has a pool, but, even though summer is beginning, there's no water in it and it appears not to have been used in a long time.

In Larry's "Canada" dream, Arthur apologizes for his poolside outburst of the previous night as he's paddling away in the canoe.  Larry says, "It's okay," a repetitive line of his in the movie.  Of course we don't know at the time that this scene is a dream.  After little Mitch Brandt does his high-powered rifle thing, Larry wakes up and Arthur is sitting on the side of his own bed with his back to Larry. Dazed and confused by the dream and lack of sleep, Larry asks, "Were we...out by the pool last night?"  Arthur nods without saying anything but, significantly, and matching up with the dream, then says "I'm sorry."

My introduction to Jewish uncles was a story called "Sleeping Arrangements" by Laura Cunningham, published in  The New Yorker on July 17, 1989. From an Internet search, I see that the writer's full name is Laura Shaine Cunningham, and that the story I thought was fiction is actually an excerpt from her 1989 memoir.  Having read that wonderful little story (the excerpt) certainly helps me to enjoy and relate to and better understand A Serious Man.

More movie violence than I thought

Ahem, pardon me. I was wrong earlier in saying, first, that the stabbing of the dybbuk? is the only physical violence in the movie, and then was wrong again when I thought the car crash was the only other instance of violence.  However, I am sticking with my story that the movie is fundamentally (physicists like to say that word) a cartoon.  The violence, like the movie, is not to be taken seriously.  So of course the Coen brothers call it A Serious Man.  An obvious alternate misleading title would be A Serious Movie.  However, we can paraphrase good old A. D' Abro (below) and say the obvious is not necessarily credited with any deep significance in moviemaking.  It is the veiled.

The other cartoon-like violence in the movie occurs in each of Larry's three dreams.  First, in the classroom dream, Sy, the serious man of the movie (according to Nachtner, and also according to Sy himself in this particular dream-scene), bashes Larry into the chalkboard while telling him he made a cuckold of him.  Sy doesn't use the word cuckold, however. He uses the f-word, and this is the only time I can think of when an adult utters a profanity, unless you count the Torah hoister muttering "Jesus Christ!" when he almost drops the heavy scroll near the end of Danny's bar mitzvah.  (The kids are using profanity all the time.) The physical bashing of Larry by the dybbuk-Sy in the dream contrasts nicely with Sy's warm-huggy-bear approach to taking advantage of Larry when he, Sy, was alive.

The Sex with Mrs. Samsky dream ends with Sy putting boards over Larry like he was burying him alive, saying "Nailing it down, so important."  This isn't literal violence but is threatening nevertheless.  Mrs. Samsky's cigarette smoke is rather threatening, also, especially when you consider that Larry is, at the end of the movie, called back to the doctor because of something detected in his chest x-rays.

And the shooting, of course, of Uncle Arthur in the Escape to Canada dream.  The dream ends with Mitch being told by his dad, both of them in their hunting outfits with rifles, to shoot Larry next ("There's another Jew, son!") and Mitch aims and fires--then the dream ends.

"No Jews were harmed in the making of this motion picture," is the disclaimer after the credit roll at the end of the movie.

Coincidences

I was searching for something in my car's glove compartment last week and ran across the reciept from Webb's Auto Service for the last time I got my oil changed.  Not what I was looking for, but I'd written on the back the mileage at which I'd be needing another oil change (the little sticker they put on the inside of the windshield didn't stick).  I thought I might be getting close to time for a change, so I looked over from the passenger's seat at what the odometer reading was. Pre-zactly what the jotted-down mileage was!  That would be: 113,421.  Not bad for a 1996 car, eh?

And today I'm in the Pine Bluff library, waiting for my laptop to boot up and connect to the public wi-fi here, walking over to the stacks where Arkansas-related books are, planning to take another look at my brother Steven's poetry book (Half Life Burning, Sarasota Poetry Theatre Press, 2000), and gazing at the books as I head back to where I know Steven's book is, and what catches my eye?  I mean besides the old copy of Cotton Stealing, written by "Anonymous" and published in 1866 by John B. Walsh Co., Chicago.  None other than True Grit, by Charles Portis, published by Simon & Schuster in 1968!  I might have ignored it (again) but for the fact that it's been in the news lately due to the Coen brothers making a new movie of it.  And also, the coincidence here, the movie hits the theaters today.

Portis dedicated the book thusly:  "For my mother and father".  Acccording to one local wag, Bob Lancaster of the Arkansas Times, Portis created Mattie's personality and way of talking from his (Portis's) mother's personality.  (That information was delivered in a moment when Lancaster was not operating so much in the wag mode.)

In A Serious Man, one coincidence is the simultaneity of Larry's and Sy's traffic accidents.  Larry is not hurt in his collision, in spite of being in a sort of small car (small for those days) and not having the whiplash-preventing headrest of our modern day cars, while Sy, making a left turn in his big ol' Cadillac, is killed.  He musta been hit by a gravel truck or something.

Another coincidence (these are intentional, story-line coincidences) is Danny's resemblance to Abraham's son Isaac as portrayed in the painting on Marshak's wall.  You can see Danny reacting unfavorably to the painting, which is of Abraham being stopped at the last moment from following God's command to sacrifice Isaac. The painting shows a person stopping Abe from cutting Isaac's throat.  I don't know the story that well, but I though it was more like the voice of God at the last moment saying, "This was only a test!"  Anyway,  on the subject of Abraham, earlier in the movie we heard from Rabbi Nachtner, when he gave Sy's eulogy, that the afterlife is not a geographical place "like Canada," and not a place where we'll be rewarded for our good deeds (not a "VIP lounge" where milk and cookies are served eternally), but is rather "in the bosom of Abraham."  Danny can't be too impressed with the desirability of having his soul rocked in the bosom of Abraham after looking at the painting.

And of course, in Larry's dream of Arthur attempting to escape his legal troubles,  the place of sanctuary is intended to be Canada.  The early parts of that scene--the sign that tells us Canada is the destination and the fact that a boat is the mode of escape--made me think of Tim O'Brien's story "On the Rainy River".

Music in the movie

Danny's transistor radio seems to be somewhat magical, in that it's not only playing "Somebody to Love" in the opening classroom scene and the closing whirlwind scene, but also played it for Rabbi Marshak, apparently, otherwise how would he quote from the lyrics (slightly misquote, but never mind) and also choose to name members of Jefferson Airplane for Danny?  When the old principal of the Hebrew school examines the radio with a rather transcendent sort of curiosity, then slowly puts the earphone in his hairy ear and truly seems to go into a transcendent state, I couldn't tell what music was playing.  Ditto for Danny's return to the classroom, when he is inserting the earphone--it's not "Somebody to Love" but could be another song on the Surrealistic Pillow LP.  Two other songs from that album are used in the soundtrack.

The actual soundtrack, the musical theme of the movie, is something else I really like about it.  I'm not sure of the ethereal tune's actual notes, some of which are played on harp and some on piano, but they are quite harmonious.  I plan to try to pick out those notes on my piano, a recent purchase from Martin Piano Company in Pine Bluff (Rudolph Wurlitzer, refinished black spinet, $600).  I've taken lessons for a year and a half from a local piano teacher named Henry Moore, who's around ten years older than I am and seems to be a good teacher (better teacher than I am a student).  I was just using a cheap electronic keyboard to practice on until I bought the piano this month.

Why did Santana Abraxas and Creedence's Cosmos Factory both get mentioned in A Serious Man as Columbia Record Club selections of the month (for May and June), when they weren't released until 1970, three years after the movie's time period?  Well, I just realized that that is a third instance where three years has some relevance in the movie (can you name the other two?).

The Hebrew chanting and singing in the movie, including the song Dem Milner's Trern (The Miller's Tears) are another transcendent aspect of the soundtrack. 

An interesting aside on "Somebody to Love":  In an interview on Fresh Air (January 2009), Bruce Springsteen mentioned something about the "subtext" of rock n' roll being that it makes you want to take your pants off (I heard that story second hand so I don't have the exact quote).  A friend of mine once told me that when "Somebody to Love" started playing on her car radio, her young son in the back seat--five or six years old, I'm guessing--almost immediately started to take off his pants.

For starters

My take on A Serious Man is that it's the Coen brothers doing their version of slapstick.  In actual slapstick routines, and also in many old cartoons such as Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, and others from the 50s and 60s (and earlier), some of the characters continually get "hurt" physically, and it's funny.  Ditto for A Serious Man, but the hurt is emotional rather than physical. So we are not supposed to take A Serious Man seriously.

Just as some people don't care for the pratfalls and the Three Stooges' style physical comedy, some people don't care for and don't get the comedy in A Serious Man.  Pat Calkins, my best friend during junior high, watched part of the movie with me recently, and when the alleged dybbuk is stabbed by Dora, he just sort of didn't get it, wondering out loud by saying something like, "She stabbed him after he helped them?"  Well, you really do have to pay attention, and have missed the essentials of that part of the movie if you don't get the reason she stabs him. And you're going to be lost to the humor of the rest of the movie if you don't find the dybbuk?'s response to his stabbing to be funny.

The stabbing in fact is the one instance where there is a physical slapstick moment.  Maybe that's why the Coens refer to the opening sequence as being like the cartoon that preceded the feature presentation back when they (and I) were kids.  Well, okay, the car wreck is physical humor.  And Michael Stuhlbarg's body language--enhanced by 1967-era pants and shirt--and facial expressions are also excellent physical comedy.

So, anyway, I let Pat off the hook less than halfway through the movie.  He wanted action, and actually asked me if someone was going to get killed--he needed to anticipate some serious physical movie violence in order to keep up his interest. The movie he had on his mind was Lord of War. That was the movie he wanted me to watch, and I did check it out from the library the next day.   And I like it, unlike him and his low opinion of, or at least lack of interest in, A Serious Man. 

During Robert Altman's acceptance speech for his Lifetime Achievment Oscar, he mentioned that he wasn't as interested in stories as he was in conversations.  You gotta be interested in conversations to care anything about A Serious Man, because that's what drives the action, and mostly is the action, in the movie.  It's Coen bros' intellectual slapstick.  It's a cartoon made with real actors. 

Like some cartoons--Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner come to mind--A Serious Man has lessons to be learned.  If you think just because someone does you a favor, helps you in some way, like helping you replace the fallen-off wheel of your cart in the snow, that he is your friend or that he is a good person, well, you better be careful.  He could be the equivalent of a dybbuk. He could be pure evil.

Or if you think you're actually in good health because your cigarette-smoking doctor tells you so, but your chest x-rays have not been developed yet, well, you're going to possibly find the "truth" to be a lie.  (The x-ray room, with its door ajar, is shown behind Larry when Dr. Shapiro gives him his supposed clean bill of health.)

And that's only for starters.