Generally, it helps if the OP advances his/her own interpretation first. You don’t want to appear to be begging others to do the heavy lifting for you.
That’s an issue with the Cohens…the endings…
I took it as life sucks and then you die. I thought it was an excellent ending to an excellent film. And I think most of the Coen’s endings are excellent.
@BAN sorry, not with you on that one. There was great character exposition that just never went anywhere. That ending was a cop out as where many of the ‘events’ in the film that occurred after the hour mark to push the ‘story’ along: the heart attack, the car accident, the Rabbi’s “help me” story. I give no credence to their cryptology. It seems to me that The Cohen’s are only good at directing films based on stories that are already in existence: Fargo (based on true events) No Country For Old Men (a Cormac McCarthy novel) everything else has been blah Burn After Reading? Get out of here. Intolerable Cruelty?_ Get out a here with that. O Brother, Where At Thou? you’re kidding right? The Man Who Wasn’t There? Did you hear that intolerable narration at the end? “I don’t know where I’m going, maybe it’s simpler there…” mm hmm, Nice screen writing boys. Even No Country was jeopardized by that foolish ending. MIKEL’s right. It’s an issue
I like the ending. Just when you think that everything is getting better for our protagonist, the rug is pulled from under him. Sure, if you don’t like their bleak worldview, the film does nothing to help you with that. I’m not sure why the ending was a cop-out. It’s open-ended but what more did you want? The film has a fine and fairly conventional resolution that would even make Robert McKee content. It ties nicely to the opening with the dybbuk’s curse being passed down generations.
R.H. – As for your comment re: Fargo, I didn’t realize there were still people who thought that the film was actually based on true events (perhaps based on events that happened to their editor Roderick Jaynes).
I personally don’t think Robert McKee would agree but I’ll make sure to have my friend ask when he goes to the seminar
Just saw it tonight. The ending, imo- convinced that the rigid moral causality of the universe he believed in at the beginning of the film (“actions have consequences”) , our hero decides to take the bribe and change the grade. The phone call from the doctor immeidately follows as the consequence for this act, as does the tornado. Lesson: even if you doubt that the universe does not reward the good and punish the bad, be extremely careful. You don’t want to be the most recent example that it does. Be upright.
you stole the words right out of my mouth (or perhaps fingers, as the case would be). the typhoon of awful things that befall him throughout the movie and the lack of answers that he gets from everyone eventually leads him to compromise his values. the questions that i was left with were and still are, was the ending brought about by his acceptance of the bribe, or was it merely a continuation of the bad things that happened before despite the fact that things seemed to be getting better toward the end? chaos or divine retribution? or neither, for that matter? among about a billion other questions that i cant articulate at the moment. (i certainly do not deign to believe that those questions cover the vast amount of possible interpretations of the film, but i do think it is a good place to start.)
I was being snarky before but now I’m trying to formulate to myself why I didn’t like it: I appreciate the meticulous storytelling and deft and imperceivable camera work by Deakins. I loved the sound track and mood and loved all the characters. I understood what the directors where trying to say. ‘no one really knows whats going on- that’s life’. I don’t like how they developed the story nor did I like the their decisions in what to use as conflict generators. I feel like the film could have gone in a different direction, a better direction. As for Logic: If the woman spotted the dybbuk and did the right thing by getting it out of the house, why did ‘hashem’ (or whomever) allow them to be cursed? For not providing soup to an evil entity? who established that there was a curse to begin with? I can’t remember the dybbuk actually cursing them. Did Hashem? Also, why didn’t bad things happen to the Rabbi’s since they where peddling information that apparently didn’t help anyone. and how does one boy listening to a radio and smoking weed after being told to “be good” justify the onset of a tornado to wipe out and kill hundreds or thousands even? This leads me to believe that there was no curse, just a perceived one.Do the Cohen’s practice or believe in their religion? perhaps and perhaps this film was how they decided to tackle the questions it raised of probability vs unknown sources controlling the universe and morality. they loaded it with so much to ‘figure out’ but once you figure it all out, all thats left is a fairly uninteresting sequence of events happening to normal people in which some kind of God is waiting for them to make a decision and then punish or bless them for it. OR it’s a comical portrayal of a group of human beings imbuing meaning and drawing conclusions from events that happen to them and then asking “why” or concluding that “life sucks”. If the latter was the intent then serious plot lines needed to be redrawn to make that clear. Either way: I was disappointed, thoroughly, since I felt hit had so much potential.
I read the Dybbuk fable like this: It is about uncertainty and how human beings deal with this. At the moment the man/dybbuk leaves, there is no certainty that he is either one. However, the couple will “find that out” in a sense by living out their lives. If their lives are good, he was a dybbuk. If not he was a man. The point is that they will intepret their fates as to that one particular incident, whether their is in objective reality a curse or not. Their future lives may or may not have anything to do with the incident, but the fact that they believe it does will make them possibly even act in certain ways to bring about the “fate” they assume they will have. Uncertainty, then, may make people try to find certainty in places it does not exist, may make them make decisions based on interpretations of events that have no inherent meaning in themselves. In a world of uncertainty, believing in certainty may actually make “certainty” come about in both illusory and real ways. And of course any real God could change the rules at will without worrying about human understanding. I think the fact that the two final blows at the end are so much more serious than all that proceded (and the tornado so maniferstly biblical) suggests that in this particular depiction of uncertainty, there is indeed a ruithless moral judgement that doesn’t have to be consitiant or understandable to be at any moment breathtakingly real.
Well put Brian, I totally missed the idea that the doctor’s call was a direct and immediate consequence of accepting the bribe. I was too busy wondering how his phone rang through to his office when all the previous telephone interactions had been in the form of messages handing to him from his secretary. Makes even more sense now.
On that note then what of the fact that the son was trying to get Fagel’s attention to finally pay him back when he noticed the tornado in the near distance?
Also, with regard to the end of No Country For Old Men, I agree there was a problem with the ending but not in the way everyone else does. I think it should have ended in the instant of the impact of the car crash.
I love an open-ended ending.
It’s interesting to me to see that some people see the onslaught of horrible events as consequences for actions. Or, that people think the Coen’s are framing their characters in terms of “good” and “bad”. The movie seems to have some relation to the book of Job, but actually a quote from Jesus kept running through my mind. “…that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”
The moral actions of the two main characters – father and son – seem to flow from the events around them rather than the other way around. I found it interesting that Larry’s one real action was an immoral one. After an hour and forty minutes of “doing nothing”, Larry decides to accept the bribe as a way to offset some of the horrible events that have befallen him. The final moment of the film interested me not for the sons intention of getting the money back, but Fagel’s disinterest in the money in the face of a motherfucking tornado. Who cares about $20 when you have a cyclone staring you down.
In direct response to Brian: the tornado seemed to be on it’s way before Larry accepted the bribe. Also, do you really think the events preceding the final two scenes weren’t serious? Though funny at times, it seemed to me that it was dead serious.
Interesting points. Yeah, I realize the tornado problem too, but I think it has to do with the son, actually. How about this: the movie proper begins with the son’s first, aborted attempt to pay back the money and ends with his second,open-ended one. Therefore, the temporal context of the body is the overarching story about how the repayment is interrupted, the consequences of that interruption, and how it may ultimately be resolved. From this perspective, it is the unpaid debt that may or may not be responsible for the troubles, depending on whether one believes in such things or not. Recall that throughout the film the son is literally and figuratively running from the situtation, therefore constantly inviting more retribution.. Why does his father suffer? Perhaps because the son is not a man, ie not bar mitzvahed, and therefore cannot be held responsible. Perhaps the tornado will be the his first post-bar mitzvohed, “adult” punishment- ie aimed at him rather than his father. Interestingly, being bar mitzvohed is what enabled him to get the money back in the first place. The needing may suggest that the son’s disaster is yet avertable, ie the tornado could change path, depending on if he gets the money to Fagel in time- tho Nathan seems to be right that the chances are dim. You make a good point re: the severity of the previous punishments as well.
Yeah, I’ve thought about the Job connection too, though the Job story assumes the existence of God and Job is notable for his strong faith in God. I’m not sure Larry has that. But there certainly are parallels.
Anyone think of the notorious “event” (what is the policy re: spoilers?) at the end of Magnolia as similar to the events at the end of A Serious Man?
most definately
I don’t think there’s a karmic relationship between the father’s and son’s actions and the tornado at all. And while I see the parallels to Job, A Serious Man evokes a feeling of quantum unpredictability (as expressed in the physics lectures, the student’s unwillingness to own up to the bribe (“accept the mystery”), etc.) more than it does any sense of God testing his characters. If it can be expressed so simply, let me say that A Serious Man is the twentieth-century Job, in which the true test is whether we can live in a chaotic, indifferent universe.
I posted this thread after I saw the film, and there are some nice bits about it there that address the ending and the film overall. Love to hear what you guys think.
Just because the events in A Serious Man don’t have resoultion does not mean they are cop-outs. They’re emphatic about ambiguity in their films because they don’t agree with the typical audience’s need to know everything about what is happening, because in reality we don’t always gain resolution. The point of A Serious Man is to “accept the mystery”, maybe formulate your own personal interpretation, but in general come to terms with how uncertain everything is all the time. The answer to all and any questions anyone asks upon watching that movie is “exactly”.
When asked if their movies should be viewed in embrace of the mystery: “Yes! Please! We don’t engage in a lot of reflection when it comes to our movies,” says Joel. “And we’d love it if everyone followed our lead,” says Ethan.
It’s best to resist the need to know everything when watching any movie with an ambiguous ending. The truth is that there is no right answer, ever.
“I love an open-ended ending”
When it well donei must say…
Sometimes i see the coens or cohens overhyped. It’s obvious that their writing skills are top notch and deakings achieved celestial levels…but i agree in so many points with RH Marcell..for me the worst Coen endings ever are Hudsucker Proxy and No country…
No Country was a Cormac McCarthy ending, not a Coen ending. They were just being faithful to the book.
illustrating books…that’s it…i think Greenaway was right in the end…
To repeat what I said on a similar thread about A SERIOUS MAN: The ending is just a set-up for the intended sequel, A VERY SERIOUS MAN. :-)
The best part of the ending was the audience’s audible groan when the credits came up (in a good way).
If you read the book of Job (on which the movie is obviously heavily based), the first time God finally speaks to Job is through a whirlwind.
I took the ending as God finally about to speak and reveal Himself to Larry.
I’m with ya Nate. I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle as soon as I heard everyone scoffing during the end credits.
As soon as Larry finally breaks down, betrays his moral strength and changes the Korean student’s grade from and F to a C-, two things happen: he gets the call from the doctor (bad news about those X-rays)…and then the tornado shows up.
I don’t think the ending is ambiguous at all: things start to look up with Larry’s son’s successful bar mitzvah and the the positive word about his tenure…and then he goes and ruins it by giving in to immoral temptation. I mean, if a tornado isn’t a symbol of God’s wrath, then what is?
I am a fan of this film’s ending. For me, its strength was compositional more than narrative. As constructed, it offered me a view of calamity yet to come … from the characters’ perspective. I appreciated the Coens’ affinity for open-ended endings, and I felt that they pulled it off better here than in No Country, the difference being a single, fleetingly powerful and poetic closing image.
The spirit of this ending had been foreshadowed earlier in the film, I think: remember the story of the Jewish dentist who found the phrase “Help Me” carved in the back of a patient’s tooth. The Rabbi who tells Larry this story is asked the logical questions. Why was that message placed there? What happened to the patient? The Rabbi’s response? “Who cares?”
To me the central question asked by this film is not why do things happen or what will happen next. It’s, “How do we see ourselves and our existence more clearly?”
tim
I just saw it and for those of you who saw it, what i your interepretation of the ending