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Pontiac Trail
iWc-
46
October 1 • 2009
humor, their visual sense, their eccen-
tricity, and most of all, that you never
know what's going to happen next in
their films."
The same applied to his own cast-
ing: After an excruciatingly drawn out
series of readings throughout 2007,
he received a call from Joel Coen, who
said, "I'll put you out of your misery
— you're playing Larry."
The Coens did not offer Stuhlbarg,
or any of the other actors, much expla-
nation about the prophetic elements
of the story. "I love to talk things out,
but I have a feeling they don't:' Kind
(Uncle Arthur) said. "And yet they're
very specific, very concerned and
thoughtful about what they want. So
it's a contradiction!'
Stuhlbarg learned early on that the
fictional Larry was very loosely based
on the Coens' father, a retired econom-
ics professor — and that the brothers
had fun inventing ways to torture the
character.
Stuhlbarg, who is also an artist,
sketched himself as Larry, over-
whelmed by consternation, in order to
prepare for the role. "I also asked what
kind of movies I could watch to get an
idea of who my character might be,
and Joel and Ethan suggested the 1967
film The Graduate he said. "Perhaps
something about the time period reso-
nated with them, and Dustin Hoffman's
journey, in terms of feeling baffled by
events thrown at him — there was a
similar sense of being adrift."
From the Coens, the actor also
gleaned that Larry's sense of spiritual-
ity is "quite dormant; he thinks more of
mathematics as his religion. It is only as
events torment him that he seeks spiri-
tual guidance, hoping that it will bring
him some piece of understanding, but
he never quite gets what he is looking
for. He'd like to think there is a reason
for the things that are happening, but
he doesn't get any answers. All he can
do is question. Yet he does go from a
place of innocence to experience."
The character certainly receives no
help from his indifferent divorce law-
yer (Adam Arkin), an assimilated Jew
who proves to be "another cog in the
wheel of the machinery that is slowly
crushing Larry:' Arkin said.
The 53-year-old Arkin relates to the
film's exploration and frustration with
aspects of Judaism; the son of actor
Alan Arkin, he grew up in a secular
home in Brooklyn, did not attend
Hebrew school or become a bar mitz-
vah. And yet others make assumptions
about his observance because he is
known for portraying Jews in the pop-
ular culture: on TV's Chicago Hope,
for example, or in the plays of Pulitzer
Prize-winner Donald Margulies.
Margulies' Brooklyn Boy and Sight
Unseen examine the complexities of
modern Jewish identity: "that no mat-
ter how much you want to reinvent
yourself, your heritage and your histo-
ry is going to be something you must
integrate into whatever you become,'
Arkin said. Perhaps the Coens may be
processing some of these issues in A
Serious Man.
"When I first read the script, I was
struck by my sense that this is a very
personal film for them because of some
of the vulnerabilities of the characters','
he said. "And there is something about
the humor and the pain in the piece,
which is in its way very Jewish."
The humor in A Serious Man is
often cringe worthy — such as the
scenes in which Larry keeps get-
ting baffled stares, even from rabbis,
when he mentions his wife wants a
"get" (Jewish divorce) — "a what?" is
always the reply. Or when a real estate
attorney (Michael Lerner) opens his
mouth to reveal information that will
help Larry win a land dispute with an
anti-Semitic neighbor — only to suf-
fer a lethal heart attack on the spot.
"Michael [Lerner] must have died 50
times that day, while the Coens gave
him so many options and shot differ-
ent angles:' Stuhlbarg recalled.
Arkin, who has studied a variety of
spiritual practices, some Jewish, some
not, relates to the idea that "if you ulti-
mately want religious wisdom, you're
going to have to do a certain kind of
work on yourself and go inward. The
idea of turning to anybody else for a
solution or a gifting of experience, is
setting yourself up to be disappointed,
which I think is one of the resounding
themes of the film.
"Larry says a number of times,
almost as a plea for lenience, 'But
I haven't done anything, as if that
should absolve him from any pain:'
Arkin continued. "But that is one of
the reasons he is in as much pain as
he is. You have to be active, present
and aware of what is going on with the
people around you, and to some extent
he hasn't been. And he pays a heavy
price for that."
E *sus"u S a*41- SZN
(with ad only) 10/1/09 through 10/14/09
Business Hours: Mon-Sat 11:30arn - 10:00pm
Sunday 4:30 - 9:00pm
Get 'Serious' from page 45
C
Lone Pine (77 mile)
A Serious Man is scheduled to open in select theaters on Friday, Oct. 2,
and in the Detroit area, at the Landmark Maple Theatre, on Oct.16.