Bloomington, Minnesota, 1967: Jewish physics lecturer Larry Gopnik is a serious and a very put-upon man. His daughter is stealing from him to save up for a nose job, his pot-head son, who gets stoned at his own bar-mitzvah, only wants him round to fix the TV aerial and his useless brother Arthur is an unwelcome house guest. But both Arthur and Larry get turfed out into a motel when Larry's wife Judy, who wants a divorce, moves her lover, Sy, into the house and even after Sy's death in a car crash they are still there. With lawyers' bills mounting for his divorce, Arthur's criminal court appearances and a land feud with a neighbour Larry is tempted to take the bribe offered by a student to give him an illegal exam pass mark. And the rabbis he visits for advice only dole out platitudes. Still God moves in mysterious - and not always pleasant - ways, as Larry and his family will find out.
Written by
don @ minifie-1
Plot Synopsis:
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ENDING SPOILERS:

The day of Danny Gopnick's bar mitzvah arrives. As he goes to read from the Torah, his mind freezes and he stands as if in a trance. He looks at his family, and back down at the Torah. All at once he comes into focus and begins chanting from the Torah flawlessly. As parents Larry and Judith watch proudly, they start to hold hands and arms, as if beginning to reconnect. Judith suddenly tells Larry that Sy always admired Larry very much, and secretly wrote letters of recommendation on Larry's behalf, to the college tenure board.

At the completion of the ceremony, Danny is told about the rights and duties of being a full member of the community and the synagogue. He is given a kiddush cup and told that he has been granted an audience with Rabbi Marshak.

Danny goes into Marshak's office, and sits in front of him. Marshak speaks slowly, almost haltingly, and in a way that suggests he's a little addled. He begins to quote lines from Jefferson Airplane's 'Somebody to Love' (not quite accurately) and recites the names of the group's members (again, not quite accurately). He then gives Danny back his confiscated radio and simply says, "Be a good boy."

The scene begins to switch back and forth at this point between Larry at his office in the college, and Danny at Hebrew school. Arlen visits Larry at his office, congratulating him on Danny's bar mitzvah and speaking about the need to savor such moments of family blessings, with which Larry agrees and promises to do. Carefully emphasizing that he is speaking off the record and didn't actually 'say anything,' Arlen insinuates that Larry has earned tenure at the college.

We then see Danny listening to the radio through his earphones, discreetly goofing off during Hebrew class again. He sees that the $20 he secreted in the radio's leather belt pouch to pay for the pot sold him by Mike Fagle, is still there. He tries to carefully whisper to Fagle, whose seat is in front of him.

Larry opens some of his mail and one of the letters is a legal bill for $3,000.00. Going to his grade book, he stares at the F given to Clive Park, and after some thought, changes it to a C minus. Abruptly his phone rings.

Back at Hebrew school, a principal's aide enters and whispers to the teacher, who announces that a tornado warning has sounded and all students are to be ushered into the synagogue basement.

Larry answers his phone and it's Dr. Shapiro, who congratulates Larry on Danny's bar mitzvah but then suddenly announces he wants Larry to come into his office to discuss the results of his X-Ray, which Larry was shown getting near the beginning of the movie.

Back at Hebrew school, the kids are all waiting in the parking lot as the teacher fumbles with his keys. Wind is picking up and the teacher can't seem to pick out the correct key to open the door to the basement.

Back at Larry's office, Larry asks if he can talk on the phone about the X-Ray results, but Dr. Shapiro feels it would be best done in person. Larry asks when, and Dr. Shapiro says now; he's set some time aside for Larry to come to his office right away. It's suggested strongly that Larry is seriously ill; possibly even terminally.

Prior to this, Larry's wife informed told him she wants a divorce and moves her new partner, the condescending Sy, into their home. Larry is farmed out to a motel with his ne'er-do-well brother, Arthur.

The final scene is back at the Hebrew school. Danny sees Mike Fagle standing in front of him and calls out to him, looking to give him the $20 he owes him. Suddenly Fagle turns around and stares over his shoulder at Danny, and Danny freezes on seeing what Fagle had been looking at: a funnel cloud heading straight toward the school... and all the kids, as the teacher is still unable to locate the correct key to the basement.

Fade to black as 'Somebody to Love' by Jefferson Airplane begins to play.

The Coen Brothers stated that the opening scene was nothing more than a little short that they made up to get the audience in the proper mood, and that there is no meaning behind it.
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In his argument with the Columbia House records employee over the phone, Larry Gopnik repeatedly rejects the album "Abraxas" by Santana. Abraxas is a Gnostic term for God, particularly a God who encompasses all things from Creator of the Universe to the Devil, and an etymological root for "abracadabra". It is thus implied that Larry Gopnik is vehemently rejecting mysticism, pantheism, and magic.
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Sarah Gopnik repeatedly talks about going to "The Whole". The Whole is the music club in the basement of the University of Minnesota student union. It opened in the 1960s.
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The names of the characters who ride the school bus with Danny Gopnik are the names of children that the Coen brothers grew up with.
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Sy Ableman says mathematics is "the art of the possible", a paraphrase of a quote by Otto von Bismarck, who called politics "the art of the possible".
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Most of the doorposts throughout the movie (including the Gopniks' and Mrs. Samsky's) have a small box attached to them. This is a mezuzah, a case containing passages from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21), which Jews traditionally affix to the door frames of their houses as a constant reminder of God's presence. A mezuzah also functions as a sign that a Jewish person occupies the house or works in the building onto which it is affixed, so in this movie, the frequent sight of mezuzahs on doorframes is one of many indications that most of the characters are Jewish.
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A law firm called Tuckman Marsh is mentioned at one point. It was also mentioned in the Coens' previous film Burn After Reading (2008).
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The cast contains very few Coen regulars, and most of the actors in the film are relative unknowns.
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Red Owl was a real Midwest grocery store chain, with several stores in the Twin Cities area, including Knollwood Plaza in St. Louis Park, about two miles south of the Coen family home. The Red Owl mentioned in the film is identified as being in Bloomington, suburb some ways to the south of St. Louis Park. The significance in Rabbi Nachtner's anecdote is that Sussman's investigation of the teeth mystery takes him on a drive in the middle of the night that would have taken about an hour and a half round trip: far enough to seem just a little obsessed, but not too much. The Red Owl sign used in an exterior scene in the movie was a genuine antique, which unfortunately was accidentally dropped and destroyed after filming.
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Tyson Bidner, the film's location manager, was cast as the magbiah at Danny's bar mitzvah because he had been one in real life. He said the Torah scroll was very heavy and difficult to lift above his head.
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The song heard on the record played repeatedly in the Gopniks' house is Dem Milners Trern ("The Miller's Tears") by Sidor Belarsky, a Yiddish folk song of a sad miller's fears of growing old and alone, echoing the film's theme.
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Shot in 44 days.
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No line gets a bigger laugh when the film plays in Minneapolis than Larry's divorce lawyer telling him "Hire Ron Meshbesher" to represent Arthur. Meshbesher is a real person, the most prominent criminal defense attorney in Minnesota for 40-some years, "The Guy" in the words of other lawyers. Thus, Larry learns that Arthur is more trouble than he'd imagined. This is a slight anachronism, as Meshbesher's reputation was not yet established by 1967. To make the significance of the recommendation more apparent to contemporary and non-Minnesota viewers, the script inflates the amount of Meshbesher's retainer a good bit from what it was in the late 60s. The scene was shot in the Minneapolis office of Meshbesher and Spence, and the address on the retainer envelope at the end of the movie is the actual address of the firm.
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At his Bar Mitzvah, Danny reads a "Parshah" or portion of the Torah scroll known as "Behar" (Leviticus 25:1 - 26:2) which details the events of the Jubilee year, including the release of slaves and return of ancestral lands. Because the reading of Torah portions follow a set yearly cycle, this means that Danny's Bar Mitzvah occurred in early May of 1967.
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The voice of Dick Dutton, the Columbia Record Club employee who harasses Larry on the phone, is supplied by actor Warren Keith. This is the second time he has appeared in a Coen Brothers film playing a character heard only on the phone. He also supplies the voice of Reilly Diefenbach, the GMAC finance officer who calls Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo (1996).
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Patton Oswalt auditioned for the role of Arthur Gopnik.
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While flipping through 'the mentaculus' one page has a doodle with the words 'Higgs Boson' written backwards
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Comedian Marc Maron tested for the role of Larry Gopnik.
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The first word of English is spoken around eight minutes into the film.
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The synagogue used for filming was B'nai Emet in the Coen brothers' home town of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, where they went to synagogue.
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Fyvush Finkel, the actor in his late 80s who plays "Groshkower" in the Yiddish-language scene of the film, started his acting career at 9 years old playing child roles in the Yiddish theater industry that once thrived on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
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Judith has Larry meet her and Sy at the Embers restaurant to discuss family matters. Embers was a popular chain of "family restaurants" in the Twin Cities in the 1960s and 1970s, known for TV ads in which a local actress would promise customers dissatisfied with a menu item would have it "cheerfully exchanged." An early Embers spokeswoman was a then-unknown Loni Anderson, who would go on to star in TV shows and film. St. Louis Park, where the story is set, had a number of Jewish delicatessen restaurants. That Judith has insisted on discussing private matters supposedly governed by their Jewish faith in a public place adds to Larry's feeling that faith, and thus Hashem, is crumbling all around him. That Embers is a specifically "mainstream Minnesota" public space identified with Anderson's Scandinavian blondness is an inside joke adding to Larry's feeling of isolation and entrapment. In real life, there was an Embers about 75 miles from the Coen family home, and Joel and Ethan probably ate there numerous times. Embers began to decline in the 1980s and eventually went belly up, though the name has been licensed to a few independent restaurants. The location in the film does not resemble an actual Embers in any way.
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Two actors in this movie portrayed notorious gambler/mobster Arnold Rothstein in other works: Michael Stuhlbarg in "Boardwalk Empire" and Michael Lerner in "Eight Men Out".
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Yelena Shmulenson and Allen Lewis Rickman, who play the Shtetl husband and Shtetl wife in the movie, are real-life husband and wife as well.
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The tornado bearing down on the town at the climax is a factual event. There was a tornado outbreak in Southern Minnesota, 1967.
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The Coen Brothers' original idea for the picture was as a short film about Danny's stoned bar mitzvah and his meeting with Rabbi Marshak. All of the other content in the movie grew out of that sequence.
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Rabbi Marshak misquotes Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love," changing "all the joy within you dies" to "all the hope within you dies" (though this is appropriate given Danny's family situation). Furthermore, he then names three or four members of the band (comically stumbling over Jorma Kaukonen's last name) as an apparent attribution to the quote, but the song was in fact written by Grace Slick's brother-in-law, Darby Slick.
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In parsha cycle - which reads through the five-books of the bible over the course of the Jewish year - Danny's Bar Mitzvah parsha, "Behar", is followed by "Bechukotai" (Leviticus 26:3-27:34). While Behar discusses the Jubilee Year - the emancipation of slaves and the return of lands to their ancestral heirs - Bechukotai is chiefly known for the verses of Admonition, which warn of the punishments to be endured by those who disobey God. Among other things, the Admonition promises exile, the loss of family and attack by enemies and faint-heartedness - fates suffered by Larry Gopnik. In most years, the two parshahs are read on the same day. Because 1967 coincided with a "Jewish Leap" year - with an extra month before Passover - reading of Bechukotai would have been delayed to the following week (May 27, 1967). Much like Larry Gopnik's travails, the fearful Admonitions would be delayed but not escaped. Although the Hebrew School and Bar Mitzvah sequences in the film are clearly autobiographically inspired, Joel Coen was born on November 29, 1954 and hence would have had his Bar Mitzvah in December of 1967. The precise date of Danny's Bar Mitzvah thus appears to have been selected for this resonance.
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When Larry is talking with Clive's father, Mr. Brandt walks over and asks, "Is this guy bothering you?" Even though Larry responds, based off of the framing of the shot, he was actually asking Clive's father if Larry was bothering him.
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When Larry opens his grade book to change Clive Park's grade, all of the other names listed are names of the film's crew members.
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A Columbia Record Club representative informs Larry Gopnik that he received a copy of the Santana album "Abraxas". That album was released in 1970, three years after the movie was set.
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One of the albums sent by the Columbia Record Club was "Cosmo's Factory", a CCR album released in 1970, not 1967.
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Toward the end of the movie the Hebrew School teacher announces that "The Weather Service has issued a Tornado Warning". The National Weather Service was known as the Weather Bureau until late in 1970.
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The school buses are painted yellow and black. During that time and into the 1970's Minnesota was one of two states (Nebraska was the other) that used orange and black for all school buses. It was only much later that they joined the more universal yellow and black color scheme.
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While Rabbi Nachtner is talking to Larry and telling him the story of the goy's teeth, he is drinking Lipton Green Tea. Lipton Green Tea was not available in 1967.
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Three prong electric sockets are visible throughout the movie, especially obvious at the dentists workbench. At the time three prong sockets were exceptionally rare.
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In Minnesota, deer hunting season with rifles occurs in the autumn, while "tornado season" occurs from late spring to late summer. Two different dates in the film imply that the time of the year is in April and May, and the trees in the film have not changed color as they start to do in late August/early September. However, Larry Gopnik's neighbors return from deer hunting, well before the tornado scene at the end of the film.
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In all or most of the driving scenes, yellow center lane dividing lines are shown. Yellow lines did not appear in the center of U.S. roads until the 1970's.
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On the bookshelf in the background in two separate scenes appears a set of the blue volumes of the Encyclopedia Judaica. The EJ was first published in 1971.
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When the son is studying for his Bar Mitzvah using an LP, the cover of a famous LP of Cantor Joseph Rosenblatt is shown. This record was in actuality a re-issue of Rosenblatt's famous cantorial recordings on the Victor label in the early 20th century, and not what the boy is listening to.
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Dr. Sussman's dental office phone used a modular cord rather than a hardwire connector. The modular phone lines were not commercially available until 1976.
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The small television set that Danny is watching during the middle of the film is a 13" RCA XL-100 from the late-1970's.
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The letter sent from Ron Meshbesher's office to Larry has been addressed using a laser printer rather than a typewriter.
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Larry and his wife use the term "blame game," which wasn't in use in 1967.
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Larry Gopnik is writing an equation on the board in class. At one point he writes delta p equals the square root of ^2 - ^2 which would be zero, but the correct equation has the squared inside the bracket in the first term under the square root: ^2-^2. This is an equation for the root mean square deviation of momentum in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics. Later in the scene, after the students leave and Sy Ableman appears, the equation is in the correct form.
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The mezuzah (a Scriptural passage usually enclosed in a small container, attached to the door of a Jewish home) affixed to the doorpost of the Sansky house, Larry Gopnik's neighbor, is on the left side of the entrance and tilted towards the outside. Mezuzahs are traditionally affixed to the right side of the entrance and tilt towards the house.
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Larry tells the feds that they are sitting shiva over Sy Ableman. "Sitting Shiva" is done only by the seven relatives which are: father, mother, brother, sister, spouse, son or daughter. And since they are not one of the seven relatives they aren't supposed to be sitting shiva.
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Yarmulkas (skull caps) are not worn in Hebrew class by students some of the time and then they are other times. The lettering on the school bus is in Hebrew which implies the school is not a reform movement school. They would always wear yarmulkas in class.
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Rabbis are not wearing yarmulkas (skull caps) while at work in their synagogue.
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Rabbi Marshak tells Danny "When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies." The lyric in "Somebody to Love" is actually "...all the joy within you dies".
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When Rabbi Marshak lists the members of Jefferson Airplane, he omits Jack Casady and Spencer Dryden, who were also in the band at that time.
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When Traitle Groshkover - the Dybbuk - leaves the house in the opening scene, the snow is falling, and the ground is white. However, he leaves no footprints in the alleged snow as he walks through it.
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The position of the Rabbi Nachter's tea-bag string changes between shots, from the Rabbi's right hand side to his left and back again.
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It is not a Continuity Error when the Dybbuk exits the house and leaves no footprints, this is done to show that he not a real person, he is a wandering spirit, a dislocated soul and not a physical being.
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The contents of principal Turchik's desk drawer changes as Danny and his reefer buddy search for Danny's radio. In the brief instant the drawer closes, several new items can be seen that were not there when the boys were ransacking the drawer moments earlier, including a set of Groucho Marx glasses, a toy ray gun, a yo-yo, a garden hose nozzle and a Playboy magazine. Gone from the drawer are a gyroscope, Pez dispenser in the shape of a pumpkin, and a set of finger cuffs.
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Larry's first name is spelled differently throughly the course of the movie. The sign on his office door reads "Prof. Lawrence Gopnik", but the letter from Meshbesher is addressed to "Laurence Gopnik" .
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While sitting on the couch drinking tea with Mrs. Samsky, Larry's hand can be seen holding the glass at various positions (higher and lower) as the scenes change.
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Larry Gopnik teaches at a suburban college, but all of the mail he receives in his office is addressed to the zip code 55401. This zip code is in downtown Minneapolis, not the suburbs.
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(at around 1h 10 mins) Larry is standing in front of the blackboard. The equation behind his right shoulder, "hbar = h/2pi = 6.6 x 10^-34 in [mks] units" is wrong. hbar = 1.05 x 10^-34 Js in mks units.
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Danny is called up as Maftir, the last reader for that weekly Torah portion. However, what he actually reads is the beginning of Parashat Behar, which is read by the first reader, not the last. The first reader would typically be a "cohen", a descendant of Aaron, the High Priest and brother of Moses. In light of their family name, it is reasonable to assume that the Coen brothers are themselves "cohanim".
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On a close-up of a spinning record playing the track "Today" from the Surrealistic Pillow album, the label is A&M but the Airplane recorded for RCA.
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The blessing that is recited from the bima before the bar mitzvah reads his Torah portion should be "...asher bachar banu..." but in the movie the blessing is said, "...asher natan lanu...," which is the blessing to be recited after a Torah portion is read, and both were supposed to be recited by whoever was called up to the Torah, which in this case was Dani the Bar Mitzva boy.
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F Troop was an ABC show, which would have been channel 9 in the Twin Cities at that time. Channel 4, that they kept trying to find, was CBS (WCCO). There was nothing on channel 7, a station they complained came in poorly.
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Mr. Brandt and his son hunt and bag a deer. Deer season in Minnesota for firearms users starts in November. The calendars on the wall, and the weather clearly show the movie is set in May - June.
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In the event of a tornado warning in suburban Minneapolis, air raid sirens would have been activated to notify everyone to take shelter.
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The next-to-last line of Larry's Schrödinger's Cat proof has the square root of 0.077 h-squared, which he writes as 1.74 h. The h is correct, but the root of any number less than 1 is also less than 1. His answer should have been 0.277 h.
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In the final scenes where Larry changes Clive's failing grade, you can clearly see the erasure marks of the new grade before he erases the old one. This could denote the film makers needing several takes to get the right shot. Yet, it could also have been chosen to be included on purpose to show that Larry struggled many times with the morality of passing Clive, going so far as to update his grade, but had changed his mind.
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Danny's transistor radio behaves like a 1980s Walkman. When it is confiscated it has rewound to (or been paused at) the beginning of the song. Marshak mysteriously knows what Danny was listening to when the device was stopped.
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