Two wonderful movies

Just saw the two movies that'll have the dubious honour of being the first that Ill discuss at more length at this blog. These are A Serious Man and Boogie Nights


A Serious Man is an absolute masterpiece and the best movie of the Coen brothers yet. I have never been a really big fan of them. I found Fargo and The Big Lebowski to be great and Intolerable Cruelty to be very enjoyable. No Country for Old Men was very well made, but left me pretty lukewarm. Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink I found somehow very incoherent. The Ladykillers was just plain bad and O Brother Where Art Thou annoyed me a lot. The rest of them I have yet to see.



One of the greatest things about almost any Coen-film is that it evokes a specific time and place, which influences the way their characters live. One often gets the feeling that if their characters lived sometime or somewhere else, they would do things differently. Good examples of this are the L.A. slackers at the beginning of the 90's in The Big Lebowski and the gangsters in the 20's in Miller's Crossing. In A Serious Man it are American Jews somewhere at the end of the 60's and the beginning of the 70's. It's the time when the culture of the whole western world is radically changing and these Jews are no exception. While the elders still try to live a life as serious men, devoting their life to God, the younger generation takes advantage of their new freedoms. They listen to rock and roll, smoke pot and call each other fuckers. In the middle of this is a professor in physics Lawrence Gopnik. When we first meet him he is a healthy man, with a reasonably nice family, he is living in a nice neighborhood and is happy with his work. He isn't perhaps a very devoted Jew, but he sends his kids to Hebrew school. In short he is a pretty serious man who doesn't do much wrong. During this movie his life will change in more ways then he probably has ever imagined.



First his wife announces she'll leave him for their mutual friend Sy Ableman and that Larry should move to a beautiful hotel. He can't stay at home, all the tension would be bad for the children. On top of all this a student that fails an exam tries to bribe him,his tenure becomes endangered and his brother turns out to be searched by the police. At least Sy Ableman consoles him for losing his wife!



His only solace is the upcoming bar mitzvah of his son. What he doesn't know is that his son is not exactly an example of the perfect Jew. He listens to Jefferson's Airplane during Hebrew class,smokes pot and orders records via his fathers' name and account. He shows up stoned for his bar mitzvah, but manages to hold himself together and is bar-mitzvahed successfully, which means that he now is a real Jew and he may see the rabbi Marshak now.



Rabbi Marshak is considered the wisest rabbi in the community and Lawrence tried to speak to him for advice about all his problems, after not getting much useful advice from the other two rabbi's. Marshak couldn't see him. He was busy thinking. But Marshak has time for Danny Gopnik, like he has for every boy who just had his bar mitzvah. Marshak then shows why he is considered the wisest rabbi. With a sad face he says to Danny:"When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies".Indeed, he quotes the Jefferson Airplane song Somebody To Love, except that he changes joy in hope. The rabbi realizes in what time he lives and that this might be more meaningful advice to Danny then some quote from the Torah. He also mentions to Danny the names of the band members and asks him to remember him. They might become more important to Danny then God. What the rabbi says seems pretty grim, but after the rabbi's quote the song continues:"Wouldn't you love somebody to love". So the rabbi's advice is the old and simple advice to rely on your loved ones.



This advice is also meant for Larry and is essentially the same like the two previous rabbi's give him. That is to stop worry about things you can't control or apprehend and just do your best in life and enjoy it. This is pretty ironic in two ways. First this is exactly how Larry teaches physics. You don't have to understand the big picture he says, just understand the math behind, since that's what really matters. The second irony is that when Larry finally loosens up a bit and his life pretty much returns to normal, he gets a message from his doctor, who says he cleared up his whole schedule for Larry and he should come right over. Also his son's school is threatened by a tornado. And on that note the movie ends.





This story is told with great humor, some interesting ethical and philosophical asides and the movie is full of great scenes and music. The most memorable scenes are probably a scene where Larry is on the roof, fixing his antenna, the scenes with Larry and the student that tries to bribe him and the scenes with the rabbi's, especially with the second one, who tells a wonderful story about a dentist who found some bizarre message in one of his patient's mouths. There is also a brilliant sequence where we cut between Sy and Larry, who are both driving a car. Sy is relaxed, while Larry is tense and gets involved a small car accident. This seems at first like a scene that exists simply to elicit a laugh, but when Larry finally gets to work he is called by his son who tells him that Sy just died in a car accident. The movie is also shot very beautifully and every single performance is pitch perfect.




Some people claim that they didn't like this movie and that if they were Jewish they probably would understand it more. That's nonsense. I am not religious and know very litlle about Judaism. This movie is first and foremost simply about an ordinary man facing ordinary problems that most people can relate to. Sure they refer to some specific Jewish words like 'gett'. I had no idea that it is a ritual divore, but an ongoing joke in the movie is that most of the characters themselves don't get right away what it is.











Up until Boogie Nights I hadn't seen anything by Paul Thomas Anderson, except for the brilliant opening monologue in Magnolia. Boogie Nights is a very entertaining movie which does not have a really gripping story, but seems to exist mostly so Anderson can show off his filmmaking and writing. That is not a bad thing, since it is pretty obvious that Anderson is very good at it. Every scene is carefully and brilliantly constructed and has got something of interest.



Boogie Nights is an ensemble piece which follows a bunch of people working in the porno-movies industry. The main protagonist is Eddie Adams, a 17 year old, who hasn't finished school and now works in a night club and earns a bit extra by showing his dick for 10 dollars. He is discovered there by porn director Jack Horner and so Eddie becomes an actor known by the name Dirk Diggler.



This porn director Jack Horner is not an ordinary porn director. His dream is to make an artful porn-movie, which people will not just see to get an orgasm, but also because it is a great film with a great story. Jack is married to Amber Waves, a regular actress in his porn films. Jack has no problem watching while she is working. Amber once had a more ordinary life and was married to a counselor from which she has one kid, which she is not allowed to see anymore. She is often pretty depressed about this and often gets high on drugs with Rollergirl, a porn actress who never takes away her roller skates. Amber develops a pretty big crush on Eddie, alias Dirk.



Dirk's best friend becomes Reed Rothchild, an actor with whom Dirk comes up with an idea for a series of movies about a crime-fighting hero and his partner, who are popular with the ladies. Reed and Dirk also star in these movies directed by Jack who hopes that these will be the movies people will remember him by.



Jack's screenwriter is Little Bill who is married to a woman who has sex with almost every man she meets, and when Bill discovers her, she simply tells him to fuck off. She also claims to be embarrassed when Bill gets mad at her for having sex with another man in front of an audience.
When during a New Year celebration Bill again finds her with another man he kills her,her lover and himself.


Buck Swope is a country-loving black actor whose dream is to own a store which sells good Hi-Fi audio systems. Scotty J is a director of gay porn who has an eye for Dirk. Maurice Rodriguez is the nightclub owner who hopes to be remembered by starring in of Jacks pornfilms. Kurt is Jack's cameraman who takes porn-movies a bit to seriously. Colonel J is the pruducer of Jack Horner's movies. He loves young women, but lands in jail when one of them turns out to be a bit too young. And finally the boss of it all is Floyd Gondolly, who doesn't care much about the artistic pretenses of Jack. Money is all that matters to him, so he forces Jack to shoot his films on video instead of on film. It is cheaper, but the movies are now even less interesting. Or like a sad Kurt proclaims: "They are all the same now."

The movie essentially exists of two parts. In the first part we see all these characters working, or having fun at either Maurice's nightclub or at parties at someone's house. And although they are using excessive drugs, having excessive sex and doing all kinds of other things most people wouldn't think of, they became sympathetic people who seem at least a little bit normal. In the second part of the movie,due to a lot of different reasons, the characters have to go out in the 'real' world. That doesn't work out pretty well. They all get in some pretty serious trouble. We realize that all these characters are really pretty messed up and that they don't make porn movies simply because they like them so much., but because there is really no other alternative for them.

Although this seems pretty grim, the movie is actually pretty joyfull. In the end it all ends happily. This is mostly due to Anderson's filmmaking which bursts whith energy. The movie takes place in the 70's and 80's and almost every scene is accompanied by some great song of that period. Like I said earlier, the movie is full of great scenes. There are two standout scenes though. The first one is a scene where Dirk, Reed and a stripper named Todd, want to deceive a pretty insane drugdealer named Rahad Jackson and played brilliantly by Alfred Molina. This an incredibly absurd and violent scene, but also incredibly funny and well made. The best scene though is the scene where Buck Swope obtains the money he needs to open his Hi-Fi shop. What happens in this scene could interest the narrator of Magnolia who is talking about great coincidences.

Finally the actors are worth mentioning. Almost every actor Anderson cast in this movie was not very famous back then, but has now become a big star, or at least a pretty respected actor. Some of the stars are Julianne Moore, Mark Wahlberg,John C. Reilly,William H.Macy
Phillip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy,Heather Graham,Luis Guzman and Philip Baker Hall. Interestingly enough the biggest cast member back then was Burt Reynolds who currently stars mostly in B-movies. This seems to become his last good movie and he got a deserving Oscar nomination for it. So did Julianne Moore and Paul Thomas Anderson for his screenplay. In a year when Titanic managed to get 11 Oscars, Boogie Nights didn't won a single one, but in none of its nominated categories was it beaten by Titanic. This post comes to and end with this irrelevant, yet fun fact