A Serious Man

My take on the movie.

The ending. The kid goes to pay Fagle, the kid, Danny Gopnick, he symbolizes to me, the North American consumer. Clueless about the effects of computerization on the psyche. The frog in the heating pot the Mr Bungle references in the song Egg, all of it is a reference to the vortex of information overload, some review called it a call to God. Okay. So? For what? A sign. If one can't view a sign in the symbol of a tornado in the end of a movie, they don't see signs.

Anyway. The vortex is info overload, which we all know, data deluge, all that shit. As has been written, things get sucked into the vortex, some sink, some don't, those that don't, are usually spherical, makes sense right? old is new, go around, come around. anyway.

(^heh)

Cultural differences. On the one hand, Clive's dad wants Larry to accept the mystery that is life. If he doesn't he is threatened with a lawsuit, a lawsuit of slander for something that can't be proven, unless the very act of referencing the motivation behind the meeting of Clive's dad and Larry is in and of itself included as defense for Larry under his guess of the probability of his hunch about Clive. To me, this is China (I know Clive is Korean in the movie, doesn't matter, he's Asian, in the same way that everyone represents regionally in one way or another, accurate or not, for accuracy you could say he's whichever side of Korea doesn't allow western influence) and Google.

One doesn't want western culture influencing it's society that is completely immersed in obligations to service the clueless needs, of yes, western culture. The other essentially wants to sell culture to the manufacturer enabling a culture it doesn't want, based on information it isn't allowed to have, simply because they don't know any better.

So finite resources based on unusual and bizarre culture divides that are taken very seriously.
Dybbuk reference, it could mean many things, cultural misperceptions of east and west, spiritual ignorance, who knows.

The rabbi's advice: when there is no hope, we are the sum total of our actions. so, since we don't know what that means either, be good.