Call Me By Your Name (4/5 Stars)

 Elio lives a charmed life. He is the teenage son of a graduate professor named Mr. Perlman and a mother who apparently inherited a Tuscan estate. Every summer the family vacations for three summer’s in an Italian paradise. They eat outside underneath olive trees, food served by the ancient stewards of the estate. There is wine and fish caught fresh from the nearby lake. There are teenage girls in the town that have the care-free summer off as well. Mr. Perlman seems like he is the friends of the most interesting people in the countryside. They come over for dinner and have conversations about highly intellectual topics. Mr. Perlman himself is an expert in ancient languages. Elio’s hobbies are swimming, flirting, and transcribing musical compositions. Really, the hardest thing about this movie is trying to shun the crushing sense of envy one feels while watching it. This looks and feels like the world’s best summer vacation.

The only thing that could possible count as some sort of conflict in this story is a forbidden love situation that also turns out as well as things possibly could have. Mr. Perlman, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, invites one of his graduate students to spend the summer with him as a research aide. This summer it is Oliver, played by Armie Hammer, a tall strapping late twenty-something. Elio, played by Timothee Chalamet, little by little falls in love with him. It is 1983, so homosexuality is still a concern to these particular characters. A 2017 audience will be more concerned about the fact that Elio is underage. This thorny issue the movie deftly handles with something akin to grace.

Most importantly, almost the entire story is told from the point of Elio, which provides the character with a high degree of agency. Timothee Chalamet here provides a sublime performance that has deservedly garnered him an Oscar nomination. It is a tricky feat to pull off, because the character cannot be any more articulate than a teenager and must necessarily convey a certain non-understanding of his homosexual feelings that apparently he was unaware of before this particular summer. He wants Oliver but at the same time understands the awkward position he is putting the older man in. He is also obviously nervous about revealing his feelings when there are so many good reasons why he would be rejected. To count the prospective ones off: Oliver believes it would damage his relationship with Mr. Perlman, Oliver does not have reciprocal feelings for Elio, Oliver has reciprocal feelings but does not believe he should act on them because of either a stance against homosexuality or Elio’s age, or Oliver likes Elio but not in a sexual way because he is not a homosexual himself.

How Elio comes out to Oliver is a tour de force scene of movie directing. Director Luca Guadagnino blocks the scene in front of a World War I memorial in the old Italian town’s square. It is the middle of the day, the square is deserted. The camera watches the action far away in a long shot. Oliver and Elio start the scene talking about the memorial. Elio stays on one side while Oliver walks around it on the other side. Although we hear Elio, we never see his face. The conversation switches from the memorial to an almost existential conversation about knowing things and wanting other people to know about the things you know. Almost nothing is actually said. There are no close-ups. But the amount of information conveyed to the audience is enormous. It is one of the best directed scenes of the year.

The movie’s theme is actually summarized in a scene near the end by Mr. Perlman. In most other movies, such an obvious exposition of “meaning” would not kindly looked upon. But this movie by that time had earned such a speech by living it out in real time for two hours. And Mr. Perlman, an educated and sensitive man, is actually a character well qualified to give it. This is the experience of “Call Me By Your Name” in a nutshell: A lot of scenes handled with grace and sensitivity that would probably crash and burn in offense and awkwardness in less qualified movies.

Not that all romances could be shown in this light. I do not believe a heterosexual romance of this kind would work even with the deftness of the makers of “Call Me By Your Name”. The closest movie that I believe has come to it was “Diary of a Teenage Girl” from 2015. I say that movie was the most similar because it too provided the very rare level of agency afforded to Elio here. However, it still concluded that the older man was not a good person. Is it possible that a movie someday could look on a heterosexual romance like the one seen in “Call Me By Your Name” and conclude that the older man is not guilty of something? Maybe, but not yet.

The Shape of Water (4/5 Stars)

“Unable to perceive the shape of You, I find You all around me. Your presence fills my eyes with Your love, It humbles my heart, for You are everywhere.”

Legend has it, writer-director Guillermo Del Toro read that the above poem somewhere, perhaps in an old Islamic text and forgot who said it first and could not find after looking. Then he wrote a movie around it.

“The Shape of Water” is a striking combination of movies, part “Creature from the Black Lagoon” part “Amelie”. It centers upon a single middle-aged woman named Elisa Esposito who happens to be a deaf-mute and works as a janitor in a top secret government in the midst of the cold water. The big bad American government, represented incarnate by a man named Richard Strickland, played by Michael Shannon at his most type-cast, has captured a fish-man from a river in the Amazon. The fish-man’s strange abilities, for breathing underwater and regenerating itself, persuade the government to perform experiments and/or pointlessly torture it. Elisa, played by a fine Sally Hawkins, falls in love with the fish-man.

Writing this after the fact, I can’t think of a logical reason why Elisa would fall in love with the fish-man other than their commonality of being outsiders (deaf people are outsiders, right?). But during the movie, I felt it. This has much to say about the style and direction of Del Toro and the masterful craftsmen he employs. Technically, the movie takes place in Washington D.C., but it feels like Paris at its most romantic. The color palette is brown and wet and green and warm. There is french accordion music playing in the background.

But mostly I believe the love story because I believe Sally Hawkins. I expect it is a tough role to pull off. She has to make us believe she finds the fish-man, played with extensive make-up by Doug Jones, attractive. She does so. She also has to be deaf and sign all of her lines. This she does also with a confidence that makes it seem like she is completely fluent in sign language. It is her greatest performance and her best opportunity for one since “Merry Happy”.

The romance is also helped by the sinister forces that aim to keep the lovers apart, and thus encourage the audience the root for the love as it stands against hate. Norah Ephron once remarked that there were two kinds of love stories, the Christian and the Jewish as she would put it. The conflict in the “Christian” type of story comes from without as in the case of “Romeo and Juliet” (whereas the conflict in the “Jewish” type comes from the imperfections of the lovers themselves). “The Shape of Water” stands directly in the “Christian” form of love story. It is almost taken for granted that the fish-man loves Sally Hawkins and the other way around. What drives the story is the evil Richard Strickland.

It may simply be my affection for the actor Michael Shannon, but I feel for Richard Strickland in this movie. Think about it. Every single character in this movie is an outsider but Richard Strickland. Sally Hawkins is deaf. Her friend and work colleague (played by Octavia Spencer) is black. Her neighbor (played by Richard Jenkins) is gay. The empathetic scientist who works at the lab (played by Michael Stuhlberg) is communist. The fish-man is a fish-man. Michael Shannon, the true-blue patriot who believes in positive thinking and 1950s conformism and commercialism, is all alone. Every other character who isn’t playing a bit role is an outsider.

Are minorities really minorities when they outnumber the supposed majority? Can a movie stand for non-conformity when the supposed conformist is the one character not conforming to the rest? Sure it can. This is America. Anyone can be whatever they want to be.

Arrival (4/5 Stars)

The screenplay for Arrival was written by Eric Heisserer adapted from the book “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang. Arrival is one of those movies where you get on IMDB and look up the name of the writer. Eric Heisserer past resume would not make him a likely suspect for “Arrival” one of the most intelligent movies in theaters today. He is a horror remake/sequel movie writer. His credits include “The Thing” (2011), “Final Destination 5” (2011), and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (2010). I guess he had to do what he had to do to get his foot in the door.

“Arrival” is several leagues away from these previous movies. The basic premise, an alien visitation (or is it an invasion?) has been done a thousand times but “Arrival” is something entirely different. It isn’t about humans battling angry alien instincts. At its core, “Arrival” is a movie about linguistics. It mainly concerns a linguist named Louise Banks (played by Amy Adams) and her efforts to communicate with the aliens (referred to as heptapods, and two specifically called “Abbot & Costello”). If there is a movie that “Arrival” is like, I suggest it would be Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” another smart movie that went out of its way to demonstrate scientific principles to the audience. To watch “Arrival” is to learn something about how your brain processes language. At the same time, there is much humor and a good deal of suspense. “Arrival” is one of the best written movies of the year.

What “Arrival” isn’t is a particularly good looking film. This is more noticeable than usual because Director Denis Villeneuve’s last two films (Prisoners and Sicario) were very beautiful movies. It just so happens that the cinematographer, the great Roger Deakins, worked on the last two but not on “Arrival.” So if you want a good idea of the value a great cinematographer brings to the screen, compare and contrast these movies. Looking at IMDB I am very glad to discover these two will be working together again for the new Blade Runner movie. That movie should be incredible, at least to look at.

The aliens land in strange ships on thirteen (give or take) parts of the globe. A major concern of the movie is the various ways that different countries respond to the aliens. (Get it, the lack of unified culture and language plays out importantly in this way too.) Because it is vogue in this particular decade (as opposed to say the Japanese in the 1980s), the Chinese have a big role in the unfolding of the plot. On the American side, the military led by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) and Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlberg) seek out two experts, one a mathematician named Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and the linguist Louise Banks (again Amy Adams). It is unmistakable that Louise Banks being the only woman in a sea of military men in this movie is not mutually exclusive to her being also the main advocate for a peaceful response. Storywise it also helps for exposition purposes because she continually has to persuade all the dudes to give her more time to figure out the Alien language so she can figure out why the Aliens came. By doing so, she explains her procedure to us, and it is enlightening and entertaining. The mathematician is generally supportive. The military men are generally not supportive but, of course, they have a Columbus and the Native Americans situation on their minds.

The story of the aliens is interspersed with a subplot about the life and death of Amy Adams’ daughter. Why and how it is being shown in the movie is one of the more interesting devices the movie uses to explain how language affects the mind. I’m not about to give it away too much except to level a general appreciation of the song used: “The Swimmer” by Max Richter (This is the same violin Martin Scorsese used in that sad and gorgeous scene in “Shutter Island”) and again to note that like “Interstellar” the movie uses Time to provide a very optimistic dues ex machina.

p.s. The Sanskrit word for "War" and its translation is 'gavisti' and it means either 'a disagreement' or 'a desire for more cows.'

Dr. Strange (4/5 Stars)

I read somewhere that Marvel had just made the 13^th successful blockbuster in a row. It speaks to the strength of the brand. True, it has a tremendous advantage in having a backlog of sixty years of story and the built-in audience to boot over other great brands such as Pixar, but that shouldn’t take away from the great franchise craft that can be found in these movies. “Dr. Strange” is one of my favorites already. It was so good that I saw it twice in a theater and took my family to see it over Thanksgiving.

Blockbusters are mainly to be seen for Spectacle. Spectacle should be big but also unique as should convey a sense of awe on the viewer. Given the consistent multitude of Spectacles that all look alike it is hard for any single one to have a great deal of their impact. A city being blown up hardly excites me anymore. I’ve already seen it many times.“Dr. Stange” to its great credit, showed me Spectacle I had never seen before. It was awesome.

To explain how, here is a character from the movie: “The Avengers protect the world from more physical dangers. We protect the world from supernatural forces from other worldly dimensions.” Like many comic books, “Dr. Strange” melds modern science with ancient bullshit. Dr. Strange practices magic but this magic comes in the form of 21^st century mathematical babbel about relativity, the multiverse, and particle physics. The audience hardly understands either so I guess it makes sense to put them together. Anyway during certain fight scenes, the magic works less on the participants of the fight than on their surroundings. Spells are casts and buildings fold up and down, the axis of the world tilts, gravity goes every which way, and then everything splits up in a crazy fantastical kaleidoscopic effect. You really have to see it to believe it. I was blown away a couple of times by what was going on.

What makes it great of course is not necessarily that things are crazy, but that these things are explained, have rules, and follow them. The biggest laugh in the movie contains a fight between two ghosts of two physically comatose people in a hospital emergency room. How the movie gets there is just superb story-telling. It is a very nice ‘aha!’ moment.

Dr. Stephen Strange of course believes none of this in the beginning. He is a famous and successful brain surgeon dedicated to science. Like many Marvel Superheroes, his main flaw is arrogance (an all too common flaw for superheroes I still believe) and after an accident that ruins his hands, he humbles himself and seeks help from The Ancient One who lives in a monastery in Tibet. The background of these training scenes are perhaps more interesting than what takes place during them as it illustrates the benefits and limitations of corporate marketing.

This Tibetan monastary is an exceptionally diverse Tibetan monastary. The three main wizards are a Black Man named Mordo (Chiwetal Ejiofor), a Chinese man (Benedict Wong), and a Woman (Tilda Swinton). There are a multitude of others in the background. I spotted a Japanase guy somewhere at some point. White men are represented by our main protagonist, Dr. Steven Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch playing another snarky genius) and our main antagonist, Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson). Everybody seems to be here except, well, Tibetans. Now the Tilda Swinton character, The Ancient One, used to be Tibetan in the comic book. But she was changed to a Celtic sorceress in the movie. Why? Well, one of the main markets for Marvel movies is China and the Chinese don’t like it when you say good things about Tibetan monks. Also notice that the three main sanctuaries for the wizards are located in New York, London, and Hong Kong. Now why would these three locations be all that special in terms of magic. The answer is they aren’t. What these three places happen to have in common is that they are major financial hubs, the three biggest in the world actually.

You can take a look at this and see crass manipulation of character and location for marketing reasons and corporate gain as well as craven capitulation in the face of a corrupt Chinese government. But you can look at the glass half-full as well. For instance, when corporations try to make as money as possible, they follow a strategy of inclusion. So these stories contain as many different and diverse people as possible. And really its the Chinese government, not Marvel, that are jerks at the end of the day. If Marvel wasn’t being pressured (i.e. the market was more free in China) The Ancient one would have remained Tibetan and we would have all enjoyed a movie that would have been even more cosmopolitan.

p.s. Conveniently, I can date back the start of the Marvel Universe (I put that at 2008’s Iron Man) with my arrival in New York. Yes, every time the Avengers and their enemies destroyed New York City, I was living there.

Steve Jobs (3/5 Stars)

Steve Jobs, an unconventional biopic about one of the founders of Apple, was written for the screen by the great Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network), directed by the great Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire), and stars the great Michael Fassbender (Hunger, Shame) as the titular tech mogul. It is not a great movie and it seems to be mostly Aaron Sorkin’s fault. Let’s jump into it right away.

Jumping into it right away is the first big problem. Sorkin has structured his movie unconventionally to say the least. The movie is divided into three acts, each act being the hour before a product release. In 1984 it is the Macintosh computer, in 1987 it is the Next computer, and in 1996 it is the iMac. The hour before the house is full of chanting fanboys is a very nerve-wracking busybody time. Steve goes around being a total dick to everybody else in the story. In the first act he must have the Macintosh say “hello.” There is a system error and the technical people in the background cannot make it work. Who cares, they posit. It is two seconds in an hour and a half presentation. Steve does not take many perfectly reasonable explanations for an answer and at one point threatens a subordinate with public humiliation. He also gets angry when they can’t turn off the fire exit lights during the presentation. He also refuses to grant his co-founder Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen, interesting casting choice) a favor in mentioning the Apple2 team, seemingly because he does not personally approve of the product even though it is the company’s only bestseller. I have no doubt that all of these things actually happened. But that does not mean it is good movie making to dwell on these things. Or to put it a better way, it is not good movie making to only dwell on the aggravating things that happen before a public presentation. Why am I watching a biopic on Steve Jobs? Is it to dwell on the perfidies and sins of a very successful and famous man? Or is it to gain some greater understanding of why he was successful warts and all? This movie shows the warts but it doesn’t show or explain the greatness. The result is a main character that engenders no sympathy. We get hints at why his products are successful. At one point he says he got rid of the Newton hand held device because of its stylus. It does not utilize all of the digits on one’s hand, he explains. Unfortunately this is a throw away line and the enlightenment ends there. I want to know how he got to that realization. What explains why he had that insight? Once that is established he can be as much of an asshole as he apparently was and the movie will still work. But here, I’m just watching an asshole period. I don’t want to do that.

It fills very odd to say that Danny Boyle should not have been chosen to direct a particular movie, but there you go. Again the problem starts with the movie’s structure. It takes place in basically real time in only three places. If that sounds like the structure of a play instead of a movie, that’s because it is the structure of a play. Before each presentation Steve has a moment with four people, his technical engineer (Michael Stuhlberg), his estranged girlfriend and daughter, Steve Wozniak, and the CEO Jeff Scully (Jeff Daniels). In these conversations the characters speak as if they are in a play. What do I mean by that? In a play, because the writer does not have the ability to easily leave the scene and go to a completely different place, the writer makes the characters speak at great length about what happened in the past and how they feel about it. People in plays do not speak the way people do because the audience would not understand what is going on. This generally does not work in movies because the writer can go wherever he wants to go. Movies are not confined by space and time. So it does not make sense when the characters give exposition that everybody in the scene already knows. This happens frequently and leads to several characters saying several times inane things like “I already know that” and “didn’t we already have this argument?” A line that really takes the cake happens near the end where Steve Jobs having gone through the four torments for a third time wonders aloud if he has to see three ghosts before every presentation he does. That’s sort of funny but it is not good funny. The only reason Steve Jobs sees three ghosts is because Aaron Sorkin wrote the movie that way. This joke is the equivalent of somebody choosing to wear an idiotic shirt, pointing to it, and saying ‘who wears a shirt like this? What an idiot.” In essence it is the admission of clumsy writing and I’m glad Sorkin can laugh at himself but I would rather he did not write so clumsily.

But the greater probem with play writing is that it does not conform to the attention span of a movie audience. As Charlie Kaufman once said, “Theater is live. Movies are dead.” The immediate presence of a human being in front of you is more exciting than seeing one on the screen. How many times have you seen a three-hour play that felt like an hour and a half movie? Because of that, characters in plays can play speak (talking at length about the past and their feelings) without the audience growing tired of it. It generally does not work in movies because it gets tedious. Because movies can show instead of tell this is what they generally do. There are ways around this. A famous one is the Sorkin walk-and-talk but I had not really seen it pulled off until I watched “Birdman” and that was with an extraordinary directorial effort. The characters playspeak but it still works because the entire movie is in one continuos shot and that lends an immediate presence to the action. But “Steve Jobs” is not made in that way. It is made in the purely cinematic way that Danny Boyle generally directs his movies. It does not fit the way it needs to fit. That is what I mean when I say Danny Boyle is badly cast.

The movie has plenty of good stuff in it. The talent is just not focused on what will make the movie work as a whole. You have got a bunch of great people working at odds with one another. The silver lining is that the stuff that does not work is generally innovative. That means the astute filmmaker can watch this movie and have a good idea of why certain choices do not work. They may also have a hint at a good movie that was lost. Take the performance of Michael Fassbender. Notice how the character of Steve Jobs is noticeably softened (somewhat) and friendlier in the third act. What happened between the multiple failures of the first and second act and the ultimate triumph of the third act? It seems like the character changed and stopped being such an asshole. Perhaps that transformation would make a good movie someday. More conventional sure but better. 

Lincoln (5/5 Stars)

Hmmmm….yummy political sausage….nomnom

Movies about the political process are about as rare as movies about marriage. We tend to romanticize politics by only making movies about campaigns, that romantic engagement between candidate and constituency, whose love for each other is consummated on election night right before the credits roll. Then like every romantic comedy that ends with a wedding we are left with the impression that everyone lived happily ever after. Love never faltered and the impassioned promises made in the campaign speeches were borne into reality by magical political storks. Abracadabra. Getting hitched/elected was the hard part and everything after was easy.

“Lincoln” the newest directorial effort from Steven Spielberg, is that incredibly rare movie that is about the actual work of being a politician. In it, our 16^th President, Abraham Lincoln, spearheads an effort to get the 13^th Amendment, which abolished slavery, passed by the required two-thirds vote in the United States House of Representatives. How rare is it for a movie to be about passing a bill in Congress? Well, according to what I’ve rated on Netflix, I have seen 1700 movies. I went through them all to find something similar on this topic. I found almost nothing. There are a few television series that have successfully written about the political process (Aaron Sorkin’s ‘West Wing,’ Armando Ianucci’s “Veep,” David Simon’s “The Wire) but to find a political movie that was not directly concerned with an election, I had to go all the way back to 1939’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” Is it not amazing that whenever filibuster reform is discussed on the 24-hour news networks that they keep bringing up a movie from 1939? We literally do not have a more current movie to draw upon for examples of the political process. All we have is “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and that short cartoon from schoolhouse rock “I’m Just a Bill.” So when I say that “Lincoln” is the best movie I have ever seen about Democracy, you can take that with a grain of salt. The bar is extremely low.

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” is a decent movie and great democratic propaganda for a nation on the edge of an apocalyptic war with fascism and communism, but it still makes the same goddamn mistake that every political movie has made since and in my opinion what has completely gridlocked the legislative branch we currently have. That mistake is the idea that an impassioned speech about principles will somehow convince the other side to change their position. It was bullshit when it worked in the 1939 movie and it is bullshit now. What I love most about “Lincoln” is that it shows politics how it should be done: down and dirty in the mud of power, greed, and nasty compromises.

For this reason and how it is so clearly and efficiently represented, the writer Tony Kushner should win an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The job performed is to represent all constituencies that Abraham Lincoln has to appease to in order to pass the Amendment. There is the Conservative Republican led by Preston Blair (Hal Holbrook) who are anti-slavery but prize the preservation of the Union above all else. Lincoln has to promise them that he will take into consideration any peace offer by the Confederates, even if slavery is to remain intact, if it will end the war. Lincoln has to keep this secret though from the Radical Republicans led by the abolitionist firebrand Thaddeus Stevens (Tommy Lee Jones). The radicals are not merely for equality before the law but total racial equality (i.e. going into the south, breaking up plantations and redistributing property amongst the ex-slaves). Lincoln has to temper the positions of this voting block in order to make the idea of a 13^th Amendment palatable to everyone else. But even if Lincoln gets the unanimous support of all the Republicans in Congress he still needs twenty Democrat votes to get past 2/3rds. Practically all these votes are pro-slavery. So Lincoln decides to call upon three “fixers” from Albany (James Spader, John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson) to do some bribing. They focus on lame duck congressman who have lost the past election and will be out of a job come the next term. They are offered political posts like postmasters and treasury secretaries in exchange for a “Yes” on the 13^th Amendment. Each voter has his own opinions and motivations. It takes extremely good writing to get everything explained in such a way that is clear, creates suspense, and does not bog down the momentum of the story. It is accomplished and then some with enough room for Kushner to throw in updates from the Civil War and some domestic strife for Lincoln to deal with, i.e. the hysteria of his historically crazy wife Mary Todd (Sally Field) and the wishes of his son Robert (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to join a war effort that has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

This is all rather serious stuff; so much so that one of this movie’s greatest attributes is that it is also consistently funny. The three “fixers” provide a good part of the comedic relief but the main component of humor is Abraham Lincoln himself, played brilliantly by Daniel Day-Lewis. It has often been chronicled that the historical Lincoln was a great joke and storyteller and in this movie we are treated to a retelling of his best material. Have you ever heard of the one about Ethan Allan and the portrait of George Washington in an English outhouse?

The portrayal of Lincoln in this movie does great justice to the man as a politician. Many times I have read about politicians who were great at actually getting things done as opposed to politicians who were just great at making speeches (think LBJ and FDR as opposed to JFK and BHO). One consistent attribute is the ability to making others believe that they are in agreement without any real commitment being made. There are many great examples of that being done in this movie by Lincoln. The trick is to listen thoughtfully and then tell a rather vague yet humorous story. For instance in the beginning of the movie, Lincoln is speaking to a couple of black soldiers. The black soldiers speak of equal pay with white soldiers and having black officers someday. Then they press Lincoln on what will happen to them after the war. “I’m not very good at shining shoes and cutting hair,” one says. Lincoln then makes a self-deprecating joke about how hard it is for anyone to cut his hair. “My last barber committed suicide,” he jokes. Then the conversation is interrupted by a couple of other soldiers and the conversation topic is eluded. Classic Politician. This great technique goes back thousands of years all the way to Jesus. Instead of focusing on the details of current policy that can lead to many minor points of contention, tell a parable vague enough that everyone can agree with it in theory. The fact that Lincoln was able to do this in private and at the same time actually craft a definite specific policy that successfully passed is the essence of his genius. I am of the opinion that it takes genius to aptly portray genius and that is what makes this one of the best movies of the year.  

A Serious Man (4/5 Stars), October 11, 2009

Who can say to him, “What are you doing?” (Job 9:12)

Oy vey, the Book of Job gets adapted into a movie by the Coen Brothers. With such source material, it is much funnier than you would think it could be. But this is not a comedy. It’s not even really a drama. And although its got some elements of horror, it can hardly be classified as that either. It’s probably best classified as essay porn (and yes I just made that genre up). It’s a thinker that many religion teachers may someday make their students write a term paper on. Like all Coen Brothers’ movies this one has very little in common with any previous Coen Brothers’ movie. They’ve previously done such works as The Big Lebowski, Oh Brother Where Art Thou, Fargo, Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men and Burn After Reading. This movie takes place in a Minnesota suburb in the late sixties. Above all else, it is very Jewish. Like I said nothing like their other movies. But just as quirky, darkly comic, and very original. 

The book of Job was the first book of the Bible I ever read. It always had a scary magnetism to it like a well-written horror story. It is very different from the lovey-dovey New Testament. There is no ‘consider the lillies’ sentimentality in it. In this book terrible things happen to good people and they seem to happen for no reason at all. Job in the course of a day loses his entire fortune, family, and health. Why? He has no idea. He always was a pious god-fearing man. Three friends visit him and insist that he must have done something wrong to deserve his fate. After all God is just. He rewards the good and punishes the wicked. But Job is steadfast. He declares his innocence and voices his desire to obtain an explanation for his sorry state. He doesn’t curse God; all he wants to know is why. Why has God forsaken him?

In this movie, the character of Job is Lawrence Gopnik (played by Michael Stuhlberg), a family man and physics professor about to receive tenure. Sure enough, bad things start to happen to Larry. His wife wants a divorce and asks him to leave the house. Why? She doesn’t say. The tenure committee is receiving letters denigrating his moral standing. They are anonymous. His neighbor is oddly hostile and may be encroaching on his property line. His oafish sickly brother (Richard Kind from Spin City) has taken up space permanently on his couch. Then there is marijuana, Jefferson Airplane records, strange deaths, and a daughter who seems to do nothing but wash her hair anymore. Larry is at a loss as to why all these things are suddenly happening. He didn’t do anything. What does it all mean?

A friend says that maybe these things are happening because God is trying to tell him something. What it is she doesn’t know but she suggests that Larry talk to a rabbi. Larry goes to three rabbis. Rabbi Scott (Simon Helberg from The Big Bang Theory) seems to be about twenty years old and admits he doesn’t have the kind of life experience that advises a person in Larry’s situation. He does suggest that Larry “consider the parking lot” outside. At times it only looks like a parking lot, but if you look at it a different way and strip yourself of the knowledge of how asphalt and cars work, it can actually look somewhat wonderful and mysterious. In this way Larry can see God in the world. This advice doesn’t go over well, especially since Larry is the kind of physics professor who deals in paradoxes like Shrodinger’s cat and uncertainty proofs. There is a scary/funny scene where Larry fills a giant blackboard with a large complex math proof that proves nothing except that there is no way of knowing anything for certain (it will still be on the midterm though). Such is the annoying thing about God. You can get the best education in the world and not learn a thing about his plans, but steep yourself in ignorance and you can see him in everything, even a parking lot. 

The second Rabbi is not very helpful either. All he does is make jokes. To his credit they are some of the best laughs in the movie. (Did you hear the one about the Goy’s teeth?) But he out and out admits that he hasn’t the slightest clue what God is doing. The way he does it though explains so much about Jewish Comedy. It basically springs from a very human response to a sort of cosmic absurdity: That the people especially chosen by an all-powerful God were fated to be the most put upon and terrorized people in human history. What does that tell you about the nature of God? We laugh because there are no tears left. 

Every person in the movie tells Larry that there is one person he must talk to, and that is Rabbi Marshakt, a very old and wise man. Unfortunately Larry can’t get to the guy, as he is too busy thinking. His son is able to do so though after his bar mitzvah. What the rabbi says to him is worth the great suspense the movie creates for the moment. What it means is something else of course. Is it profound or is it a joke? I suppose it depends on how you feel about the source. 

The Coen Brothers have taken pains not to cast anyone you are remotely familiar with. The only people I recognized were Richard Kind and the delusional nerd from The Big Bang Theory. This gives the movie a very personal and distinct feel to it. There aren’t even any stock Coen Brother actors in this movie. The only person to be in a previous film is Michael Lerner (Barton Fink) and he has but one scene and if I remember correctly no actual lines. It is a very memorable performance nonetheless. 

This movie ranks up their with all the other great Coen Brothers films. It’s not on their top tier with Fargo, The Big Lebowski, or No Country for Old Men. But it is on par with the likes of O Brother Where Art Thou, The Hudsucker Proxy, and Raising Arizona. It may get awards because it happens to be the type of movie that gets nominations. But besides the haunting original score, I can’t say anything in particular jumped out at me. As always Roger Deakins does a superb job as the cinematographer. But unfortunately this isn’t the type of movie that gets noticed for that. His much deserved Oscar will have to wait another year. 

There is one scene that particularly weighs on me as I write this review. One night Larry’s brother goes somewhat nutty and has a breakdown in an abandoned pool at the motel they are both staying at. He denounces God and wails that Hashem has never given him anything. He is especially distressed by his recent blacklist from a neighborhood poker game. All he had in life was playing cards and now he can’t even do that. As bad as Larry’s situation is, it is not as pathetic as his brother’s. Larry, frustrated and confused more than ever just blurts it out: Maybe instead of depending on God, you should help yourself out. What a good question, I mean if God is unknowable why bother with him at all? And perhaps the final scenes are a very cynical answer to that question.