fiquata

"so to get in order with the payments for marijuana, which doesn’t seem to me to fit very nicely into Jewish logic" :) I think I was referring more to the behaviors of the faithful rather than the religion itself. Now I’m coming up with a ton of bad and sharp jokes about Jews and their relationship with cash, but I’ll hold back. Anyway, yes, "we seem a bit foolish trying to make sense of it," but it’s also true that this is the beauty of it. Cronenberg, while acknowledging his skill, doesn’t particularly inspire me and I don’t know why. Haneke, on the other hand, is definitely one of my favorites. With Lynch, I give up any attempt at understanding and just let go... there you really end up in therapy if you start looking for answers.

Putting aside the fact that the scene with the third rabbi had me in stitches, and that the one where the guy calls him saying “Abraxas... Santana. The next one is Cosmo's Factory” made me love them more than I should have, the kid at the very end of the film returns the money. So it could be a conversion, an awakening, a rejection of amerikanism in favor of Judaism, which the father does the opposite of... anyway, it’s a dead end; opinions can all be debated, and when a film evokes different interpretations, I believe it’s almost always a good film. Anyway, I could totally see a “People Are Strange” playing in the background, at least when the non-Jewish neighbors return from hunting :)

You're right, you are. I won't do it anymore. No more spoiling the plot, especially since I held back on the review on purpose. I'll tell you the name of the German in private. I wouldn't want those serious angry folks to come and slit my throat in my sleep. I need to sleep peacefully.

Eh, Aeneas... that's how you start talking about religions :) Take the second rabbi, when he tells him about the teeth and the engravings. He asks him why that is, and the rabbi responds that there is no why, that you can't demand answers from God, that in fact it's quite the opposite. I interpreted the ending as the arrival of God with the hurricane. The son pays off his debt and becomes a serious man, while the father puts aside his rules and gets a call from the doctor (who doesn't actually say you have cancer or anything like that, but leaves it to be presumed... or perhaps I'm the one seeing it dark). A kind of passing of the torch. Knowing the Coen brothers' filmography, where moving money is always the engine of the story, and considering this situation, which is somewhat a jab at certain Jewish dogmas, I can really see the arrival of a bad God, tired of daily ugliness and hitting randomly. And everything should also be read in light of the beginning, which I don’t see as so distant from the film; rather, it’s a sort of clue. The wife isn't afraid; the husband, a rational man (at least that's how he defines himself), is. She stabs the guy, the supposed ghost, and despite the bloodstain spreading, she doesn’t bat an eye, but the husband does. As if to say one cannot be autonomous in God's grace, but must have blind trust. Then, as you say, we must always assume a God that we've been taught and spoon-fed, which may not necessarily be the true God, assuming there is one at all. Anyway, I agree with you; the true protagonist of all the Coen brothers' films is the Coen brothers themselves, who not only play with their actors but have fun even before with the audience… so much so that a film full of fools lost me some hours of sleep, and I think I’ll go see it again.

Yes, but "tie'" goes with the apostrophe, in my opinion. With the apostrophe, it's more vulgar. Tie'.

Welcome back. They never gave a damn, but at this point.

I completely agree with telespalla. Partly because it made me think for a while, and partly because I also believe that the solution lies in the response of the second rabbi, who essentially tells him to stop overthinking and take life for what it is. However, judging by the reviews I've read online, it seems that no one has understood or grasped the film for what it is (and it’s two things), namely an invitation to take things more lightly... then the paradox, and this is why the Coens are always my favorites, is that to reach a conclusion, you have to mull over it for a bit, and the conclusion is, indeed, stop overthinking. Oh, sfascia... give him a good price so they can scrap it :) For me, this is at the "Fargo" level: good movie, nice story. Their masterpieces are others, at the "Barton Fink/The Man Who Wasn't There" level.

Yes, alright, but Arturo Bandini is so egocentric and important that he doesn’t deserve just 3 lines, so important that even Fante treated him like a real person and when relating to his wife he used the name Bandini to refer to the author. Come on, Bandini is so egocentric that he can’t truly love anyone but himself. In fact, he doesn't want to love; he just wants to feel loved and accepted, both by Camilla and by his publisher, as well as by the whole world. Whether he would actually do anything for her is another question entirely. It would also be interesting to change the perspective, but not with John Fante. If he has always written in the first person, except for a few significant exceptions, there must be a reason. You're right, I’m a pain in the ass, but John Fante is John Fante and I love him :)

Ah, I see, Matacà. Just think that until just before sending it, the first two paragraphs were glued together; then, since it resembled Kubrick's monolith, I separated them. It's a case of it could have been worse :)

Well, if it's a necklace, we wait hopefully, still published by Mondadori, a "Black Book of Capitalism."