This is the second of a three-part series from Fuller professor J.R. Daniel Kirk on the Bible’s wisdom literature and the films of the Coen brothers. The first part was on True Grit and Proverbs. Here, we continue with Job and A Serious Man. SPOILERS FOLLOW
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The Hebrew Bible enshrines a diverse wisdom tradition ranging from Proverbs’ tight connection between human righteousness and God’s blessing in the world, to Job’s wrestling with a God whose work in the world is inscrutable, to Qoheleth’s angst that the God in heaven works all too little in the world in Ecclesiastes. Joel and Ethan Coen have worked this very diversity of voices into their recent films True Grit, A Serious Man, and No Country for Old Men, and offer some reflections on creating a film catalog that enshrines such competing views of the world. Let’s turn our attention to A Serious Man.
If True Grit embodies Proverbs’ economy of just recompense, A Serious Man provides us with a modern-day Job story: the economy of Proverbs is taken up with all seriousness – but it is taken up within a world in which God does not repay the wicked with judgment or the righteous with reward. The presumption of the economy of just desserts creates the pathos that drives the narrative.
The Coens provide a few different interpretive cues for this film. The widely recognized parallels to Job come in several forms: the man whose life is falling apart has three sorry comforters in the persons of three rabbis; a tornado appears with the non-answer of the final scene; and, generally, reward fails to follow a life well lived.
But two other interpretive clues also frame the film. As with True Grit, one comes by way of an epigraph and the other comes by way of a song. The saying is not from Job, but rather from Rashi: “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you” (Sifre Deut 18:13). The song is “Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane: “When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, don’t you want somebody to love…”
In their own ways, each functions as an apt complement to the Jobian framework that has been regularly noted in the film. “Somebody to Love” lays out in starkest terms the debate that rages throughout Job and A Serious Man alike: what are we to do with the fact that the world as we experience it belies the cause-effect economy advertised in books such as Proverbs and, more generally, throughout the Deuteronomistic History? “The truth” of the world of Proverbs seems to be lies, “joy dies,” and Larry Gopnik doesn’t even have somebody to love.
From a different angle, Rashi’s advice might be seen as a recognition of the reality that the film embodies and offering the sage’s way to live in such a world without going mad from the Joban cries that plague Gopnik. Each of these other two commentaries on the film complements the widespread assessment that A Serious Man is a modern-day Job story.
The opening scene lets us know that all is well—relatively. Gopnik is receiving a physical examination, after which his doctor concludes, “Well, you’re in good health.” The doctor enquires after Gopnik’s wife and children, and Larry responds, “Good. Everyone’s good,” and there’s even a bar mitzvah around the corner.
But the viewers already have inklings that this report of all’s well is not going to be the last word. As Gopnik is having his physical, his son Danny is listening to Jefferson Airplane during Hebrew School, and attempting to pass a $20 bill to another student in the class. We will soon discover that Danny has not only been listening to his radio during Hebrew class, but also smoking pot and getting himself in a bit of debt with his dealer.
When Gopnik returns from his doctor’s appointment to his office, we receive a preview of other aspects of a life prepared to fall apart: Clive Park comes in to complain about an unjust grade, a complaint that will create a moral dilemma about whether or not to take a bribe; Colombia Record Company has called, and apparently Danny has been receiving his selection of the month without paying; Sy Ableman has called, and Gopnik’s wife is looking for greener marital pastures.
As with Job, the story is almost secondary to the questioning and wrestling it engenders. When his wife first tells him about wanting a divorce, Gopnik replies, “I haven’t done anything.” This story is not going to develop within an economy of just rewards for the righteous and the wicked. “Why?” will be asked throughout, and no answer will be found, despite the protests that are laid at God’s door. A conversation at a picnic finally convinces Gopnik to seek the wisdom of the rabbis.
The three sorry comforters come in the form of three rabbis. The first is Rabbi Scott. He assesses the problem quickly: Larry is losing track of hashem: he needs to remember how to see him in the world!
“God is reaching into the world! You’re looking at the world, looking at your wife, through tired eyes. It sounds like she’s become a sort of thing, a problem, a thing!” To which Larry replies, “She is seeing Sy Ableman…” … “This is life. You have to see these things as expressions of God’s will. You don’t have to like it, of course.”
The first rabbi comes up short when the reality on the ground cannot be pinned on Larry’s failure to perceive the world aright. From “you’ve lost track of how to see hashem,” in all hashem’s goodness and wonder, Rabbi Scott retreats to, “You have to learn to see these things as expressions of God’s will.” And here’s the tension: the presupposition that all is, or will be, well for God’s people is belied by their experience. It is not a matter, now, of having eyes to see the goodness, but of submitting to the will of God even when we don’t like it.
The second rabbi has even less in the way of answers for Larry:
Rabbi Nachtner: “Maybe the questions that are bothering you, maybe they are like a toothache—felt for a while and then they go away.”
Larry: “I don’t want it to just go away, I want an answer.”
Rabbi Nachtner: “Sure, we all want the answer. Hashem doesn’t owe us the answer, Larry. Hashem doesn’t owe us anything. It runs the other way.”
Larry: “Why does he make us feel the questions if he’s not going to give us any answers?”
Rabbi Nachtner: “He hasn’t told me.”
We owe God. God doesn’t owe us. We begin to hear the distinct echoes of Job’s sorry comforters. The cries of despair are not met with an answer about why life is unfolding the way it is. There are no clear messages from God. Our protagonist believes that there is an answer to be had, and that God owes it to him. That there are no easy answers to be had indicates that we have stepped away from the clear-cut world of Proverbs.
We receive more wisdom from Nachtner from his funeral homily at the death of Sy Ableman. What is the age to come? “We are not promised a personal reward, a gold star. ’olam haba is in the bosom of Abraham.” While celebrating Sy as “a serious man,” even a righteous man (a zadik), Nachtner cannot also promise that either in this life or in the age to come is there reward for the righteous individual as such.
The pervasive undoing of “the truth that is found to be lies” results in a thorough agnosticism at points. In one dream sequence, Larry is teaching a class the Uncertainty Principle: “It proves that we can’t ever really know what’s going on,” he says, “but even though you can’t figure anything out, you will be responsible for it on the midterm.” This is the summary of his life. There is no system of deed and reward, of God at work on behalf of God’s people, to make sense of this world—but we are still responsible for making sense of it, so it would seem.
The third Rabbi is Marshak. Everyone has been telling him to see Marshak, as though this conversation will make everything clear. But Marshak won’t see him. It is as though the answer to all his problems lies behind a closed, albeit unlocked, door that will not open for him.
Following this rebuff, in a raw scene in by an empty pool at the Jolly Roger motel, Larry tries on the conventional wisdom he has heard as he attempts to comfort his brother: “Don’t blame hashem. Sometimes you have to help yourself.” What Larry knows cannot help, he nonetheless prescribes for his brother.
In the end, it is Danny, not his father, who gets in to see Marshak, by virtue of his being bar mitzvahed. High as a kite on the pot he and his friend have been smoking, Danny has nonetheless made it through the ceremony and joined the community. He then goes to see the great Marshak. Marshak’s wisdom? “When the truth is found to be lies. And all the hope that within you dies. Then what? Grace Slick. Marty Balin. Paul Kanta. Jorma… something. These are the members of the Airplane. Be a good boy.”
Endings are crucial for interpreting stories. This one seems to be headed for a Jobian restoration: tenure is granted, the son is bar mitzvahed, the estranged wife apologizes. But then, there’s the call from the doctor: “Come in, and now is a good time.” And what will the final tornado bring with it? More non-answers? Death? Destruction? We don’t know.
As a whole, the wisdom tradition, and the reintroduction of the wisdom tradition into our modern vernacular through the Coen Brothers’ films, invites us to reassess what we think we know about how the world works. The cries of Job, or Larry Gopnik, are there for those who live within “the truth” of the just world in their communities, but experience the suffering and loss for which “there is no answer” becomes the only viable answer.
When the truth of just deserts has been made a lie, and hope has died, it is time to simply receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.
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J.R. Daniel Kirk is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary. He also claims “living in San Francisco cool guy cred, diligent parenting of two wee ones daddy cred, and struggling farmer to 1 hen and 4 chicks urban crunchy cred.” He blogs admirably at jrdkirk.com, tweets at @jrdkirk, and recently unveiled a new book, Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul? that you should probably check out.