We took advantage of the semi-holiday break and went to see the Coen Brother's "A Serious Man". It's well made, but mostly puzzling. All the characters are grotesque characters. Segments of the film are in Hebrew (well, sort-of Hebrew), some of it's Yiddish, and none of it is particularly convincing. Watching it with an Israeli audience, however, made for an unusual experience. After the screening I chatted briefly with an elderly acquaintance, a deeply religious man of much Jewish learning and very little general education. He thought it was great: "Such self humor!"
I don't know what the Coen brothers thought they were telling, I haven't any idea how the film is viewed by most of the people who saw it, and I'm reasonably certain this audience saw a different film than most.
Yaacov, My wife and I saw this movie with our very close friends. All four of us grew up in Jewish suburbia during the time frame of the movie. I felt completely alienated from the people on the screen. These were not people I grew up knowing and I thought the Coen brothers took a fairly arrogant and obnoxious approach to them. OTOH, my friends insisted they recognized everyone depicted in the move and thought it was uproariously funny. To which all I can say is: de gustibus non est disputandum.
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