Category: Michael Stuhlbarg

A SERIOUS MAN

By Marc S. Sanders

There’s never anything wrong with questioning the Almighty God.  At least that’s what I believe. 

There’s nothing wrong with being faithful to an Almighty God…if you can find comfort and solace in its doctrine.  At least I think that’s what I believe.

The Coen Brothers released A Serious Man in 2009 to solve a great mystery that frankly we should all know can never be solved.

In 1967, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a Jewish family man living in small town Minnesota.  He never steps out of line with his principles or morals.  He attends synagogue regularly.  He’s simply a good Jew; a good husband, father, brother-in-law.  Again, he’s a good Jew. 

Yet, he is also plagued with suffering through the results of what everyone around him commits as sin or violations.  His brother-in-law Arthur (Richard Kind) has overstayed his welcome in the house and is now under suspicion of committing illegal gambling in various bars.  His daughter is swiping money to get a nose job.  His son is listening to Jefferson Airplane in Hebrew school while getting ready to become a Bar Mitzvah.

Most prominently speaking, his best friend Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed) is gently counseling Larry through an unwelcome crisis at home.  Sy is encouraging Larry to agree to a “Get.”  Sy is ready to begin a relationship with Larry’s bitter wife Judith (Sari Lennick), and as they move towards divorce, Sy will need Larry to obtain a “Get” from the Rabbi. The Coens are admirably nervy in their writing because Sy addresses Larry like a child who he’s trying to get to swallow a bottle of castor oil so that he can finally make after two days of constipation.  That’s truly what it feels like.

I never read the book of Job, but I understand that A Serious Man was metaphorically inspired by its contents.  The question residing in both contexts is simply why must all of these unfortunate circumstances occur in Larry’s life? 

For Larry, it is best to get definitive answers.  After all, Larry is a physics teacher which is built on solid formulaic equations and never compromised because it’s a subject of exact science.  His giant blackboard bears the argument of solid answers from top to bottom with endless scribbles, diagrams and numbers.  It looks like incomprehensible gibberish, but at the end of it all, there’s a definite answer.  The proofs do not lie or compromise.

A South Korean student cannot comprehend that wrong answers on a physics test merit a failing grade.  It’s unfathomable because without passing Larry’s physics course, the student cannot obtain a mathematics scholarship.  Larry knows that is true, because how can you study physics without math? The two subjects hinge upon one another.  Larry sees no other way than to fail the student.  He won’t budge on that.  He sticks to his code of ethics.  He’s right all the way. Still, he’s accused of being prejudiced and then an envelope of bribe money is discovered on his desk.  It won’t sway him, but he can’t return it back to the student, if he can’t find him.  So, here’s another thing to weigh on him.

Larry is a healthy middle-aged father and husband, a devout Jew and somehow he’s the one suffering the most from the misgivings of everyone else.  Poor Larry even has to move with nebbishy Arthur into a local hotel.  Sy assures him it’s a lovely place with a pool (the pool is drained empty by the way).  His chance at tenure is also at risk.  There’s the divorce filing from his wife which causes him to hire an expensive attorney (Adam Arkin).  All this “tsouris!”  It’s too much to carry at once.

Midway through A Serious Man, the Coens opt to have their protagonist visit three Rabbis for the exact answers that will tell of his unfortunate circumstances.  The three visits do not so much lend to the story of Larry’s plight as they prove a point.  As satisfying as it might be for a physics teacher to arrive at the exact answer on the right side of an equal sign, one Rabbinical student (Simon Helberg from The Big Band Theory)- filling in for THE RABBI – will tell you to seek the answers you are looking for in an empty parking lot just outside the window.  ?????????

The second Rabbi played by favorite character actor George Wyner (Hill Street Blues, The Devil’s Advocate, Spaceballs) will tell a tall tale of a dentist and his goyish patient that leaves me wanting to know the end all be all.  What’s concluded may leave you shouting OY VEY!!!!

The third Rabbi is the mysterious Rabbi Marshack (Alan Mendall).  He is the elder, maybe the grand prophet, who is concealed in a private office with his long white beard and black hat, sitting behind his desk at the faaaaaarrrrr end of the room.  Will he finally have the answers to Larry’s questions?

This is reminiscent of that animated commercial that asks how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.  Did Mr. Owl actually have the answers the little boy was looking for?

A Yiddish told prologue that is seemingly unconnected to Larry’s story opens the film and it tells the story of a dybbuk knocking on a couple’s door in the “mitt en drinen” of winter.  The wife sees the curse of this dybbuk – the soul of a dead man meant to haunt them.  The husband does not.  It’s only after you watch A Serious Man from beginning to end that you’ll likely make the connection of a curse that future generations will never be able to escape now that the dybbuk arrived many years prior. Perhaps that is the answer that no Rabbi could clearly define for Larry.  It’s more apt to be my theory but it’s still not entirely clear.  Then again, perhaps it’s just the tale to resort to when a congregant like Larry Gopnik asks his clergymen why his life is in such turmoil.

I adore this film and it might be on a very personal level that others may not appreciate unless they have had an upbringing like mine.  Practically every single character in A Serious Man, all played by relatively unknown actors, look completely familiar to me. 

From Larry’s obnoxious kids (“I’m studying Torah asshole” with a defined middle finger raised), to his bitter wife that I routinely see a caricature of in Shull. Sy Abelman talks like my father-in-law (a great man, who I love by the way) does at Passover Seders, to his co-workers and even Larry himself.  Wearing nerdy black rimmed glasses, he hunches down to scribble on the blackboard with his fat butt sticking out just like my Hebrew teacher Mr. Katz did in my Yeshiva.  It’s all uncannily familiar and easily recognizable. 

There’s a very striking authenticity to A Serious Man that I’d be remiss in not complimenting.  Many may not see it.  You’d have to a be a northern practicing Jew or at least personally experienced with this secular environment to understand. That being said, seek out this unsung Coen Brothers piece and allow your patience to guide you through its various oddities.  It’s Joel & Ethan Coen.  So, you know it’s going to be odd. I expect that it’ll leave you thinking, though.

These actors that you may recognize, but cannot pinpoint what else you’ve seen them in, were meant for these roles. Only a certain kind of Jewish actor could play these people.

For example, no one else but Fyvush Finkle could play a Dybbuk arriving on a doorstep in the mitt en drinen of snowy winter!

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME (Italy, 2017)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Luca Guadagnino
CAST: Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg
MY RATING: 10/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 94% Certified Fresh

PLOT: In 1980s Italy, romance blossoms between a seventeen-year-old student and the older man hired as his father’s research assistant.


Call Me by Your Name is remarkable because it tells a heartbreaking first-love story that could have easily devolved into cheap melodrama.  I mean, look at the plot description above.  It has “soap opera” written all over it.  But because director Luca Guadagnino (Bones and All, the 2018 remake of Suspiria) applies restraint, and because the screenplay by James Ivory (of Merchant Ivory fame) sticks to realism as opposed to predictable scripted nonsense, and because of the fearlessness of the film’s two leads, Call Me by Your Name becomes one of the best films about the thrill and heartbreak of first love I’ve ever seen.

The story takes place in the summer of 1983, in Italy.  The Perlmans are on vacation at their villa in the Italian countryside.  Mr. Perlman (Michael Stuhlbarg) has hired an American, Oliver (Armie Hammer), to assist him with research over the holiday.  Elio (Timothée Chalamet), Mr. Perlman’s 17-year-old son, appears to take an instant dislike to Oliver, but we later see this is a maneuver designed to disguise his real, and scary, crush on Oliver.

…but I don’t want to write a full synopsis of the story, because I guarantee it would read like someone’s Twilight fan-fiction or something similar.  What happens is reasonably predictable and has been seen in countless movies from Douglas Sirk to Nora Ephron.  What makes this movie special is how it happens.

There is not a single scene or shot in the movie that feels routine.  Or, not “routine”, that’s not the right word.  The whole movie feels authentic.  Nobody talks in screenplay-ese (except for a sensational speech from Mr. Perlman near the end, which I will forgive because it works).  Whatever happens, whenever it happens, feels spontaneous and precisely observed.

Here is at least one moment that captures what I mean.  Elio’s crush on Oliver has gotten deeper, but he’s kept it to himself.  One night, the two of them and a bunch of Elio’s friends visit a local bar with an outdoor dance floor.  Oliver starts dancing with a pretty girl.  Elio’s friends get up to dance, but Elio stays behind, eyeing Oliver and the girl, and you can almost hear the gears turning over in Elio’s head.  He finally does get up to dance, but watch his movements carefully: he starts dancing with a girl, but surreptitiously moves closer to Oliver for a moment.  Oliver turns to Elio, and Elio abruptly turns away and pulls a little move and slide, pretending not to notice Oliver while also trying to impress him a little.  Elio turns back, sees that Oliver is no longer looking, and quickly moves back towards him.  This kind of behavior is so specific, and yet universally recognizable.  There was no dialogue, but I knew everything going through Elio’s head in every second of that scene.

I also admired the scene, done in one take, where Elio finally reveals his feelings to Oliver, but it’s all done in this marvelous code, where Elio never actually says precisely what he’s talking about, but Oliver is smart enough to decipher the code.  (“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”)  I’ve seen so many films where the Oliver character is written as an otherwise adult person but has to be incredibly dumb in order to prolong the “idiot plot.”  How refreshing to be confronted with characters with working brains.

Guadagnino also appears to be a great fan of Japanese films, particularly those of Yasujiro Ozu.  Throughout the movie, there are many scenes that are divided, almost like chapter headings, by a series of stationary shots, held for several seconds, of ordinary items: a window, or a staircase, or the still waters of a lake, or an apricot tree.  Ozu was known for doing the same thing in his films; they were called “pillow shots,” because Japanese poetry utilizes the same device, using words instead of shots, to separate thoughts or ideas.  These “pillow shots” lend a sense of poetry or…I don’t know what, exactly, to the film.  It may look (and sound) a little pretentious, but trust me, it works.  It made the movie feel as if there were great currents of significance rumbling below the surface.

Alert readers may notice I haven’t even mentioned the sex scenes yet.  Going into this movie, I remembered that there was some hoopla about the graphic nature of those scenes, but I get the feeling they’re like the ear scene in Reservoir Dogs: everyone thinks they remember seeing the ear actually getting cut off, but we don’t.  Tarantino tactfully moves the camera up and away and leaves the dismemberment off-camera.  Same thing here.  Guadagnino leaves no doubt as to what is about to happen, but then moves the camera away, or cuts to the next scene, or expertly positions the camera so the naughtiest actions are never actually seen.

This is shrewd filmmaking.  If the film had been filled with NC-17-worthy content, the message would have been lost.  It would have become a movie about the sex instead of being about the turmoil and ecstasy of being in love with someone who loves you back, even if it’s only for a short time.

I should also mention the roles of Elio’s parents.  I can see how some people might watch the movie and imagine that his parents are far too forgiving, especially given their religious upbringing.  However, this was another welcome departure from the realms of unnecessary melodrama.  Instead of scenes where the furious parents make unreasonable demands or deliver intolerant lectures, we are given a father and mother who know enough about parenting, and about their son, to realize when it’s time to lecture and when it’s time to just let things happen.  I’m not suggesting they would ever willingly allow their son to go into harm’s way.  But they’re smart enough to know how important it is that Oliver and Elio take a little sabbatical together before Oliver’s final departure.

(They also know when a small lie is sometimes necessary at the appropriate moment.  After Mr. Perlman’s wonderful speech at the end of the film, Elio asks him, “Does mother know?”  Mr. Perlman hesitates, then delivers a very tactful answer.  To me, this was his way of protecting his son at a time when he desperately needed comfort.  I suppose it could be interpreted either way, but since Mr. Perlman knows his wife, I believe it was a perfectly timed lie.  Just a small one.  It’s a magnificent button to the scene.)

Call Me by Your Name deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay that year.  It’s a masterpiece of storytelling by osmosis, without using signal flags or hokey dialogue.  It recalls with perfect precision how it feels to be uplifted and crushed emotionally, and how one must decide how to deal with those feelings.  I was never the 17-year-old son of a professor with romantic feelings for his assistant, but I understood and identified with Elio nearly every step of the way during the movie.  I would imagine many others can, too.