Larry is not a man of faith far from it, Larry is a man looking for the math.

But Larry is not purely a devoted man who worships God and is set upon for no reason in a test of his faith.

Sy is viewed as 'A Serious Man' and he's a lecher and a creep whose gentle voice belies a manipulative and selfish individual. And yet a closer read shows that Larry is not a faithful man in the sense of being 'A Serious Man', a title that mocks him and the concept of how 'A Serious Man' is viewed. The Coens' moral philosophies appear to be rooted in Old Testament wrath, this is a story about Jewish characters, Job is in the Old Testament and bad things happen to him, therefore Larry is Job. At the same time, Sy Ableman ( Fred Melamed), the man who's coveting Larry's wife Judith ( Sari Lennick) and also secretly badmouthing Larry to the tenure committee, gets into a fatal car accident.Īs a series of misfortunes befall Larry, it's tempting to draw a parallel to the story of Job. For example, as he bitterly curses his extortionist student, Clive ( David Kang), Larry gets into a fender bender. Throughout the film, we'll see that even though Larry and Danny don't have a close relationship, their fates are intertwined and that Larry's life expands beyond what he can see. Larry is a professor on the verge of getting tenure and Danny is half-heartedly preparing for his bar mitzvah, but is more interested in listening to Jefferson Airplane on his radio and repaying his violent classmate Fagle the $20 he owes him for pot. We then cut forward to our main story of Larry Gopnik and his son Danny ( Aaron Wolff).

Bluenose Paradox by Larry Gent