AJS Review

Table of Contents - November 2011 - Volume 35, Issue 02  

Symposium: A Serious Man

“Serious” Talk

Jeffrey Shandlera1 c1

a1 Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey

Starting with its opening scene, A Serious Man offers a complex, provocative engagement with the role of storytelling in Jewish life, past and present. Many viewers have wondered how the film's “shtetl” prologue relates to its main story, set in Minneapolis in 1967. They have often speculated that there is some plot-driven relationship that they somehow missed. But the connection, by the filmmakers' own assertion, is not diegetic; rather, it is thematic, and storytelling figures strategically in articulating this link.

Correspondence:

c1 jashandler@aol.com