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> >>indeed, it's definitely more Jewish than any film I can >think >>of offhand, although I feel that a truly effective film can >>take you into the world of any culture & find something >that's >>either universal in nature or at the least interesting to an >>outside observer even if not fully understood/appreciated. > >Well, it's an interesting. Take a film like "Big Fat Greek >Wedding": it was a big hit, partially because it focused on >the broad, more easy-to-relate parts of the culture, and all >of the characters were painted in broad strokes (loud and >obnoxious relatives, over-protective parents, etc.). It might >as well have been called "My Big Fat Ethnic Wedding." I think >this film dealt more with the nuance and the details with >Jewish culture, rather than painting everything in broad >strokes (Except for the characters of other ethnicities, who >were purposely turned into charicatures). The "Big Fat Greek >Wedding" type of movie has already been made for the Jewish >culture; I think the Coens were going for something a more >esoteric. > I hear what you're saying, I think it may have gone too far in the other direction for me, I need to care about someone in the flick one way or another to some degree.
>>I mean I kind of grasped the things expressed by the junior >>rabbi, etc.......what I had the hardest time with was the >way >>this guy reacted to the things that happened to him, it >>eliminated any sympathy I had for him or investment in his >>outcome. > >I mean, yeah, the guy was a whiner. He thought because he >didn't do anything necessarily bad in his life, that nothing >bad should happen to him. But at the end of the day, he lived >a pretty charmed life. They pretty much made him into a >Job-like figure. Still I think they did an effective job of >showing how circumtances can converge to make someone who's a >serios man make the decision that he did at the end of the >film.
It wasn't so much the whining as the allowing himself to be completely emasculated in every way that I found hard to not swallow. I guess in a way they're connected.
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