The Coen brothers' film, 'A Serious Man' starts with this perplexing quote. Sounds pretty straight forward initially, but to me, the more you think about it, the more you can twist yourself up in knots over EXACTLY what it means.
As with the film. Billed as a comedy, there are some darkly funny moments, but overall it's way too bleak for such a classification. Whatever. It's fascinating. It starts with an extraordinary folk tale, in which a woman stabs an old man who has helped her husband. Because she believes him to be a 'dybbuk', who will bring a curse on the house. We never get to find out whether she's right, and has averted evil - or wrong, and murdered an innocent man. We then move forward in time to the 1960s. The folk tale is never referenced or mentioned again. I was waiting for it to reappear (as anyone with basic story-telling chops knows, you expect something like this to be justified or reincorporated). It's brilliant that it doesn't. Because it introduces in the most unsettling way, the concept of uncertainty, which is the theme running through the film. One character even explicitly talks about having to 'accept the mystery'.
So I suppose that's the point. That however much we want to understand, there are rarely any clear and easy answers. All that remains is how you face the uncertainty.
It's been a long time since I've seen a film that got me thinking as much as this one. I've been scuffling around with it in my head ever since I saw it.
Which isn't exactly receiving with simplicity... Ho hum.
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