Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss
Fargo - The Wandering Who?
41 views
Skip to first unread message
thinbl...@gmail.com
Jun 13, 2017, 4:16:58 PM6/13/17
to
‘Fargo’ Heads Back Into The Mystic For Its Best Scene Of The Season
ALAN SEPINWALL 06.07.17
http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/fargo-who-rules-the-land-of-denial-recap-review/
While this season has felt overwhelmingly at times like a remake of the first, Noah Hawley’s Coen touchstones are a bit different this time around, with both Lebowski (violence as a result of confusion between two men with similar names) and A Serious Man (a good man suffering the wrath of an Old Testament God) as particularly strong influences.
Revealing Paul to not be a traveling salesman at all, but a messenger of the Almighty — “Paul Marrane” is one of many names ascribed to The Wandering Jew, who was cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming because he taunted Jesus on the cross — matches not only the folkloric nature of a lot of this season’s storytelling (the East Berlin prologue, Yuri telling Irv the tale of the Cossacks, Varga’s various fake historical accounts), but seems a reasonable follow-up to season two’s UFOs. If Lou Solverson’s life can be saved because Bear Gerhardt was distracted by a flying saucer, then why can’t Nikki Swango’s be saved by The Wandering Jew?
Just as Fargo itself is a mash-up of many Coen ideas but still the movie Fargo itself first and foremost, so too is the bowling alley sequence a theological hodgepodge that also leans primarily on Jewish tragedy. Judeo-Christian teachings don’t involve dead people being reincarnated as adorable kittens, yet there is Ray the Cat to offer a moment of comfort to Nikki as she catches her breath from the terrifying ordeal Yuri has put her through(*). Jewish tradition is mixed on the existence of an afterlife, but the Book of Judgment to which Paul alludes is very familiar to any Member of the Tribe who’s sat through Yom Kippur services, and Paul speaks with eloquence and passion about the teachings of Hasidic trailblazer Rabbi Nachman, and about the Cossack massacre of the Jews of Uman, and later jokes that giving Nikki and Wrench a VW Beetle to drive away in is “the universe at its most ironic.” (For decades after World War II, most Jews refused to drive any German cars, and particularly Volkswagens.)
(*) Nikki has turned out to be my favorite character of the season, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead was just tremendous throughout this scene. There’s so much warmth and vulnerability and hope as she nuzzles the kitty, in a way that makes it clear once and for all that Nikki’s love for Ray was wholly real, and not just a con woman taking advantage of a useful sap.
I had not realize that I’d been waiting all my life to hear Ray Wise say the name of Rabbi Nachman over and over again, not to see him hold a kitten in a way that was simultaneously sweet and menacing, and yet apparently I was, in what’s turned out (between Marrane, Sy, the Widow Goldfarb, and more) being the show’s most Jewish season to date(*)
-------------
Remember that we suffered!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj5MSjMiIu0
ALAN SEPINWALL 06.07.17
http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/fargo-who-rules-the-land-of-denial-recap-review/
While this season has felt overwhelmingly at times like a remake of the first, Noah Hawley’s Coen touchstones are a bit different this time around, with both Lebowski (violence as a result of confusion between two men with similar names) and A Serious Man (a good man suffering the wrath of an Old Testament God) as particularly strong influences.
Revealing Paul to not be a traveling salesman at all, but a messenger of the Almighty — “Paul Marrane” is one of many names ascribed to The Wandering Jew, who was cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming because he taunted Jesus on the cross — matches not only the folkloric nature of a lot of this season’s storytelling (the East Berlin prologue, Yuri telling Irv the tale of the Cossacks, Varga’s various fake historical accounts), but seems a reasonable follow-up to season two’s UFOs. If Lou Solverson’s life can be saved because Bear Gerhardt was distracted by a flying saucer, then why can’t Nikki Swango’s be saved by The Wandering Jew?
Just as Fargo itself is a mash-up of many Coen ideas but still the movie Fargo itself first and foremost, so too is the bowling alley sequence a theological hodgepodge that also leans primarily on Jewish tragedy. Judeo-Christian teachings don’t involve dead people being reincarnated as adorable kittens, yet there is Ray the Cat to offer a moment of comfort to Nikki as she catches her breath from the terrifying ordeal Yuri has put her through(*). Jewish tradition is mixed on the existence of an afterlife, but the Book of Judgment to which Paul alludes is very familiar to any Member of the Tribe who’s sat through Yom Kippur services, and Paul speaks with eloquence and passion about the teachings of Hasidic trailblazer Rabbi Nachman, and about the Cossack massacre of the Jews of Uman, and later jokes that giving Nikki and Wrench a VW Beetle to drive away in is “the universe at its most ironic.” (For decades after World War II, most Jews refused to drive any German cars, and particularly Volkswagens.)
(*) Nikki has turned out to be my favorite character of the season, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead was just tremendous throughout this scene. There’s so much warmth and vulnerability and hope as she nuzzles the kitty, in a way that makes it clear once and for all that Nikki’s love for Ray was wholly real, and not just a con woman taking advantage of a useful sap.
I had not realize that I’d been waiting all my life to hear Ray Wise say the name of Rabbi Nachman over and over again, not to see him hold a kitten in a way that was simultaneously sweet and menacing, and yet apparently I was, in what’s turned out (between Marrane, Sy, the Widow Goldfarb, and more) being the show’s most Jewish season to date(*)
-------------
Remember that we suffered!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj5MSjMiIu0
thinbl...@gmail.com
Jun 13, 2017, 11:32:26 PM6/13/17
to
On Tuesday, June 13, 2017 at 4:16:58 PM UTC-4, thinbl...@gmail.com wrote:
> ‘Fargo’ Heads Back Into The Mystic For Its Best Scene Of The Season
> ALAN SEPINWALL 06.07.17
> http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/fargo-who-rules-the-land-of-denial-recap-review/
>
>
>
>
> While this season has felt overwhelmingly at times like a remake of the first, Noah Hawley’s Coen touchstones are a bit different this time around, with both Lebowski (violence as a result of confusion between two men with similar names) and A Serious Man (a good man suffering the wrath of an Old Testament God) as particularly strong influences.
>
> Revealing Paul to not be a traveling salesman at all, but a messenger of the Almighty — “Paul Marrane” is one of many names ascribed to The Wandering Jew, who was cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming because he taunted Jesus on the cross — matches not only the folkloric nature of a lot of this season’s storytelling (the East Berlin prologue, Yuri telling Irv the tale of the Cossacks, Varga’s various fake historical accounts), but seems a reasonable follow-up to season two’s UFOs. If Lou Solverson’s life can be saved because Bear Gerhardt was distracted by a flying saucer, then why can’t Nikki Swango’s be saved by The Wandering Jew?
>
> Just as Fargo itself is a mash-up of many Coen ideas but still the movie Fargo itself first and foremost, so too is the bowling alley sequence a theological hodgepodge that also leans primarily on Jewish tragedy. Judeo-Christian teachings don’t involve dead people being reincarnated as adorable kittens, yet there is Ray the Cat to offer a moment of comfort to Nikki as she catches her breath from the terrifying ordeal Yuri has put her through(*). Jewish tradition is mixed on the existence of an afterlife, but the Book of Judgment to which Paul alludes is very familiar to any Member of the Tribe who’s sat through Yom Kippur services, and Paul speaks with eloquence and passion about the teachings of Hasidic trailblazer Rabbi Nachman, and about the Cossack massacre of the Jews of Uman, and later jokes that giving Nikki and Wrench a VW Beetle to drive away in is “the universe at its most ironic.” (For decades after World War II, most Jews refused to drive any German cars, and particularly Volkswagens.)
The Wandering Who?: A Study of Jewish Identity Politics
> ‘Fargo’ Heads Back Into The Mystic For Its Best Scene Of The Season
> ALAN SEPINWALL 06.07.17
> http://uproxx.com/sepinwall/fargo-who-rules-the-land-of-denial-recap-review/
>
>
>
>
> While this season has felt overwhelmingly at times like a remake of the first, Noah Hawley’s Coen touchstones are a bit different this time around, with both Lebowski (violence as a result of confusion between two men with similar names) and A Serious Man (a good man suffering the wrath of an Old Testament God) as particularly strong influences.
>
> Revealing Paul to not be a traveling salesman at all, but a messenger of the Almighty — “Paul Marrane” is one of many names ascribed to The Wandering Jew, who was cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming because he taunted Jesus on the cross — matches not only the folkloric nature of a lot of this season’s storytelling (the East Berlin prologue, Yuri telling Irv the tale of the Cossacks, Varga’s various fake historical accounts), but seems a reasonable follow-up to season two’s UFOs. If Lou Solverson’s life can be saved because Bear Gerhardt was distracted by a flying saucer, then why can’t Nikki Swango’s be saved by The Wandering Jew?
>
> Just as Fargo itself is a mash-up of many Coen ideas but still the movie Fargo itself first and foremost, so too is the bowling alley sequence a theological hodgepodge that also leans primarily on Jewish tragedy. Judeo-Christian teachings don’t involve dead people being reincarnated as adorable kittens, yet there is Ray the Cat to offer a moment of comfort to Nikki as she catches her breath from the terrifying ordeal Yuri has put her through(*). Jewish tradition is mixed on the existence of an afterlife, but the Book of Judgment to which Paul alludes is very familiar to any Member of the Tribe who’s sat through Yom Kippur services, and Paul speaks with eloquence and passion about the teachings of Hasidic trailblazer Rabbi Nachman, and about the Cossack massacre of the Jews of Uman, and later jokes that giving Nikki and Wrench a VW Beetle to drive away in is “the universe at its most ironic.” (For decades after World War II, most Jews refused to drive any German cars, and particularly Volkswagens.)
Gilad Atzmon Zero Books 2011
https://www.docdroid.net/RpdvOzJ/the-wandering-who-a-study-of-jewish-ide-atzmon-gilad.pdf.html#page=10
Atzmon begins "The Wandering Who?" with his personal story, growing up in Israel with a grandfather who wouldn't let his father buy a German car.
thinbl...@gmail.com
Jun 14, 2017, 3:27:01 PM6/14/17
to
On Tuesday, June 13, 2017 at 4:16:58 PM UTC-4, thinbl...@gmail.com wrote:
Hawley: I think she's looking for wisdom certainly. I think she's had the rug pulled out from under her and the world she thought she lived in isn't the world she's living in. And you're not going to come to a deeper understanding about the meaning the universe by reading 140 characters that someone just thought up.
We thought of it, on some level, in the writers' room as the three Rabbis who Michael Stuhlbarg goes to see in A Serious Man. At that moment when the universe stops making sense you want someone who thinks big thoughts about the nature of things to help you understand. I don't think there was any romantic attraction with Ray Wise's character but there is a spiritual sense of "this is the person I need to be talking to right now."
FARGO EP NOAH HAWLEY ON NIKKI, GLORIA, TECHNOLOGY AND THE SUPERNATURAL
BY MATT FOWLER 14 JUN 2017
http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/06/14/fargos-noah-hawley-on-nikki-gloria-technology-and-the-supernatural
0 new messages