Larry has a pretty good life. He has a family (pending divorce or no), resides in a quiet and pleasant neighborhood, and has a cushy job. Larry's only problems are situations that he doesn't do anything about and allows them to fester until he can't avoid the consequences. "I didn't do anything!" he says in every other scene, it's pretty much his motto.
Larry's family doesn't respect him because he's such a pushover (and it's been a while but I recall he didn't really pay them much attention or show them much interest unless they complain). Larry doesn't have to move into a hotel and let his wife's boyfriend live in his house, he just went along with it. Larry could either directly help his brother or kick him out rather than just tolerate his freeloading. Larry jeopardizes his pending tenure by not bothering to publish anything. He gets into a car accident because he isn't paying attention. Larry could just cancel the damn record club membership instead of complaining about it.
Even the threat of a lawsuit by the father of the failing student is largely based on Larry not having taken any action with the apparent bribe money: if Larry believes the money is a bribe, he should do something about it instead of just kind of hanging on to it and leaving the issue unresolved. He can report it, he can accept the bribe, or he can give it back. Sooner or later he has to pick one (The father says he'll also sue if Larry tries to return the money. Let him try! That's not a case that'll go well for the plaintiff).
Larry is an ungrateful wretch who doesn't appreciate his good fortune, even when his destitute brother points it out to him. He's also too involved in pointless navel-gazing to take the moral of the goy's teeth story to heart: we can't know all of life's mysteries, but we know how to be a good person, so do that. But when Larry finally makes an active decision about the bribe, it's an immoral one. And then he sees what an "act of God" REALLY looks like.
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TrentnQuarantino (8612)
5 months ago
Cool. I just do not see all that in this movie.
And what did it have to do with the ... dybbuk?
A Jewish man in a 19th-century Eastern European shtetl tells his wife that he was helped on his way home by Reb Groshkover, whom he has invited in for soup. She says Groshkover is dead and the man he invited must be a dybbuk. Groshkover arrives and laughs off the accusation, but she plunges an ice pick into his chest. Bleeding, he exits their home into the snowy night.
That was the opener to the movie, so if you are going to take it serious to the level you obviously do, you must account also for that.
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Daf (106)
5 months ago
I can't speak for certain about the introductory scene because I'm not familiar with the folklore it's drawing from and I feel like I might be missing some important context, and also because the unexpected setting and extended period of subtitles caught me off guard and I felt a little disoriented. Oh, and by the end of the movie I've mostly forgotten about it.
Going by the rest of the movie, though, I'm comfortable just considering the opening dybbuk scene a non-sequitur. If there's a point to it, it's that nobody can say for sure what the scene has to do with the rest of the movie exactly (I've read the Coens say they consider it a mood setting scene rather than performing a story function), and to dwell on it too hard when the movie proper functions perfectly well on its own is precisely the kind of thing Larry himself would waste his life over while he neglects more urgent matters. Best to accept the mystery.
If I'm coming off hostile at all I apologize, I don't mean to. I guess I just think this is a pretty easy movie to figure out and it's a worthwhile message, so seeing so many people (including professional critics!) run in circles trying to "crack its code" makes me feel like I'm reading Larry himself watching this movie and he's crying, "But what does it mean? What does it MEAN?"
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TrentnQuarantino (8612)
5 months ago
> Going by the rest of the movie, though, I'm comfortable just considering the opening dybbuk scene a non-sequitur.
No way - you can't do that if you want to be taken seriously.
It's like someone said, if you see a gun on the wall in act 1,
someone is going to get shot in act 2.
That is, in literary fiction ( which I feel safe to say this was
supposed to be ) everything is there for a purpose as has
a point.
What it means ( sorry to be hostile ) is that you are mentally
lazy and opt for the over-simplification route because you are
trying to force your logic on something that doesn't apply.
Like the the dybbuk, you can't just ignore it - it is there front
and and center for a reason.
You're just as much admitting that it makes no sense to you either! ;-)
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Daf (106)
5 months ago
A seemingly inexplicable parable in the opening scene is paid off by framing it by proxy as another of life's mysteries that no one can explain and ought to be set aside if it starts getting in the way of more important things. Works for me! Your mileage may vary, but it's thematically sound, feels appropriate, and while arguably a bit "cute," it's an amusing and illustrative idea.
More specifically, the payoff for the dybbuk is the scene with the story of the goy's teeth. What does it mean? The rabbi makes it plain: how's he supposed to know? But we already know the most important thing god wants from us: to be a good person. It couldn't hurt to assume any and all divine messages lead down that alley eventually.
To be even more specific, the true payoff for the dybbuk story is Larry's reaction to the goy's teeth. It can be tough to be critical of a character when we've been following his POV the whole time, so try viewing the scene again out of context and try to see it from *the rabbi's* perspective this time. He tells Larry exactly what he needs to hear: go out and do good things for people, stop wasting your time on trivia like some guy's teeth.
Larry actively refuses to listen. His response is that of a selfish child. Larry is being presented as a cautionary tale for indulging yourself into pointless rabbit holes. If the dybbuk story doesn't evoke any meaning even after giving it some thought and perspective, leave it be, lest we become a sadsack loser like Larry! (https://youtu.be/YUTyEEiulQk)
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TrentnQuarantino (8612)
5 months ago
Something to think about. A valid point I guess, but I don't buy it.
Not to mention that Larry is not the only one that is going to be affected by the terrible storm.
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Daf (106)
5 months ago
I'd like to add: I don't believe this or most other films are puzzles to be solved. Film works by evoking meaning in the viewer through the act of experiencing it. If you feel like there's something meaningful there but can't quite pin it down, you can talk through it and see if a change of perspective can help you gain insight into the film, but for the most part the meaning of a work is felt more than it is reasoned out.
That is to say: I don't believe you can "over-simplify" a movie, because the deeper you delve into works of art, the simpler they get. There's a reason they're called "base" instincts and emotions. Movies can by all means be complex if we let them be, and that can indeed be rewarding and that's all fine and dandy, but these complexities are *attachments* to the basic core of meaning to the film, supplements to the base feelings the movie evokes while viewing.
I also want to make clear I'm not trying to argue or override how you perceive the film with my own. If you genuinely watch the movie and you see that Larry really is having a rough go of it and maintains your sympathy throughout, then that's perfectly valid. You asked for some help understanding some parts of the movie, so I'm trying to help by letting you know what the movie evoked in me.
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