Main character repeats question "What's going on?" throughout the film 

• ill-fated protagonist of a dark comedy 

• reflexive and sort of stupid question in response to a series of unfortunate events that tears his quiet suburban life apart without cause 

  • wife demands divorce

  • student tries to blackmail

  • neighbor infringes on property

  • wife's lover dies and he's forced to pay for it

  • brother gets in trouble with law and he pays for that

  • anonymous hate mail 

  • car accident 

  • witnesses death 

  • forced to pay for a record subscription 

    • "I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!" 

• Each situations compound and unfold into one another with surgical precision 

• Each individually illustrative of their own batch of themes 

  • Together they shape out the central message of the movie like an optical illusion that demonstrates closure

There is no real closure in A Serious Man nor is there a real shape in the illusion

• still he seeks it

• he wants to understand what he's done to deserve such misfortune 

  • character is unaware of what the audience can see clearly: It is his INACTION / constant refrain: "I HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING" that causes his problems

    • actions have consequences

    • inaction has consequences too 

Larry looks for a way to interpret his suffering rather than accepting it

• seeks cousel of 3 rabbis

  • 1. A junior Rabbi : lectures Larry on the importance of perspective 

  • 2. Tells a convoluted parable abouta  dentist who finds a message in a patients teeth that never resolves itlself

    • illustrating the inscrutability of God's plan 

  • 3. Elderly wise Rabbi : refuses to see Larry altogether, liberalizing the heavenly silence in the face of big questions that prompted Larry's search for advice in the first place 

A lot of what Larry hears are CLICHE'S 

• i.e. need to change your perspective 

• many of them are true

  • cliche and parable are two devices that people use to understand what's going on

    • not the only devices the film has to offer

      • music and drugs 

      • a complex probability map of the universe 

      • theories of physics and mathematics ; equations which definitively prove the under riding uncertainty of all things 

The film questions the persuasiveness of every interpretative device

• by placing them side by side and showing how they fail to work together and form any kind of semblance of coherence 

  • The Coens' communicate the real dread of a world that's become unreadable 

    • Take it down to the most basic form of interpertation: language 

      • symbols of hebrew are incomprehensible

      • mumbling 

        • interpretation is how we nail down the world around us; how to secure the storm of the world around us onto fixed points 

          • When these come undone it becomes traumatic, we reach for anything that can orient us, explains the appeal of religion 

This criticism of interpretive methods makes us realize we are watching a form of interpretation: A cinematic narrative

• ​A film in which every element is ambiguous in which cause and effect--the engine of any narrative--is willfully disregarded, suggests that film and story are plagued by the same problems as all the other devices (despite what hollywood would have you believe) 

Opening prologue of the film: A short parable about a Jewish couple of the old country and stab and kill either a good samara tin or a demon ; the prologue's meaning and relationship to the rest of the film are totally nebulous 

• just enough thematic similarly to prompt interpretation but once you try the only outcome is frustration 

Moving the viewer into a headspace like that = masterful craftsmanship 

• A serious Man is the Coen brother's most profound philosophy : The big philosophical truths about life are devastatingly simple; there is no god, no objective or cosmic purpose for us, everybody suffers, everyone can figure these things out with a small amount of observation, introspection and study 

  • once you do, that dim feeling of disappointment will always be there

    • also relief! the kind of relief you get when you put aside questions that are really just waste of time 

      • better questions can be asked