I thought it was a reference to “Schroedinger’s Cat”- the guy is sort of both “alive” and “dead” at the same time. When the intro segues into the rest of the film, isn’t Larry talking about ""Schroedinger’s Cat"? My memory is foggy on it. Anyways, I never analyzed it as a deep probing insight into “Schroedinger’s Cat” but more of an in-joke (maybe it is more elaborate). Am I crazy/not crazy? (Once you read this, I will be one or the other)
For more info, the most abused theory, and cat in theoretical physics (quantum mechanics):
poor poor kitty
EDIT- and brentos, sorry I did not answer your original post but sort of spewed my own theory. This was a drive by posting… I had a 5 minute break
Yes!! Schroedinger’s Cat is definitely involved. I always saw the film as combination of the Schroedinger Cat experiment/the Dybbuk folk myth, and the book of Job.
That’s fine, that is great input, but i was trying to specifically address the Dybbuk aspect of the film—i feel one could analyze it from all three above perspectives, and i’ve discused the film in regards to the other two,but never really about the dybbuk aspect.
come back when you have more time and can post more to your liking!
I think I need to see it again to digest “Larry’s brother as a Dybbuk” It is interesting idea. I loved the beginning and I thought the Dybbukk character was dead/alive like a weird version of the Schroedinger Cat problem. But would the Coens have that intro for just a high brow reference? Probably not. So maybe me there is Dybukk in the rest of the film. So I can drink my coffee and say “interesting” to your theory, and I’ll keep it in mind when I watch it again, which I want to.
I know there are other threads on this film, but one thing that bugs me: SPOILER The rabbi quoting Jefferson Airplane lyrics. Too cute.. I like irreverence, but that seemed out of place. Perhaps it was meant to meaningful? just did not like it…
But back to the beginning of the film: The beginnings of Serious Man makes me think that the Coens should someday attempt a medieval or a gothic film, or something far away from their American settings. I know it sounds crazy,… but that beginning was so interesting….
Brentos, That’s a really interesting theory that I’ve yet to hear, but it doesn’t really work for me. I struggle to see his brother as the source of all evil. I like that character much more as a test of Larry’s compassion.
My personal interpretation is that the opening is simply a parable about not knowing. First of all there is never any confirmation if he is a Dybbuk or not and second of all there is no concrete knowledge of this opening’s connection to the rest of the film (ooo so meta!). This is showing how in-grained “not knowing” is in the Jewish religion and in the human experience.
We don’t know anything. Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people. Some people have Hebrew characters on the back of their teeth. What is the meaning of any of this? We don’t know.
I read the beginning as sort of a microcosm for the rest of the film: An old man gets murdered as a result of a kind act. No correlation between intention and result.
Drew said, “This is showing how in-grained “not knowing” is in the Jewish religion and in the human experience.”
Hence: “embrace the mystery.” I’m with Drew.
I thought of the beginning as parable about faith and reason. The wife is absolutely certain the guy is a demon. But that defies reason—i.e., what they know via their senses. This tension is a crucial part of religion.
@2
SPOILER The rabbi quoting Jefferson Airplane lyrics. Too cute.. I like irreverence, but that seemed out of place. Perhaps it was meant to meaningful? just did not like it…
Here’s my take. In that short phrase, the film does several things at once:
1. It conveys that the rabbi (who, in my interpretation, represents God) knows everything.
2. It conveys that God cares about what we care about, even things that seem insignificant (e.g., the lyrics to a pop song; the fact that the rabbi is returning the radio, signifies that God is looking out for us as well);
3. It’s funny.
I love that scene—and the entire movie. It’s one of my favorites in recent memory.
@ Drew: Very well put. Makes me want to see it again, because what you are saying is something I “sensed” but did not think about. I wonder though: The very end of the film: Do you think the Coens, as they grow older, are starting to wonder (fear?) that there is indeed something to “know” after all?
Hey all:
Thanks for this discussion…I watched this movie with two other friends of mine last year (both of them reasonably intelligent movie watchers) and we discussed the dybbuk scene and could not conclude how it fit into the rest of the film…..this has helped me put into perspective in relation to the rest of the film.
On a side note (not meant to derail):
Did the ending of Take Shelter remind you guys of the ending of A Serious Man? It immediately sprang to my mind.
@ Jazz. Ok. I am sold! wow, that was easy. Except for point 3. for me it was a Big Fat Greek Wedding kind of cutesy joke, (though I never saw Big Fat Greek Wedding ) or an “old folks break dancing” joke (A Ron Howard/Cacoon reference.. how dare I? . sorry!) For the record, I think the Coens are very funny in general (I am one of those people who can laugh just thinking about John Goodman’s “nihilist” speech from Leboswki) …though I prefer “late Coens”
Damn! I haven’t seen it yet!
I’m also with Drew, though Brentos makes a compelling case for that interpretation.
Big Fat Greek Wedding was terrible.
//Big Fat Greek Wedding was terrible.//
Painful, in fact.
I found the Rabbi quoting the Jefferson Airplane lyrics to be perfect. It’s the general truth that all the characters are looking for, summed up in a pithy pop lyric. “When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, don’t you want somebody to love?”
That also now makes me think of Tolstoy. Levin cycles through all kinds of moral philosophies and finds meaning in none, then discovers the truth was so obvious he missed it. It seemed to me like the main character tried to settle on a philosophy like that at the end, to just live the life you can and accept the world’s failures, only in his case getting an ambiguously probable death sentence.
hmmmmm. Jirin might be right too. I am contemplating that I might have been wrong. hmmmmm……
“the Coens should someday attempt a medieval or a gothic film,”
Actually in some ways many of the Coen’s films are “American Gothic.”
—DiB
“The rabbi quoting Jefferson Airplane lyrics… too cute…irreverent.”
The specific quote is
“When the truth is found to be lies
And all the joy within you dies”
And he goes on to say,
“Be a good boy.”
I’d say that’s pretty in tune with the movie’s philosophy.
—PolarisDiB
@Polaris— Good point. the Coen Bros “American Gothic” has been great… but picture this…. A Coen Bros version of Ken Russels The Devils (not literally The Devils but something like that…) I know it sounds crazy, but… ok . it’s crazy.
“That also now makes me think of Tolstoy. Levin cycles through all kinds of moral philosophies and finds meaning in none, then discovers the truth was so obvious he missed it. "
And then he forgets it again, but is okay because he realizes he’ll remember it again.
—PolarisDiB
“SPOILER The rabbi quoting Jefferson Airplane lyrics. Too cute.. I like irreverence, but that seemed out of place. Perhaps it was meant to meaningful?”
What about the appearance of two albums not released until 1970 in a film set in 1967?
Accept the mystery, Matt.
Didn’t they play “white rabbit” and “somebody to love” on smothers brothers in 1967
I was not there, mind you…
EDIT- oops, that was 68.
Accept the mystery, Matt.
LOL!
@2
Except for point 3. for me it was a Big Fat Greek Wedding kind of cutesy joke, (though I never saw Big Fat Greek Wedding )
Well, your comparison might be more apt if #1 and #2 weren’t present. For me, the more serious elements stand out in that scene, more than the humorous ones.
@RGrimes
Did the ending of Take Shelter remind you guys of the ending of A Serious Man? It immediately sprang to my mind.
Honestly, I did not, but I can understand why others would.
Here’s a terrific interpretation of the ending (and much of the film, imo) by David Lincoln Brooks, a poster who closed his account:
The ending is clear: The movie is the Biblical story of Job, re-written for 1967 in Goffin/King’s “Pleasant Valley Sunday” land. The implication is a grimly funny one: no matter how bad things get, they can ALWAYS get worse.
It’s a wry discussion of what it means to be Jewish… They may be the Chosen People, but…. chosen for what? To suffer constantly?
The tornado comes right after Danny Gopnik has been bar-mitzvah’d into the faith. The Coens are definitely making a bitter joke about what it means to be Jewish.
No matter what Rabbis say to try to make life better, there’s no cure for cancer, death and taxes. Much of life… has to be borne. And many of life’s ills are not invited, earned, deserved.
Perhaps humor is the ray of sunshine that makes life bearable—- that’s the only life-preserver the Coens are throwing at us.
I disagree with David, though. Here’s partially what I wrote in another thread (edited for this thread)
_I sort of think of the ending as maintaining the mystery of life by balancing out the good things that preceded the ending—Danny’s bar-mitzvah; Larry’s promotion; the hint that Larry’s marriage might be on the mend; and Marshak’s gesture to Danny. After all these good things, one may have an easier time accepting the mysteries in life (e.g., why bad things happen to good people) and trusting God in these matters. The ending would be too pat.
The “message” of the film seems to be, funny as it may seem, “accept the mystery” or “accept all the things that come your way with simplicity” (or whatever that Rashi quote was at the beginning.) For believers I think the film also has this message: God is interested in your life—even the insignificant details; He cares for you and wants you to be good (conveyed in the scene with Marshak), but there are no satisfying explanations for why bad things happen to people; no easy answers to dealing with life’s problems (how should Larry pay for Uncle Arthur’s lawyer?). Faith and trust in God—that He has a plan; that He cares about us and wants good things for us—is probably the only thing we have to get through life.
So as to avoid a pat ending, we get the tornado. OK, can we still trust God and accept the mystery? (Btw, I think David’s reading is compatible with this one.)
This film is far and away the Coens’ best! It is a great examination and exploration of faith.
Brentos
SPOILERS:
The film opens in Eastern Europe with about a 5-6 minute long Dybbuk parable. I have always wondered the significance of this in regards to the rest of the film.
One of my interpretations is that everything is not always as it seems, such as Larry’s marriage (which he sees as fine, yet his wife is leaving him), he believes his brother to be going to social singles events to find a significant other and believes he’s working on a breakthrough in physics, whereas he is actually in an illegal gambling circuit the whole time, as well as being accused of sexual solicitation and sodomy, while in the opening, it is unclean whether or not the old man really is a dybbuk.
Another interpretation is that Larry’s brother IS a dybbuk in a metaphoric sense.
Dybbuk is defined as: In Jewish folklore, a dybbuk (Yiddish: דיבוק, from Hebrew attachment) is a malicious or malevolent possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person.
Dybbuks are said to have escaped from Sheol or to have been turned away for serious transgressions, such as suicide, for which the soul is denied entry. The word “dybbuk” is derived from the Hebrew דיבוק, meaning “attachment”; the dybbuk attaches itself to the body of a living person and inhabits the flesh. According to belief, a soul that has been unable to fulfill its function during its lifetime is given another opportunity to do so in dybbuk form. It supposedly leaves the host body once it has accomplished its goal, sometimes after being helped. (this definition was taken from Wikipedia; every other site was extremely wordy and this one sum it up perfectly, and more importantly, briefly) It is important to note that a dybbuk is not exclusively malicious or evil, there are many good dybbuk’s in Jewish mythology and folklore as well
Now Larry’s brother moves in with the family at the beginning of the film, thus using Larry as a host, in the same way a dybbuk would. Dybbuks never eat, yet they do consume liquids, and if i’m not mistake, Larry’s brother is never seen eating in the film. He is inhabiting Larry’s home and personal life for the duration of the film, and while both of them need help, it is Larry’s brother that ultimately gives him the epiphanies he needs to get out of his extreme depression, and get over the whole “Sy Ableman (who could be the Satan allegory in the Book of Job reading of the film) thing”—his brother lives with him in the hotel during the duration of this act of the film.
However the film ends much like the Book of Job (before the ‘epilogue’) which the film is also loosely based on, and without the epilogue, it is difficult to see what redemption, if any, that Larry will come across—it is hinted at by his superior that he will make tenure, yet he gives in and passes his Korean student, and takes the bribe, while he is also called by his doctor with “something important” to talk about regarding some x-rays. However, all of the situations brought up in the film, minus the tornado and the doctor’s telephone call are resolved once Larry’s brother leaves the house, thus fulfilling the duties that a dybbuk would, and Larry helps him with his court expenses, which finally rids him of his brother’s co-habitation with Larry’s family for good—his role as the dybbuk is accomplished; he has reestablished stability in his brother’s house and family life (from what we know, as we have no idea if the Doctor’s phone call is for bad news or good news, and can not be certain if his son with survive the tornado) BUT Larry’s role, as far as he is character is developed and concerned, is accomplished, thus he leaves, albeit against his will.
ultimately, Larry’s brother’s staying and leaving the Gopnik house accomplished the goal of not only bringing the family back together, but helping his own gambling addiction.
I was wondering if anyone else here had any other thoughts or theories on this, points to add to mine that i may have skimmed over or missed, or what the intro of the film could hold in comparison to the rest?