RATING:

New Moon really is like porn for tweens. It has two dreamy boys—one athletic and smiley; the other brooding and poetic—both deeply, madly, eternally in love with the same girl. It features lots of moony stares and desperate embraces—and the fact that the athletic boy is a werewolf and the brooding guy is a vampire only adds to the total emo-ness of it all.

But I have to give the filmmakers credit. Much like Twilight before it, New Moon is respectfully pandering, if such a thing is possible. It gives the audience, almost all of whom have read (and in some cases memorized) Stephanie Meyer's books, exactly what it wants. So Edward the vampire (Robert Pattinson) lurks in shadows and wears overcoats and perfects his tortured pout. And Jacob the werewolf (newly buff Taylor Lautner) runs through the woods and climbs deftly into bedroom windows—often without his shirt. Meanwhile, Bella (Kristen Stewart) pines beautifully—mostly for Edward but maybe a little bit for young Jacob, too.

In this one, as in the original, Edward and Bella are totally in love, and their relationship can be boiled down to this: "We must!. . .But we mustn't!" Edward is in one of his "We mustn't" phases and he leaves Bella alone in the woods, never to return. (Never, by tween standards, is about six months—or 50 minutes movie time.)  So Bella commences the beautiful pining and is racked by horrific nightmares, until she starts hanging out with Jacob, who soothes her soul.

Meanwhile, we are introduced to bad-ass vampire royalty, the Volturi, led by Michael Sheen, slumming with gusto, and an almost-grown-up Dakota Fanning, who I hope has a bigger part in Eclipse.

Production values are excellent. And a few times the film is funny on purpose (mostly courtesy of the great Anna Kendrick, who plays Bella's so-over-it best friend). Those concerned about Chris Weitz taking over the directorial reins from Catherine Hardwicke should rest easy—the transition is seamless.

As I griped in my review of Twilight, it bugs me that Bella wants to become a vampire so she can be with Edward forever. I like tween novels that encourage young girls to do their own thing, not be subsumed by some hot guy.

But Stewart is a good actress, and she gives Bella an appealing stubbornness. And besides, if Bella was all like, "Good point, Edward—this thing between us would never work," we wouldn't have much of a movie, now would we?

RATING:

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Precious is that it isn't the most depressing film of the year.

It tells the story of 16-year-old Clareece "Precious" Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), who lives with her defiantly unemployed mother Mary (Mo'Nique) in a Harlem apartment. As the film begins, Precious is fat, painfully shy, functionally illiterate, and pregnant for the second time by the hand of her abusive father. Her first child, born with Down's Syndrome, is being raised by Precious's grandmother-Precious never sees the child save for a few staged house visits with the social worker (so Mary can collect the welfare check.) Instead of taking her daughter out of this hellhole, Mary sits in front of the TV all day, accuses Precious of "stealing her man" (mind you, she's been repeatedly raped by her own father), and orders her daughter around, hurling projectiles at Precious when she isn't immediately compliant.

What keeps Precious sane throughout all of this is her daydreams. When things are at their absolute worst, she dreams of being a model, an actress, the lead singer in a gospel choir. In these dreams, she always has a "light-skinned" boyfriend and a cute little dog. Sometimes, heartbreakingly, when she looks in the mirror, she sees a white girl with flowing blonde hair.

Then something happens that changes Precious's life—she gets kicked out of school and sent to the "Each One, Teach One" alternative education program. Mary doesn't want her to go, as she can apparently collect more from welfare if her daughter isn't enrolled in school. But Precious somehow, miraculously, finds her way to the school. At Each One, Teach One, she meets the committed, kind-hearted Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), who is determined to teach Precious to read and give her a better life.

If Ms. Rain is perhaps a little too pretty, too compassionate, too perfect, I'm willing to forgive this film. So much of Precious is so unflinchingly honest, we crave these moments of grace. And who's to say there aren't real life Ms. Rains out there who can swoop into a girl like Precious's life? (An almost unrecognizable Mariah Carey is also on hand as a no-nonsense social worker who comes to Precious's aid.)

It's at Each One, Teach One that Precious learns to read and write, and makes friends with the motley but loving crew of misfit teens who comprise her class. These scenes give the film levity and hope, but things remain brutal at home. To its credit, Precious never, ever allows for a trite happy ending.

Making her film debut, Sidibe is truly remarkable as Precious. The actress doesn't have a single false note—her character is no martyr. As much as we love and root for Precious, she is deeply human-she has flashes of misdirected anger and can be maddeningly passive about her own life. As for Mo'Nique, what can I say? It took incredible guts to play a character as loathsome as Mary, and the Baltimore-based actress/comedian doesn't hold back at all. Mary is a horrible human being, but Mo'Nique reveals her reservoir of resentment and self-pity that makes her actions believable, if not forgivable. She's created a character here, not a monster.

Precious won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at Sundance, and I can see why. Upsetting as the film is, Precious's strength and perseverance is inspiring. And director Lee Daniels has managed to present this grim material with humor and humanity. It's a film, and a heroine, I'll never forget.

RATING:

I experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance when they showed the real Michael Oher at the end of The Blind Side.

No, not because the young actor Quinton Aaron doesn't look much like the Ravens rookie offensive tackle—although he doesn't. But because the real Michael Oher walked with his head up—he had an athlete's gait, a quiet confidence. He wasn't the halting, shoe-gazing, nearly mute man-child depicted in the film.

No wonder it's rumored that Oher is not a fan of the film. It turned him into Forrest Gump.

And that, in a nutshell, is my problem with the film. There were pretty much two ways to do Oher's fascinating real-life story—as a teen, he was rescued from the streets of Memphis (his real mom was a junkie and his father was out of the picture) and ultimately adopted by a wealthy white family. You can dig deep, show the larger social and personal ramifications of this act of kindness, and the inevitable conflicts that arose. Or you can do a neatly scrubbed, sit-com ready, Disneyfied version of the events.

Guess which one this film chose?

Which is not to say the film isn't enjoyable. Sandra Bullock gives an extravagantly entertaining performance as Leigh Anne Touhy, the Southern spitfire who adopted Oher. The Blind Side, you see,  is her story, not Oher's (he's pretty much just a prop.) We're meant to marvel at her sass, her stubbornness, her generous doses of Southern-fried wisdom.

Tim McGraw is on hand as her dutiful husband. (He's the Ricky Ricardo of this sitcom fantasy—always shaking his head fondly at his wife's antics.) Then there is the precocious younger son S.J. (Jae Head), who gets lots of laughs with his pint-sized hustler ways. Very little screen time is given to the Touhy's teenage daughter (Lily Collins), although they do at least bother to ask her if she minds having a 17-year-old boy sleeping in the bedroom next door.

(Not to worry, as depicted on screen, Oher is the only 17-year-old boy on the planet who isn't interested in sex.)

So yes, what we have here is an ersatz inspirational film-fun, easily uplifting, and totally shallow. It deflects any criticism by annoucing, "But it's a true story!" But my eyes don't lie. There's a real Michael Oher out there—too bad we didn't get to meet him.

RATING:

I think the thing I like most about Jenny (Carey Mulligan), the restless heroine of An Education, is how representative she is of a certain type of brainy teenager. Jenny, who lives in suburban London with her parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour), thinks she's worldly and sophisticated (she peppers her conversation with pretentious bits of French). She thinks her parents are oh-so-bourgeois (indeed, they sort of are). She thinks that her life hasn't really started yet-but maybe it will when she finally goes to Oxford.

She is, in a way, the perfect mark for David (Peter Sarsgaard), a conspicuously charming, much older (and Jewish!) man who slowly ingratiates himself into her life. How can she resist his sleek sports car, his glamorous friends (Rosamund Pike and Dominic Cooper), his jet-setting ways? Soon enough, she's going to museums and concerts with him, taking trips to Paris, and falling into his bed.

So where, you might ask, are her parents during all of this? They are equally flattered by David's attention. One of the clever insights of An Education is that even the most fuddy-duddyish of folks secretly aspire to a glittering life. When David lies about knowing C.S. Lewis, they are dutifully impressed. "It's one thing to be a writer," says Jenny's dad. "But to know a writer."

Sarsgaard plays David as oily, but not too oily. We can see how appealing he is-and we can tell that he's genuinely fond of Jenny. But something doesn't smell right. The film gives us clues, saving the real revelation about David for the coda.

Still, even if David is completely upstanding, the film asks the question: Should Jenny really consider marrying this man and giving up Oxford? Her teacher (a touching Olivia Williams) is mortified. "If you don't go to Oxford," she says, "you'll break my heart." But Jenny makes a compelling counter argument: Why not skip the school part and go straight to a life of museums and concerts and world travel?

And Jenny's dad, once completely obsessed with his daughter's admittance to Oxford, is suddenly keen on the idea of a marriage between Jenny and David. Turns out, for a girl in 1960s England, an education is more about finding a good husband than any sort of intellectual edification.

[To read my full review of An Education, check out the December issue of Baltimore.]

Assistant managing editor Amy Mulvihill attended the Maryland Film Festival's "Three Movie Visionaries" talk with Barry Levinson, John Waters, and David Simon at MICA. Here is her report:

It was like the G-8 (G-3?) summit of Baltimore filmmaking at MICA on Saturday night when the heavy-hitting triumvirate of Barry Levinson (Avalon, Diner, Liberty Heights, Tin Men), John Waters (Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, Cry Baby, Hairspray, Pecker), and David Simon (The Corner, Homicide, The Wire) convened for a wide-ranging discussion of their careers. The freewheeling, highly-entertaining talk was moderated by celebrated film critic Elvis Mitchell and framed by VIP dinner and dessert receptions.

Ostensibly, the occasion was a fundraiser for the Maryland Film Festival, which goes down each May, but it seemed just as much like a good excuse for the three colleagues to sit around and talk about how weird and wonderful Baltimore is.

Before I dive into my recollections of the event, I must make some disclaimers.

One: I only had a notepad with me so I jotted down notes as best I could but much of the dialogue is "as remembered." Two: The opinions expressed by the three filmmakers and host do not necessarily reflect those of Baltimore or this writer!

Now, on to the good stuff.

As I mentioned, the evening began with a red carpet where the press got a few minutes with each director as they entered. I kind of can't remember what I asked them because I was seriously nervous, but my photographer assured me that I managed to maintain a calm façade.

I do remember asking David Simon what he thought about some universities using The Wire as a teaching tool, particularly in sociology courses. Unsurprisingly, he thought it was great, although he maintained that wasn't his intention when he created the show. What I really wanted to ask David Simon was, "How come The Wire is so awesome?" but I thought that might seem unprofessional.

The dinner/cocktails reception for the VIPs-and those who forked out $250 for all-access tickets, admission for the talk was $125-followed. Thanks to my media credentials I was allowed into the VIP reception and got to surreptitiously observe (it's not stalking if you were invited!) the directors.

Barry Levinson and Elvis Mitchell spent most of the evening huddled in a corner in deep discussion. I didn't try to eavesdrop-even I have my limits!-but they were friendly to those who approached. Actually, the thing I noticed most about Barry Levinson was his shoes. They were black sneakers, the kind with the shock absorbers built into the sole. I don't know why that made such an impression on me, but it just tickled me pink.

Speaking of wardrobe, David Simon wore a vintage, blue, nylon Colts Corral jacket in honor of Barry Levinson's latest project The Band That Wouldn't Die, a documentary about the Colts' abandoned marching band. He circulated affably, having just flown in from New Orleans where he was on day four of filming for his new series about post-Katrina New Orleans.

Of course, the beau of the ball was the human quote-generator John Waters. I mean, really, who is more entertaining than him? He is the rare argument for a celebrity reality show. Seriously, how can I get fewer Kardashians and more John Waters on my TV, stat?

The discussion was hilarious and insightful with the three guys sharing war stories about shooting in Baltimore and raising money in Hollywood ("It never gets easier," Waters assured the audience). The conversation jumped around so quickly and touched on so many disparate topics that I'm just going to bullet point the highlights for you starting with John Waters's Brad Pitt casting story. Yep, you read that correctly.

• He and right-hand casting director Pat Moran auditioned Pitt when they were casting for Johnny Depp's sidekick in Cry Baby. The then unknown gave a solid audition but could never have toned-down his natural charisma enough to play second fiddle to the equally-beautiful Johnny Depp.

"When he left, Pat and I turned to each other and said, ‘Can you believe it? He's going to be the biggest movie star in the world!' You could just tell." Still, he wasn't right for the part so they passed. "I'm the only person in the world who's turned Brad Pitt down!" Waters declared to the delight of the audience.

• Shortly after David Simon's book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets was released in 1991, it was shopped around to various film and TV studios. At the time, Simon had no intention of leaving his job at The Sun and didn't expect that he would ever have the opportunity to anyway. One night, he was working the rewrite desk when he got an unexpected call. "There was this computer at The Sun that, for some reason, wouldn't automatically update the weather so you'd have to manually put the temperatures in, like Pittsburgh, 74, or whatever. So I was doing that and the phone rang. I picked it up and this guy says , ‘Hi, This is William Freidkin.' Not knowing or particularly caring who it was, Simon grunted, "Hi. What do you want?" Freidkin, the director of ‘70s classics like The French Connection and The Exorcist, introduced himself and explained that he had read Simon's book and really liked it. Skeptical, Simon believed it was his colleague playing a trick on him.

"Alvarez, quit effing around! I'm doing the weather," he huffed.

Eventually, Simon came to believe it really was the lauded director on the other end of the line. But, when his hopes started to rise, they were quickly dashed when Freidkin ended the call saying, "Well, just wanted to say I liked your book. Bye," leaving a bewildered Simon to complete the weather chart.

• Though it was the first time the three Baltimore auteurs shared a stage publicly, they had all met before and are admirers of each other's work. Simon and Levinson go way back as collaborators. It was Levinson who did eventually option Simon's book and turn it into the NBC drama Homicide. Levinson and Simon were able to shed light on Homicide's downward slide in quality during its seven-season run. The basic explanation: It's NBC's fault. Levinson had a deal with NBC to produce the series that included no interference from the network for the first six shows: They couldn't weigh in on scripts, casting, directing, cinematography-nothing. Levinson was liberated. The network was "apoplectic."

"They were like, ‘Why is the camera moving around so much? Who are these people?' Can't you have a shoot out?'" Levinson recalled. Eventually, network pressure forced the show to compromise its gritty vision of dead-end investigations and ne'er-do-well detectives. "By the end, the cast looked like the cast of Friends," Simon snarked.

• Though all three have distinct visions of Baltimore, there was one big thing they could all agree on: Non-natives should NOT attempt a Baltimore accent. "Actors always want to do it," Levinson said, rolling his eyes, "and most of them can't." For the sake of continuity then, the directors all agree that's its best to discourage the actors lest they end up with one half of the cast speaking Bawlmorese and the other half speaking some weird mixture of southern and Midwestern dialects.

• This brings me to the most un-PC story of the night, related by (who else?) John Waters. On the mid-80s TV show The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, the main character had a cousin from Baltimore, played by Maryland native John Glover, whose accent was no affectation. Apparently, the network received lots of viewer mail saying, "Love the show, but what's up with the retarded cousin?"

• Most importantly, the three bemoaned the state's lack of support for the film industry. Currently, Maryland is 48th in the nation in offering tax-rebates to productions. Despite having an experienced, well-trained crew available, diverse landscape and housing stock that can double for almost any location, and easy transportation access, the Land of Pleasant Living is commonly passed over in favor of states that offer better incentives. Levinson was particularly vocal about his displeasure at the legislature's myopic policy. "It's like, if I gave you $1 and you gave me back 20¢, you'd still have made 80¢. But the state doesn't think of it as making 80¢. They just think, ‘Hey, we gave you 20¢!'"

Here's hoping the legislature figures out a way forward or, as Waters noted, "a lot of [film business] people who live here will have to move."

Photo credit: Richard Lippenholz

RATING:

2012 is like a 1970s disaster film on steroids. Instead of a towering inferno or a sinking cruiseliner, we have the whole planet Earth getting destroyed. Because that, ladies and gentleman, is how Roland Emmerich rolls.

2012 is a lot like Emmerich’s other apocalyptically-inclined gems—Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow—except the special effects are better and the film may even be more treacly.

Yes, buried amid the rubble (and the tsunamis and the giant earthquakes that cause whole cities to split in two—neat!) is a message about caring for your fellow man. Kumbaya, brother—and watch out for that flying Eiffel Tower.

2012 has everything you would expect from this sort of big budget, high-minded schlock. Some humor (much provided by Woody Harrelson as a conspiracy nutcase who just may be right this time), some serious-sounding scientific jargon (brought to you with appropriate “run the numbers again!” dismay by Chewetel Ejiofor), some familial bonding (still-lovable John Cusack as a divorced dad who takes his two kids to Yellowstone—big mistake), a smarmy villain who wants to save the elite (also know as “the part for Oliver Platt”), some “We are the World” global hand-holding, and a CGI budget that exceeds the GNP of several developing nations.

Bottom line: You can either give over to the grandiose silliness or snicker at the film for its bloated 2 and a half hour running time. Either way, you can’t say that you didn’t get your money’s worth.

RATING:

Robert Zemeckis’ 3-D animated Disney's A Christmas Carol is clearly a labor of love and, like so many labors of love, it feels slightly ill-advised.
Yes, the motion-capture animation is gorgeous—saturated, detailed, almost hyper real. But Zemeckis seems strangely intent on showing us just how real it can be.

In one of the opening scenes, an undertaker’s apprentice is shown with a bulbous pimple on his chin. Later, the ghost of Marley spits some sort of otherworldly sputum at Scrooge. The Ghost of Christmas Present is a half-malevolent, half-jolly red head with a big beard and—ew!—a hairy red chest (he looks, disconcertingly, like the Burger King).

No one can argue with the depiction of Scrooge himself: Sunken-chested, hook-nosed, hunched, and thoroughly miserable, he seems, at first, to be a man completely devoid of spirit. But during the course of his night visitations, this character comes to life—he’s infused with dread, then sadness, then empathy, until he actually experiences a rush of unadulterated joy. The changes in Scrooge, both in terms of animation and in Jim Carrey’s pitch-perfect vocal  performance (he voices all of the Christmas ghosts, too, which is a bit of overkill) are revelatory—and capture the true essence of Dickens’ tale.

Still, why make this movie again? Zemeckis, I suppose, thinks he’s bringing this classic to a whole new generation. But when both Mickey Mouse and the Muppets have already had their crack at the material, I’d say the gig is up. (Also, though I'm sure this wasn't Zemeckis' call, the whole Disney in the title makes me a bit ill. What next? Disney's Hamlet? I shouldn't give them any ideas.)

In the end, as lovingly rendered as his A Christmas Carol is, I’m not sure young people will flock to it. It’s far too scary for small children and perhaps a bit too ponderous for older ones. Fans of Edgar Allan Poe and Hitchcock might appreciate Scrooge taking a creaky stair one by one or staring with dread at a slowly ticking clock, but young people are probably thinking, “Just die, old man!”

RATING:

When I saw the trailer for The Men Who Stare at Goats, I got pretty excited. A military satire based on a true(ish) story about a secret branch of the army that tried to develop human super powers, staring Jeff Bridges as its baked commander and George Clooney as a wild-eyed true believer? Count me in.

But here’s the problem: The trailer is better than the film. The trailer lays out the storyline and shows some of the film’s best jokes—men trying to rush through walls and drive while blindfolded; George Clooney giving a death stare to a goat; Kevin Spacey expressing his regrets about a couple’s divorce at their wedding—but the movie itself is glib and unfocused. Sad to say, it works better edited down to four minutes.

Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a recently divorced reporter looking to prove to his ex-wife just how macho he is. He goes to Kuwait where he meets Clooney’s Lyn Cassady who tells him about the First Earth Battalion, a classified military program started in the ’70s that practiced mind control.

“We were Jedi Warriors,” says Lyn.
“What’s a Jedi Warrior?” says Wilton. (How meta.)

Lyn at first says he’s retired, but later claims he’s been reactivated for a top-secret mission. To Iraq they go, where Lyn does things like try to break up cloud formations with the power of his penetrating gaze and disarm hostage takers with his mind. Is Lyn a loon or a gifted psychic? The answer, in short, is both.

The First Earth Battalion, apparently based on a real army program, is a fascinating oxymoron: A non-violent military division that tried, in vain, to be in step with the anti-war times. (Hey, if the whole world is flashing the peace sign, why can’t the military join in?)

In a way, I think I would’ve liked to have seen a whole movie about the unit’s heyday, when Lyn was a rising star, Bridges’ Bill Django was an inspirational guru, and Spacey, who plays Lyn’s rival in the unit, was a jealous Iago-type, seething in the shadows.

Instead, we flashback and forward, watch as Lyn and Wilton get into various scrapes, and eventually get to Lyn’s secret mission—which is pretty silly and, yes, involves goats.

The Men Who Stare at Goats feels like a wasted opportunity—as though they used a notebook filled with clever jottings where a script should’ve been. Someone should’ve seen this coming.

RATING:

After seeing Amelia, you can only assume one of two things: That Amelia Earhart herself was an insipid, uninspiring woman or that filmmaker Mira Nair just blew it.

I think we can all draw the same conclusion.

How did this film go so far afoul? You have a talented director (I loved Nair’s The Namesake), a perfectly cast Hilary Swank as Earhart, and the kind of subject matter that seems destined to land on critic’s Top 10 lists.

But Nair made the classic mistake. She was so concerned with mimesis—yes, Swank looks like Earhart, the aviator-chic clothing is spiffy, and the planes look sufficiently rickety—that she didn’t bother with story. You can’t just present us with the details of Earhart’s life. You have to show us what drove her, what gave her lift off.

Instead, Earhart is depicted as an earnest, cheery lady who simply wants to fly. She wants to be free, she says over and over again. She wants to soar like a bird, roam like the buffalo. Oh, how I wish I was making this up.

“It was a night of stars. Of tropical loveliness,” Earhart intones from the sky.

“A fairyland of beauty lay below and above me,” she says later, as I tried not to laugh out loud.
(She’s a pilot folks, not a poet.)

The film gives us two equally uninspiring romances—one between Earhart and her doting publicist/publisher husband George Putnam (Rirchard Gere); the other, an affair between Earhart and fellow pilot Gene Vidal (Ewan MacGregor). (If the story is to be believed, it turns out that 7-year-old Gore Vidal was afraid of tigers. And yes, folks, that is quite possibly the most interesting revelation of the film.)

Amelia is slick, handsomely mounted and really just a colossal dud. Oh, and I’ll go ahead and ruin the ending for you now—they never find the plane.

RATING:

The trials of Job in 1950s Midwestern Jewish suburbia. That might be the best way to describe the dark comedy A Serious Man, which many are saying is the Coen brothers most personal film to date.

What, then, to make of the film’s protagonist, Larry Gopnik, played by New York theater vet Michael Stuhlbarg, and clearly a stand-in for Joel and Ethan’s dad? Yes, Larry is a decent man—his quest to be a serious one is open to debate. But he’s also a total doormat.

Early in the film, Larry’s wife (Sari Lennick) tells him she’s leaving him for family friend Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed). Somehow she manages to turn this announcement into a harangue—she’s annoyed at Larry because he forced her to cheat on him (or something like that). Sy, on the other hand, wants to prove what a mensch he is by comforting Larry. “It’s going to be okay,” he repeats unctuously, enveloping Larry in an unwanted embrace.

At the university where Larry teaches physics, a Korean student (drolly funny Danny Kang) tries to blackmail Larry into giving him a passing grade. Larry is outraged, but doesn’t act. Indeed, his entire personality seems to revolve around fretful ineffectualness.

Everyone seems to recognize what an inconsequential man Larry is, including the three rabbis he turns to for advice. One pawns him off on an underling, the other tells him an empty parable that seems to bear no relationship to Larry’s troubles, the third claims he’s too busy to see him.
The Coen brothers point in all of this seems to be: Life sucks and then you die. Or perhaps: Don’t attempt to look for meaning in your life—there is none. Or perhaps that old Jewish chestnut: It could always get worse.

I had assumed that since the Coen brothers were mining such personal territory, it might curb some of their misanthropic tendencies. Au contraire. Virtually every character in this film is repulsive in some way; Larry is taking care of his gambling addicted brother (Richard Kind) who mopes around the house in saggy underpants and periodically drains a cyst on his back; Larry’s son Danny (Aaron Wolf) is more concerned with getting high and watching F-Troop than noticing (or caring about) his family’s unraveling; Larry’s vaguely menacing next door neighbor—the neighbors call him “the Gentile”—takes his son out of school to go hunting.

A Serious Man opens with what seems to be an old Jewish parable about an old man who may or may not be a dybbuk (evil spirit) who helps a villager in the snow and then is killed by the villager’s wife. Was the old man really a dybbuk? Or did the wife just kill a kindly do-gooder? Either way, the couple seems cursed.

The parable’s relation to the rest of the film is never made clear—is the couple supposed to be a descendant of the Gepniks? Or are the Coens suggesting that all Jewish people are cursed in some way? Or is the opening parable an object lesson of sorts—we try in vain to find meaning in the story, just as Larry tries, in vain, to find meaning in his own suffering?

Whatever the case—bummer, man.