Script To Screen: “A Serious Man”
Leave it to the Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan) to come up with a denouement in their 2009 movie A Serious Man that resolves virtually…
Leave it to the Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan) to come up with a denouement in their 2009 movie A Serious Man that resolves virtually nothing and leaves the audience with a sense of impending doom.
Plot Summary: Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern mathematics teacher, watches his life unravel over multiple sudden incidents. Though seeking meaning and answers amidst his turmoils, he seems to keep sinking.
Here is the scene from the script:
LARRY’S OFFICE
He stares down at his desktop.
Thunder.
He reaches up and scratches his nose, staring.
On the desk: a ledger sheet with a list of students’ names. Next to each name, a grade.
Larry drums his fingers.
He picks up a pencil.
He goes down to PARK, CLIVE. Next to it is an F.
He waggles the pencil, eraser-end thumping the sheet.
He erases the F. He enters a C.
The pencil leaves frame. We hold on the new grade.
After a beat the hand reenters to put a minus sign after the C. The hand withdraws.
The phone jangles, very harsh.
Larry looks at it, frozen.
He lets it ring a couple times.
He reaches for it. He hesitantly unprongs it.
Larry
. . .Hello?
Voice
Larry
Larry
. . . Yes?
Voice
Hi, Len Shapiro.
Larry
Oh. Hello Dr. Shapiro.
Dr. Shapiro
Listen, mazel tov on Danny.
Larry
Yes, thank you.
Dr. Shapiro
Listen, could you come in to discuss these X-ray results?
Larry sits frozen, phone to his ear. . . .
Dr. Shapiro
Hello?
Larry
Yes?
Dr. Shapiro
Larry, could you come in and discuss these X-ray results?
Remember the X-rays we took?
Larry
. . . We can’t discuss them on the phone?
Thunder. Pattering rain.
Dr. Shapiro
I think we’d be more comfortable in person. Can you come
in?
A beat.
Larry
When?
Dr. Shapiro
Now. Now is good. I’ve cleared some time now.
TALMUD TORAH PARKING LOT
It is overcast, dark, and extremely windy. The students mill about in flapping cloths, Danny with his radio earpiece still in place.
A teacher is fumbling with keys at the door to the shul.
Mark Sallerson shouts above the wind:
Mark Sallerson
That fucking flag is gonna rip right off the flagpole!
CAR
We are looking at Larry through a windshield lashed by rain. His drives with hands clenched on the wheel. Wipers pump to keep up with the rain. The cars behind have their lights on. It has gotten quite dark.
Passing streetlights rhythmically sweep Larry’s face, their light stippled and bent
by the rain on the windows.
TALMUD TORAH PARKING LOT
Danny’s head bobs in time to the music. Wind whips his hair. We hear, very
compressed, the beginning of “Somebody to Love.”
Danny spots a shaggy-haired youth among the milling students.
Danny
Hey! Fagle!
Danny notices something past Fagle: a funnel cloud in the middle distance.
A growing rumble. The tornado is approaching.
At the first downbeat of its chorus the Jefferson Airplane song bumps up full.
We cut to black, and credits.
Here is the scene from the movie:
There are two significant editorial differences between the script and the screen. Can you spot them? Why do you think the Coens decided to make those choices?
I love this movie and although it did very little business, I believe it is one of the Coen’s best films, much of it an homage to their youth in Minnesota, but wrapped in a modern day parable a la Job from the Old Testament. If you haven’t seen A Serious Man, put it on your watch list.
One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a weekly series on GITS where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.
For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.