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Bob Driscoll 01/03/2012 3:02:00 AM
"A Serious Man' is spectacular film making. "The Goy's Teeth" - backgrounded by Jimi Hendrix' "Machine Gun"- is the most brilliant piece of anyone's film making for years ( check out the lyrics to that song too) ! As a goy I was NOToffended by the portrayal of the virulent Anti Semite brewing next door, nor the disturbing future for that man's son nor the firearms/deer tied on station wagon roof . Get a grip; it's a movie about spiritual struggling , not a dump on Judaism ! Instead of going out to start a pogrom with my goyim neighbours , I bought the DVD and have watched the film enough times to see just how brilliant it is. Leni Riefenstahl they are not .
Looking elsewhere, should rural or small town folk take offence at O Brother, simply because its principals do not behave like Noel Coward ? I am crazy about white blues ( Appalachian and Blue Grass ) and now live in a rural waterfront subdivision. But I recognize that film making is entertainment. The 1930's Mississippi stereotypes in O Brother may have some truth or not, but they are presented to tell a story in film language . The Coens have sometimes elevated entertainment into marketable philosophy. Look at most North American TV fare to see the opposite. One PS : check out No Country For Old Men( 2007) as a subtle remake of Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal (1957)... and even listen to the Bergman clock ticking underneath the closing credits ... Jan 2 2012
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11/22/2011 3:53:00 PM
This is the dumbest review I have seen of this movie, excluding of course the totally ignorant who went to see it by mistake and had no idea whatever of what was going on.
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Marty1234 01/02/2011 5:24:00 PM
Ella I'd love to meet you....Perhaps we could meet at morts deli..have some lox and bagels, kibbitz a bit, if we get there early we would be entitled to a discount coupled with my coupons we could both eat for the price of one and the portions are hugh and the corned beef isn't to fatty and the pickles oy vay you know I get a little gas but it's worth it.. oh my husband Jacob he loves morts but he hasn't been feeling to good lately, I told him see a doctor but does he listen..no..he only complains that are son could have been a doctor but no..he had to become an accountant.. we have 3 accounts in the family already...I ramble...Ella once we meet at morts we can talk about that terrible movie and those horrible people in it..such people ..people like that I've never met and did I mention I happen to be Jewish...it's true.. although people tell me I don't look it...
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Marty1234 01/02/2011 4:39:00 PM
More bad news for Ella...in "True Grit" Rabbi Marshak shows up on a horse wearing a bear skin.....
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Weldon 09/27/2010 2:31:00 AM
Its true that all the Jewish characters are flawed but so is everyone else in the movie and almost every character in Coen bros movie I've seen. The movie is place in a time of conformity and a general lack of self awareness. The only handsome person in the film is Adam Arkin who seems to play a secular Jewish lawyer. The Coens point to everyone and say aren't they lame,aren't they silly. They don't tell jokes as much as point to human absurdity.
I think its valid to ask if its antisemitic. It is a black comedy film about Jews living a stereotypical life without heroes or any real answers. Can you make a film about stereotypical people with out suggesting prejudice?
Everyone seems to omit the song " When the truth is found to be lies and all the joy within you dies." Its sort of a story of Job and Gracie Slick provides the sound track. Can you have Casablanca without acknowledging "As time goes by"
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Caroline Winter 09/09/2010 7:58:00 PM
Ella Taylor, you are brilliant. What an extraordinarily fine and dead accurate review. I hope you ignore the comments of the morons who wrote in who don't get it. You do get it. I was horrified by the positive reviews of this --you are so right-- loathsome film, by half wit reviewers who suck up to the famous. Thank you for correctly labeling this film as the anti-Semitic screed that it is. Thank you for the phrase "Ugly Jew iconography," so apt, so perfect. Your choose words like a poet. Your review could not be more more trenchant. With this soaring review, which shames the other film critics, you have become my favorite critic and I will read you before any of the others from now on. Thank you, Ella Taylor. What a relief to find a critic who doesn't run with the pack.
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Blue Dezembrum 04/19/2010 11:38:00 PM
This reviewer seemed to be reviewing her own self-righteous feelings exclusively rather than the movie. As someone who grew up in Jewish Rogers Park at close to the time period of the movie, I think I can say that the movie was honest and unsentimental, and furthermore the directors may have treated their characters with critical scrutiny, but certainly I never felt they did so with contempt. The movie is not saying "Hey everybody, this is what all Jews are like, let's look down on them"; rather this movie intelligently looks into a particular, twisted situation that extends beyond middle-class Jews, beyond the breakup of a family. The scope of the film implicates the breakup of societal ties generally. The issues in the film around the broken commandments and the disintegration of faith in modernity casts a wider net than Jewishness, although from a narrative point of view it makes a great deal of sense that it come from a Jewish perspective. As someone pointed else here pointed out, reviewer Taylor was wrong about the shiksa neighbor, which is hard to believe Taylor could have overlooked if she was actually paying attention to the film. And if she thinks the scowling, buzz-cut anti-Semite in the film is handsome, then I fear for her taste in men (even with her rider "by comparison"). Too bad for Taylor that "A Serious Man" wasn't the well-groomed, ethnic-pride set piece that she clearly would have approved of (OMG, people with yellow teeth!!), and that would have absolved the Coens from the hilariously overused and misguided charge of "self-loathing." As with the Coen's best films, "A Serious Man" is allusive, intriguingly structured and subject to a VARIETY of interpretations.
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marty1234 03/31/2010 7:18:00 AM
Sandra Bullock should talk to Rabbi Marshak.....
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marty 03/24/2010 8:22:00 AM
Oops previous post....marty...I use the marty1234 at Newsweek,where I just read Ann Coulter was not allowed to speak at a canadian college...Not long ago she talked about converting Jews to Christianity:Lets make them a little more perfect...After seeing the movie she may reconsider..Although Ella may be ripe for the picking.....
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marty1234 03/24/2010 7:56:00 AM
For some reason Id like to see Ella Taylor and Ann Coulter in a steel cage wrestling match.....
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Julia Rachel Barrett 03/22/2010 10:36:00 PM
Thank you! Thank you! Every single self-hating Jew must love this movie. There's everything to hate about us except Bernie Madoff and the old myth about mixing the blood of nonJewish children into our matzoh at Passover. If the Coen brothers could have found a way to fit that stuff in there, they would have. Can you imagine the reaction if a director had made a movie about African Americans that was so filled with self-loathing? I just posted a similar review on my website. The movie was awful beyond redemption.
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OllyOllyOlly 03/20/2010 5:19:00 PM
just read all the other comments Ms Taylor. Congratulations; it seems that in one review you have managed to prove to your editor not only your lack of qualified judgement, but also that there is a community of eminently more eloquent and culturally perceptive individuals compelled by your tripe to let you know that you are a twat.
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OllyOllyOlly 03/20/2010 5:01:00 PM
utter tosh Mr reviewer. The movie is about characters, who happen to be jewish; a movie concerning theological quandries needs religious characters, and being Jewish the Cohens take a logical step in writing about that which they know. Do you also objectto the "ugliness" in their portrayal of working class White America as bowling obsessed fat pot smoking crooks? Its a film. Films contain characters mate. Its not self loathing, its just stylistic license.
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Inna 03/01/2010 8:14:00 PM
The author of the article, Ella Taylor, is staggeringly unable and unwilling to understand subtlety, nihilism, and the quality that permits Jews not to lose all their marbles by laughing at themselves. She also misses by a mile the pity and compassion that the Coens have for their protagonist as well as the larger message of the film – that Hashem helps those who help themselves. Blinded by misguided indignation, the author concludes that Larry’s luck improves when the movie’s narrative is a downward spiral. This blunder reflects just how poorly Ms. Talyor understood the lesson, which the rabbis teach Larry and Larry teaches us – that just because things are going poorly does not mean they will improve. Or as the characters themselves tell us – “Why does Hashem give us the capacity to ask all these questions, but doesn’t provide any answers?” “He didn’t tell me”. Accusing the Coens of intentional or unintentional anti-Semitism based on the endlessly compassionate portrayal of a dubiously sympathetic Jew makes as much sense as suing a mirror for defamation: it reflects far more unflatteringly on Ms. Taylor than on the Coens.
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Fred 02/25/2010 1:11:00 PM
Awful review. I don't understand how this woman is writing for The Voice. The mistake she makes when she refers to the character, Mrs. Samsky, as a Shiksa indicates that she did not pay attention to the movie and therefore should not be writing about it. Please stop printing her material, it is dumbing down your newspaper.
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Mitch Paradise 02/24/2010 8:37:00 PM
The Coen Brothers bring to mind Esau, who disdained his birthright, and therefore lost it. His goal from that point forward was to kill his brother and eradicate the Jewish people. According to Jewish teaching, the descendents of Esau formed Rome. 'Nuff said.
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John Downs 02/22/2010 10:08:00 PM
Hysterical and self-sabotagingly defensive review by someone who obviously barely watched (the "attractive shiksa" next door was Jewish, as was underscored several times).
Its' obvious that you were looking for "loathsome" self-hatred and anti-semitism - it's lurking everywhere - and would've found it in anything short of Exodus II (with a better looking male and female lead).
Notwithstanding the fact that on one (obvious to some) level, this story was basically Job updated, on a personal level, this goy grew up in a family that was in many ways the mirror image of the one in the film; which would seem to suggest that the film's purpose was less an image reclamation project and more a slightly jaundiced (but ultimately hopeful)account of our common humanity..
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Jennifer 02/22/2010 12:08:00 AM
correction: 1960s-70s
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Jennifer 02/22/2010 12:07:00 AM
Wow! I did not walk away with that impression of Jews from watching this film. Quite the contrary! This 1920s suburban community was a complex world of various personality types, each rendered touching by the humorous portrayals. The community could have been Catholic or Muslim and achieved the same end. The religious/ethnic identity of the community and characters was immaterial; the significance was in the search for truth and longing for certainty in a world that doesn't make that search easy. And, if you thought the goy neighbor was "handsome by comparison," well, you've got unusual taste in men. ;-) This was one of my favorite Coen Bros. movies (and there are a lot to choose from). The point of view of this review really doesn't make sense to me.
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Martin Gralla 02/20/2010 11:36:00 PM
I've never read a review written by Ella Taylor before, and after reading this one, I never will again--it's utterly ridiculous and amateurish. Doesn't she know what satire is? Village Voice, reconsider using this reviewer, please. I hope that your audience is much more discerning than Ms. Taylor is. What nonesense?
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Tom 02/05/2010 2:24:00 AM
I'm amazed at how so many critics are throwing praise at this Coen Bros film. Its a very unlikable and torturous film. The audience is asked to identify with a character who is pretty much picked apart like a random target with no payoff or explanation. We are just supposed to accept some existential garbage about random chance, when really the only random chance is that the Coens decided to pick on poor Gopnik out of any infinite list of characters they could have created.
Very little entertainment value for as little as they give you at the end. Thank you for going against the grain and writing an honest objective review as opposed to towing the line with Coen loving critics.
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Lucas 02/01/2010 9:30:00 PM
Great review - and thank you for picking up on the great effort made by the filmmaker to portray his characters as physically ugly. But a lingering puzzle. What was the connection between the tale at the beginning and the rest of the film?
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marty 11/28/2009 7:17:00 AM
Good news for Roger Corman..Roman Polansky is about to be released from jail and confined to his 4 million dollar swiss house ..;.hmmm.....I bet he enters from the rear....
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Jim Slattery 11/22/2009 3:38:00 AM
Is this review some kind of joke?
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ken hense 11/16/2009 11:13:00 PM
To Ella Taylor - Regarding "A Serious Man." Ella - Sorry that the Coens made a movie where everybody isn't good looking. You know they weren't that terrible - kind of in the realm of ordinary people. Sorry that the Jewish family was slurping soup. I think you would like every meal scene to be like John Travolta having a milk shake with Uma Thurman (and then dancing).
Sorry that you don't like sharp satire (unless it's with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie).
Note "A Serious Man" doesn't end as a comedy. The call from the doctor and the black cloud everybody is watching in the last scene remind us that life's smaller struggles may be a bright window in a powerful but indifferent cosmos.
Ken Hense
Marina Del Rey, CA
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HenryD 11/02/2009 2:29:00 AM
I agree that the film represented Jews in an unflattering light, but so what? Jews were telling the tale and Jews are allowed to tell Jewish jokes.
The rare Jew, like the reviewer, gets offended by these jokes, even if Jews tell them, but this is clearly a minority view.
By only problem with this film was its sudden ending. Call it catharsis, or emotional ejaculation, or whatever, but good drama should leave us satisfied. This was a brilliant film, I just wished they completed it.
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Froma Zeitlin 11/01/2009 8:26:00 AM
I loved this film. I thought it was brilliant from beginning to end, with wonderful acting, cinematography, and far from being a self-hating Jewish shtick, it was tender, beautiful, moving, and funny. Alas for the sour critic.
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blake walters 10/29/2009 8:46:00 PM
I believe you missed significant points being made in this movie that transcend its "jewishness". I say this mainly because in your review you make no link between what goes on in the first scene and what happens in the rest of the story, seeming to indicate that the first scene happens a propos of nothing. In any case, the criticism I might level at this film is that the characters are archetypes and provide very few entry points for identifying with them. However, I believe that it's an idea-driven film, with the cruelties heaped upon Larry Gopnick all bent towards advancing an existential agenda, not an anti- or self-hating jewish one.
It's almost as if you wish you'd gone to see a completely different film, leaving you unable to evaluate this one based on where it's really coming from.
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mac mackenzie 10/25/2009 4:03:00 AM
You should actually review the movie, and drop your needless self indulgence. Would you have been offended if they framed their movie in the equally surreal dogma of Catholicism or Protestant Christianity? Unlike most of the mainstream movies on the market, the movie has actual merit that transcends the setting and context. The filmmakers guide you steadily to a truth that is difficult to accept, and do it with an appropriate amount of humor. 'Enjoy the mystery' of life, because, as they say over and over, 'when the truth is found to be lies' all we know we can do is 'embrace the mystery' and appreciate the wonder of the time you have... since time is relative and even the existence of matter is uncertain. They do make fun of religious dogma since it has promised answers and never delivered in any religion. Science, and scholastic pursuit, is not the answer either, they poke at that as well. They DO NOT make fun of wisdom gained through honestly questioning the nature of existence through personal experience. They also do not pretend to know the answer, only to report the undeniably observable. It sounds like you 'want somebody to love'. This is a bold movie. Go see it again. I'm glad you weren't my teacher in film school.
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David 10/25/2009 12:48:00 AM
In reference to Ken Loach's "vile comment," Ella Taylor is taking what he said entirely out of context and imputing a meaning to him that he obviously did not intend. In context, it is clear that what Loach is saying is that the recent rise in anti-semitism is being driven (in part) by reactions to Israeli state policies, rather than being what motivates the criticism of those policies. He is not saying that anti-semitism is understandable in the sense that it is acceptable, and has gone out of his way to distinguish between criticizing the state of Israel and discriminating against Jews. To slander him as an anti-semite in the way that Ella does here is intellectually dishonest.
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kss 10/22/2009 11:32:00 PM
So, what is up with the kids comment at the end of the movie about the American flag: "that's gonna get ripped off of there".....what I got from this movie, and apparently I'm a goy, not Jewish, is that to care and do good is apparently a waste of time. That there is no God, just randomness and you may as well do what you please, the hell w/everyone else. I saw very little compassion, except between Larry and his gay brother. The alluding to the American flag being ripped off the flag pole was very dark and telling to me. Obviously dissing the U.S. This movie was marxist, God-less, snide and anti-American. I found it disturbing.
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marty 10/18/2009 8:32:00 PM
Exactly glorgio NYC... I've now seen the movie 4 times watch the ''Rabbi Is Thinking'' scene hes mumbling the lyrics to.. The Bird Is The Word....
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GiorgioNYC 10/18/2009 3:12:00 AM
If anything, the film is anti-religion. Or critical of religion's claims to have the answer to why we suffer. The Coens' seem to be saying there's more wisdom in a great pop song ("Somebody to Love").
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Diana 10/16/2009 4:01:00 AM
I wish I read some of these comments before posting my own. Jan, I completely agree with you, and I don't think your commentary detracts from what I said in mine.
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Diana 10/16/2009 3:55:00 AM
I am not sure I agree. The main character (and many others in the film) may have fallen to many misfortunes, but this is clearly merely the Coens' attempt to paint an allegory of the Jewish people's historical struggles (through stereotypes and persecution, etc.). I don't think the filmmakers intended to intentionally poke fun at the Jews for sadistic purposes, but merely to show that suffering is almost inherent in being a Jew (whether in a Polish shtetl or in Mid-Western America). Indeed, although not all the characters had movie-star good looks, many still bore attractive qualities and were sympathetic, particularly the main character. This made his misfortune particularly annoying and difficult to bear. I think the Coens were trying to show that the Jews suffer, many times through circumstances outside of their control and possibly through bad luck, but still manage to persevere. It is a dark comedy, but one that is both sad and triumphant in many ways. On a side note, the attractive neighbor is not a shiksa (thus belying the reviewer's contention that all the Jewish characters were unattractive) because she explicitly asserts that another neighbor is a shiksa and she also attended the same synagogue as the title character. Furthermore, the anti-Semite neighbor is not nearly as attractive as the lead. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I think it is a quintessentially Jewish trait to be able to laugh at one's misfortunes, and this is what the Coens are doing. They are not self-hating Jews or sadists, but merely attempting to acknowledge how centuries of persecution and misfortune have affected the American Jewish psyche. It is a noble effort and a success. As an Eastern European Jew who is acquainted with anti-Semitism at its worst, I was extremely provoked because I saw a lot of myself, my relatives, and my community in the film. But I also laughed and enjoyed it immensely. Indeed, the film made me appreciate my culture even more because I saw that Jews are human--they can be brilliant or unintelligent, studious or rebellious, moral or amoral--but they are unique, and not necessarily in a negative way. I think the only people who may rightfully be offended by this film are ultra-religious Jews who may not take kindly to any negative portrayal of rabbis or Jewish religious practices. I am obviously not one of those people.
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HH 10/11/2009 9:15:00 PM
So, what difference does it make if they are Jews? Is there a law saying that movies about Jews have to make the Jews look good?
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ella taylor 10/06/2009 7:52:00 PM
You blew my cover, Marty. Polishing my horns as we speak.
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MARTY 10/06/2009 6:05:00 AM
Perhaps I was a little harsh with my previous post..After rereading your review you did indeed address the movie and were quite sincere I'm sure..You write eloquently I might add ...Having said that I still feel you were quite out of line with your criticism of the Coens on a personal level as well as your interpretations of their jewish characters...Without getting to personal something about your review didn't seem right.. Didn't add up...Then it came to me.. It was obvious ..Hiding in plain sight if you will....Your a Dybbuk..
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danusha goska 10/05/2009 3:57:00 PM
Loved your review. Keep up the good work.
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Stephen Conn 10/05/2009 9:08:00 AM
I don't know, Taylor may be on to something with the Coens habit of creating characters they feel superior to. With the exception of The Man Who Wasn't There and Miller's Crossing, this indeed always seems to be the case. I don't know what I'll make of A Serious Man, but I'll give her instincts the benefit of the doubt.
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marty 10/04/2009 6:33:00 AM
Boy hit a nerve with you..I haven't heard such protesting about racism since jimmy carter..You remember jimmy the one who had the problem with the jewish sounding names.. Not that that you feel that way of coarse.. And such passion you reminded me of al gore talking of global warming... Yet some how forgetting to green his own house...And i'm sure you voted for Obama for all the right reasons nothing to do with color i'm your sure totally color blind and very proud of that..Me on the hand voted against Obama mmm mmm for all the now obvious reasons. Oh.. wait a minute I haven't given you much of a movie review ...Come to think of it you didn't seem to get around to it either..'
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Daniel 10/04/2009 12:36:00 AM
Do you have the slightest idea how tiresome Jewish navel-gazing is? Hint: it's no less tiresome than any other navel-gazing. Shalom!
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Richard Van Ingram 10/03/2009 11:53:00 AM
Last week Michael Moore was a Marxist and this week The Brothers Coen are anti-semites. Next week Fellini will be insensitive to clowns and the week after Truffault will be a pornographer. Do you give as much thought to your patrons when you're waiting tables at your day job,m'am?
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michael hoffmann 10/03/2009 4:41:00 AM
Ms. Taylor's outraged criticism of this truly hysterical sounding movie triumph , makes her sound as if she should be another one of the characters in it.May God save us from the selfrighteous but they certinaly make funny characters in stories.
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Simon 10/03/2009 2:57:00 AM
Wow. I just read about 10 great reviews and then this one. Were you under the influence when watching the movie? Or were the others?
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Throbber 10/02/2009 10:49:00 AM
Ella did you diddle Tarantino? Sounds like it, feed that ego sad person.
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GiorgioNYC 10/02/2009 12:49:00 AM
Readers should check the review in Time Out, by Joshua Rothkopf. He loved the film -- gave it 5 stars and didn't see anything disparaging of Jews in it. Interesting that two reviewers should come to completely opposite conclusions about the same film.
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Ken 10/01/2009 10:35:00 PM
Every word that Ella Taylor writes is meant to confirm HER own superiority.
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roger corman 09/30/2009 10:44:00 PM
what idiot puts up the money for such junk----and do they actually believe there's a market for such crapola?
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Dan Kimmel 09/30/2009 7:50:00 AM
I'm a film critic in the Boston area and attended a screening of the film today. While my colleagues are swooning, I was disgusted. I thought of the great "Simpsons" line when Krusty the Klown finds out he was never bar mitvahed: "I used to think I was a self-hating Jew. Now I find out I'm an antisemite."
Thank you for YOUR review. I have a feeling we're going to be feeling lonely on this one.
