The movie made just before their much larger, most recent film True Grit, this is little hand-crafted Coen effort, based loosely on the Book of Job from the Old Testament. It is a deeply Jewish film, and at least some parts of the film, such as Hebrew school, are autobiographical. The story has a Jewish physics professor Lawrence "Larry" Gopnik standing in for the much beleaguered, hounded and horrified character of Job. Just about anything bad that shouldn't happen to a nice guy happens to Larry.
There is basically no one single character in the entire movie that doesn't do bad to Larry. Some hound him on purpose, such as his wife, Judith, suddenly and out of the blue telling Larry that she wants a divorce due to problems Larry isn't even aware exists. She wants to marry Sy Abelman, who is just strange. His kids a highly problematic, his brother is sleeping on his couch and he has a Korean student that is failing his psychics course, and wants bribe Larry for a better, even the student's father gets in on the act, to say nothing of the prejudiced white redneck neighbor, who is trying to steal part of Larry's lawn. Then there are characters that are negative by either not being a help to Larry, such as the rabbi's (one of whom tells Larry "look at the parking lot"), or even his divorces lawyer who winds up charging Larry a crazy fee for services rendered (crazy by today's standards, and the film is set in 1967). Even Larry's chain smoking doctor ends up being the bearer of very bad health news--delivered to a very clean living Lawrence. Finally there are some mysterious letters being sent to the tenure committee denigrating Larry and accusing him of "moral turpitude". It's just a case of a lot of little things adding up to one very big Heaven sent mess.
Trivia:
The opening scene is in Yiddish. The Coens wanted to start the film out with an old Yiddish folk tale, but couldn't find one that suited them, so they make one up. It features Fyvush Finkel, a legendary Yiddish stage actor as the Dybbuk, a kind of Jewish zombie.
The law firm that Judith hires, Tuckman Marsh, is the same law firm that Sandy Pfarrer (Elizabeth Marvel) hires to divorce Harry (George Clooney) in Burn After Reading.
The record that Larry is rejecting from the Columbia Record Club is Santana Abraxas. The word "Abraxas" is Hebraic, is Gnostic in nature and refers to God. Not just God, but an all being entity that encompasses everything from the Creator of the universe to the devil. It is the base word from which "abracadabra."
The voice of Dick Dutton from the Columbia Record Club is that of actor Warren Keith. Keith also supplied the voice on the phone in Fargo talking to Jerry Lundegaard from the GMAC.
Specs:
Runtime: 106 min
Rated: R
Color (Arriflex Camera 535 with Zeiss Prime Master Lenses)
DTS
Language: English/Yiddish/Hebrew
It was primarily filmed in Bloomington Minn.
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