Receive with sim­plic­ity every­thing that hap­pens to you — Rashi.[ French Rabbi ].

 There are 2 types of per­son­al­i­ties [ ஆர‌ம்பிச்சிட்டாண்டா ! ]. Knowl­edge based and Emo­tions based. Sujatha explains love as the hor­monal dis­tur­bance and Bal­aku­maran as some icy mat­ter run­ning through the spine. Prob­lems are always with the later typed per­son­al­i­ties. It appears true when mother and wife nar­rates the same incident, in their own per­spec­tive like Rashomon story. Which one is true? Do we really know it ?

 Fam­ily, Work, Pro­mo­tions, Indef­i­nite home loan amor­ti­za­tion charts, trou­bled kids, unknown or unex­plored dis­or­ders of us, elderly par­ents, unfriendly soci­ety — These are few of the mat­ters that bother us heav­ily and we talk about them with a friend at the bar, with an elderly rel­a­tive, with an astrologer, with a psy­chi­a­trist, with a lawyer, mostly with self :) and even with GOD. What we do is ask for instant answers and solu­tions. The truth is nei­ther they know the answer nor they have solu­tions. Why they hap­pen to us ? What’s the solu­tion? Why me ? What should I do to over­come[ escape ] this ? Can God answer for this ? When? How? Is it des­tiny? Is it cir­cum­stances? Is it because we chose them ?

 There’s a fine one word answer: Nothing.

 This is the lovely con­cept of this com­pli­cated film ‘A Seri­ous Man’. I like Fargo and No coun­try for old men of Coen broth­ers prod­uct [ not ‘Burn after read­ing it’ :( ].

 Story :

 The very first frame grabs the atten­tion and gives us the idea. The story is set to hap­pen to a Jew­ish pro­fes­sor who lives in Min­nesota sub­ur­ban area, in the late 1960s. His trou­bles are divorce seek­ing wife, her new would-be, work related issues, prob­lem­atic kids, par­a­site brother, trou­ble­some neigh­bor, increas­ing expenses, night­mares and what not. How did he solve all of these problems ?

 View :

 Coen broth­ers are the fan­tas­tic story tellers who make the audi­ence to think and offer an unusual movie watch­ing expe­ri­ence. Though I am not matured or knowl­edge­able to com­pletely under­stand the craft [ the Jew­ish part ! ] , it’s a plea­sure to watch the way the story is nar­rated to us. The mak­ing is near per­fect. The dis­claimer here is that one can inter­pret the way he sees this movie with his own understanding. 

 The story starts with a short Jew­ish folk tale which the audi­ence has to attach with the story. Then it trav­els to the time late 60s and gets us into the life of a Jew­ish per­son Larry Gop­nik and his fam­ily. Any mid­dle aged man can see his reflec­tion with one or more of the Larry’s situations [ ப‌ழ‌ம் வேற‌ ஆனா பிர‌ச்னை ஒண்ணுதான் ].

 The suc­cess of art direc­tion is that you don’t know that it’s a set [ unlike films from AVM ]. Some fine exam­ples are the news­pa­per office in “All the president’s men”, Shalini’s house in “Alai­payuthe”. I loved this film’s set­ting. One can never know arti­fi­cially that the story is hap­pen­ing in a dif­fer­ent time­line. Cars, TVs, Radio songs, cos­tumes, spec­ta­cles, tele­phones, avoid­ance of mod­ern gad­gets [ cell phone ], restau­rants, motels. But none of them were arti­fi­cially exploited to the audi­ence like show­ing a close-up of an old Coke/Pepsi bot­tle. The cin­e­matog­ra­pher and the cos­tume designer have done a fab­u­lous job.

 The next admirable thing is dia­logues. I am fas­ci­nated towards the philo­soph­i­cal dia­logues — they are tem­po­rary plea­sure which con­soles us though we don’t take it seri­ously and apply. An exam­ple “The Uncer­tainty Prin­ci­ple. It proves we can’t ever really know what’s going on. The end of the story is left to our under­stand­ing. The script has too many rela­tions and ele­ments to carry the story with­out any sag. I don’t nor­mally like the dark humor films and this is an exception.

 Is the cat dead or is the cat not dead? Who cares!!

 Note : The other good movie in this sim­i­lar line is “What­ever works” from Woody Allen [ another mas­ter crafts­man ! ]. His expla­na­tion of life is also sim­i­lar.. No need for ques­tions — just set­tle with “What­ever Works”.

–Toto.

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