Watching "A Serious Man"

Rewatching A Serious Man last night two things struck me:

1- A Serious Man is a serious allegory with the underlying meaning being that...nothing has meaning.

The films opens with a reenactment of a Yiddish fable, in which a married couple is confronted with a dybbuk, a spirit of a local villager.  The rational husband refuses to believe that the old man standing before him is a spirit, while the seriously superstitious wife stabs the old man with an ice pick to prove to her husband that he's a ghost.  The old man laughs, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he has an icepick in his chest, but the mood changes as blood appears on the old man's clothing.  The old man stumbles back out into the cold snowy landscape, and disappears, leaving the audience feeling uneasy and confused.  Was he alive or was he a dybbuk? Like most things Jewish, the end is inconclusive: a perfect introduction for the parable that follows.  Similar to Goldilocks in the children's fairy tale, the film's protagonist Larry Gopnik visits three different rabbis looking for answers.  But unlike in the Goldilocks story, the rabbis all fail to answer his questions.  As unfortunate events pile up Larry's quest for meaning grows increasingly frantic.  By the end, some of the events have reached conclusions, while others remain ambiguous.  In the final scene, a hurricane sweeps into town, but the screen cuts to black before the results are known.  So what's the moral of this story? Like the story of the dybbuk, it's indeterminate.  Larry's struggle is representative of man's general struggle against the chaotic forces of the universe and the hapless search--through religion, science, mysticism, what have you---for meaning in the chaos.

2-A Serious Man is a comedy dressed as a horror movie.

Coen humor always centers around the quotidian lives of its grotesque characters.  In A Serious Man, this comedy becomes a serious, anxiety-ridden affair.  The Coen Bros imbue the gestures of each character with enormous portent, from the son's fingers drumming as he listens to music to Larry's hands fiddling with the antenna on his roof.  Every movement seems so deliberate and well thought out, increasing the tension with the skill and grace of a well-timed anxiety attack and leaving the audience on the edge of its seat, hands to chest in suspense.  But every time, this pent-up anxiety is for naught.  Just like Larry, the audience is fooled into thinking that the film's style will lead to substance--an attack, a surprise.  But these ultra-controlled movements, accentuated by the film's eerie and mysterious 4-note theme only lead to a big question mark.  And the audience, who have been waiting for answers to their anxiety and fear-laden questions--Will the son’s Walkman be discovered? What will the Larry's ear-test results be? Who was trying to sabotage his tenure hearings?  Will his brother get caught?--are left in the dark.  The mysteries of the universe are unknowable and uncontrollable, and the unfortunate series of events that causes Larry to try to uncover them is quintessential Coen humor.

What do you think? Do you agree that the film is this cynical?  I'd be interested to hear how people felt that religion and general jewishness was portrayed--endearingly, knowingly, derisively, etc.   Comments, critiques welcome!

Paranormal Activity's Amazing Hot Streak

I know, I've been terrible about writing. But I've been swamped preparing for this viral comedy short I produced last weekend. Now that it's (mostly!) over, I hope to get back to the nitty gritty. In the meantime, check out the excerpt below from Nikki Finke today about Paranormal. The numbers are incredible and speak to what its possible for filmmakers to achieve. True $10 million in P&A doesn't hurt, but what impressed me most was that a slow build through digital word of mouth, when done correctly, can be highly successful. Turns out the industry is cyclical, after all. For the most part, it had seemed that the roll-out release strategy had been nixed for not generating enough buzz around a film to be financially viable. But now its back, and proving to be very successful with niche films like Paranormal Activity, or even A Serious Man.

On the other hand, Paramount's Paranormal Activity received its "R" rating for language. The pic scored $7.5M Friday and is looking to be close to $8.6 million for Saturday and a weekend of $22 million. The cume should zoom to $62.4M. I can report that, as it expands for next Halloween weekend, the studio is starting to think the thriller has a shot at $100M. Which would make this the most profitable pic in modern Paramount history. After all, the project was acquired for a mere $300K, and the studio spent under $10M total on prints and advertising, "so this will be the best return Paramount has ever had," an insider tells me. Amazing, since Paramount had been playing the movie mostly at midnight shows and in just a 100 or so dates. Then again, the hype has been so successful -- right down to the claim that Steven Spielberg screened it and returned it in a trash bag.