Coen Brothers movies have been more and more like New Yorker short stories lately, with rich character interactions through a loose plot framework culminating in an open, abrupt ending. Not that this is a bad thing, though I’m sure it hurts the duo’s mainstream box office potential tremendously (people still divide into camps over their like or dislike of the No Country For Old Men ending), and it certainly closed off even more accessibility for this story, which was already intensely Jewish. I enjoyed watching the travails of the film’s main character, Larry Gopnik, who endures professional, marital, paternal, sexual, medical and financial stress during the course of events, but I feel like I was missing something by not being more familiar or inculcated with the Jewish experience. And that’s fine. I often feel that way reading New Yorker short stories about Jewish Manhattan or WASP-y Connecticut as well. Part of the reason for engaging in art like this is to broaden one’s cultural understandings. All that aside, I came away from the movie loving the smiling and malicious character of Sy Ableman the most. His overbearing invasion of personal space and presumptive psychologist’s tone (though we never discover his profession) play an expert villain role to Larry’s mouse-like panic at the course of daily events. The opening vignette got me especially interested in the concept of a dybbuk, which is a possessing spirit that animates a body until its need is fulfilled. The word googles up all sorts of fascinating images, mostly from old plays and films.
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