The film opens with a prologue set in a snowy 19th century settlement in Poland. A Jewish husband and wife are just about to sit down for dinner when a mysterious man knocks on their door. The husband, naive and eager to please, hurries to accommodate their guest. The wife, attentive and suspicious, identifies the stranger as a man who supposedly died three years ago, and – fearing that their houseguest is a dybuk, a malicious demon who possesses the bodies of the dead – promptly sticks a knife into his stomach. Her husband is shocked, but the stranger appears enigmatically unaffected by the wound. Finally, he gets up from his chair, knife protruding from his abdomen, and walks out into the cold from which he came, leaving the family in stunned uncertainty about whatever great misfortune they may or may not have set in motion.

Flash forward to a Minnesota suburb in 1967. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a physics teacher and married with two children. Despite his great efforts and earnest intentions, Larry’s ordinary, suburban life is unraveling at an alarming speed. His wife is leaving him for unclear reasons and wants to throw him out of the house; a student at school attempts to bribe him for a better grade, then threatens him with a defamation lawsuit when confronted about it; his sick, long-suffering brother becomes embroiled in legal trouble; his long-awaited university tenure is threatened by anonymous letters denigrating his ability; and his doctor may have worrying news regarding his recent X-ray scan.

Desperate for answers, Larry seeks counsel from three different rabbis, but their cryptic answers only confuse him further. Is Hashem (God) testing him, or is he being subjected to a meaningless cosmic prank? Does anyone really hold the answer to anything? What must a man do in this world to finally attain a meaningful existence, to count for something – to be a serious man?

The Coen Brothers, who themselves grew up in a Jewish household in Minnesota during the 1960′s, have admitted that they drew from their own childhood memories when making the film, and that Larry Gopnik is largely based upon their father. Jewish audiences will undoubtedly find an additional level upon which to enjoy the film, since the film is probably one of the most profoundly Jewish films ever made for a mainstream audience. There is even a 10-minute prologue entirely in Yiddish where the film pokes fun at itself by leaving a great number of Yiddish terms untranslated and entirely unexplained in the subtitles.

Still, ethnicity-based jokes aside, the themes at the heart of “A Serious Man” are as universal as life itself. Feelings of uncertainty, alienation and existential angst run rampant throughout the film, and are beautifully articulated by the weary, sun-bleached colors and vast empty spaces of Roger Deakins’ cinematography. The scene depicted on the film’s poster, in which Larry enjoys some time on the roof of his house after adjusting its constantly malfunctioning TV antenna, is a stand-out. Images of Larry adjusting the antenna in eerie silence, then stopping to enjoy the view of his neighborhood – from there a labyrinthine network of artificially green lawns and sterile white villas – manage to feel at once recognizable in their triviality and as alien as a trip to the Moon.

While “A Serious Man” never quite reaches the bar set by the Coen Brothers’ 2007 masterpiece “No Country for Old Men” – whose sad, weary wisdom still represents a high point in emotional maturity for the directors – it is arguably their most personal film to date. The worldview it presents is not optimistic, and the film begins and ends in ambiguity, but amid all the chaos there is something about it that is unmistakably, nakedly, resentfully human.

/John

Liz spoke to us about advertising and public relations in a way that made us all listen. She was well prepared, positive, energetic, lively, optimistic, and enthusiastic. Liz didn’t talk much about herself and her career; we even had to ask her about it, which was different from our other guest speakers. I thought this was great since she focused on giving advises and prepare us for the future. She also brought examples of ads that they had created at her firm, which gave the speech even more color.

When I was standing outside WII´s office building 8.50 Wednesday morning, waiting for Liz Fitzgerald to show up, I was sure that I wanted to become a journalist. But listening to Liz made me confused about my career decision. In some weird way I could see myself having the position she has in 20 years. I don’t know why but her passion and energy were something I could identify with myself and I suddenly felt like journalism would fit me badly.

I have been thinking about every single word Liz told us the whole weekend, and even if I am sure that I want an internship in journalism during the spring 2010, I do think that I will end up working with communication later on in my life. I have even done some research about further education in that area this weekend.

I didn’t know that Wednesday was going to be an important day when Liz Fitzgerald came walking down the street with an umbrella shielding her head from the rain. But when I thanked her one and a half hour later for talking to us, I certainly knew that she had made a strong impression that I never will forget.

As Liz said, you never know which person that will affect your life, and give you knowledge that will be useful the rest of your life. But I think that Liz was one of those persons, and once again I would like to thank her for coming to our class and inspire us to become creative persons.

-ANNA-

For those of you that don’t know anything about Guns n’ Roses, here is some background: Guns n’ Roses was founded in Los Angeles 1985, the co-founder and lead singer of the band is Axl Rose. Slash the band’s lead guitarist has become a legend during his career and when he was awarded in 2005 with the ”Best Guitarist” price the write-up said,

”He’s who we see ourselves as every time we strap on an air guitar. The top hat. The hair. The dangling cigarette. The near-death experiences. He’ll always be Slash of Guns N’ Roses to us…”

Guns n’ Roses debut album, Appetite for Destruction, released in 1987, went straight to the number one spot on US Billboard charts. The album has not only been ranked as one of the best albums throughout history, but is also the highest-selling debut album of all times. The band’s success kept going with the album Use your Illusion I & II and the 28-month-long world tour that followed. The band released two more albums after that tour, but because of some disagreements among the band members, all the original members left the group in 1994, except for Axl Rose. Guns n’ Roses did their last appearance and press conference in 1994, until Rose and his new crew preformed in 2001. They released their sixth and latest album Chinese Democracy in 2008, but according to critics it is not the same Guns n‘ Roses you hear on the new album.

Even though Guns n’ Roses has chance during the years, their music from the late 80s and the early 90s will always stay the same and be remembered as classics. So you guys who are one of them that just sing along to ”Sweet Child of Mind” at a nightclub, give the other songs a chance. I bet that after a while you’ll find yourself singing along ”I smoke my cigarette with style,” a phrase in their song Nightrain.

//Stephanie

This weekend´s downturn started on Friday, when we went out on a club. Saturday morning I realized that my purse was gone, and so was my card and ID. This happened to me in Sweden a couple of times, I wouldn’t say that it isn’t a big deal when I do it back home, but at least I know what to do, who to contact, etc. I belong to a small city in Sweden, where I usually find my lost belongings a couple of days after I have lost them, but here that is not a possibility. So now I face two big questions, who should I contact and what should I say?

Yesterday, I woke up with a neck that was killing me. I start to panic every time I have a problem with my health here, since I still don’t know where to go if I need to see a doctor. Lucky me that the pills here are more effective than in Sweden, two Advils and then you should be okay, so when a health problem arise you rely on the curing effect of those pills.

The two Advils were so good yesterday, that I actually thought that it would be a good idea to go and color my hair. Or you can say that my dear friend Amanda thought it was a good, since my hair was kind of horrible. Why do they not sell the simple and easy color dark brown at Harris Teeter? How hard should it be? And why do they offer hair colors like warm brown that made my scalp red and the rest of the hair brown?

Anyways, to go to a hairdresser in Sweden is way different from America I learned yesterday. in Sweden they talk to the customer, ask what they want to do and suggest what they think would be good. If you are about to color your hair they show you the different colors they offer and then you make the decision yourself, yesterday the hairdresser looked at me and then she said, well I am going to fix your scalp, I put 5.0 in it and it will be okay.

The result was good, but I was surprised, she spanned me around in the chair, and dragged my head back and forth, she was rough. The most surprising thing was when I paid for the service, they actually asked me if I wanted to tip, and how much… I was chocked and therefore I probably tipped her too much. I would say that this weekend was filled with cultural differences and problems.

ANNA

Then maybe www.nanowrimo.org is something for you.

Every November, this writing-oriented online community encourages aspiring writers to write a 175-page novel (50,000 words) from scratch between November 1 and November 30. The ridiculous time constraints are intentional – they are meant to force writers to abandon all expectations and self-criticism and just write as much as humanly possible before deadline strikes. The objective is not to write a perfect novel, but to overcome the initial obstacles and just write something, no matter how bad or incoherent.

So what’s the catch? Well, if you manage to scramble together those 50,000 words in time, you can upload your story to the site and receive feedback from the web community, as well as receive a winner’s certificate for your efforts. That’s it. NaNoWriMo is non-commercial and entirely funded by donations, so if you’re not a believer in the saying that “achievement is its own reward”, chances are that this might not be an event for you.

But to everyone who loves to write, likes to try new things, and doesn’t mind sitting back and laughing at your own accomplishment, I say go for it!

/John, 2008 NaNoWriMo participant (who bailed after 4,000 words)

This morning I woke up to the lovely sound of my alarm, a loud song of the Outfield – Your Love. Both my arms were asleep, and I had a hard time getting up and stop the alarm from ringing so loud. After struggling up from my cozy bed, I had breakfast and coffee before I put on my shoes and left the apartment in Arlington to take a walk to DC.

A great morning with a bright sunshine and a cold wind, could this day begin any better? After walking for an hour, past the Washington monument, the Lincoln memorial and lots and lots of other memorials and beautiful park and ponds I finally reached 14th and F Street. At the same time I realized that I was an hour early. I walked faster than I ever thought I could walk.

Anna was going to meet me there half an hour later, so I killed some time at borders, looking for Christmas gifts and enjoyed the atmosphere. At 10.00 a.m. we were standing in the office of the Foreign Press Center, they welcomed us and offered us a seat in the briefing room. Never have I ever felt so important and in the very same moment, totally lost.

We watched the room get filled with journalists and cameramen, everyone had a pad and pencil. I was so proud of myself that I actually also brought a pad and a pencil, and now I felt even more important, and in the very same moment, stupid and lost.

Daniel showed up just in time when the briefing was about to start. I have to say that this was an experience worth going to. Even though I could have been more well-informed then I was, I really enjoyed the briefing. Sometimes it was hard to understand what they were saying, but overall I followed the conversations and the speech well. This was a new experience for me, and since I want to be a journalist, it was very good to see how those briefings work, which questions are asked and why they are held. Everything said in that room were on-the-record, and every journalist noted almost every word that was said.

This was a briefing held by Dr. Gordon, who was talking about relations between the U.S and EU. He talked about how their relationship could be improved and what the U.S wanted to do for the EU. As far as I know, almost every journalist in that room where from EU, and I even recognized a few Swedes.

In short, great experience, and if I get a chance, I would definitely go again.

Amanda Svensson

I have always enjoyed shopping, and fashion has always been a big part of my life. The first thing I noticed when I got here was that Washington is not a very fashionable city. For instance, it’s not rare to see people in a $1000 suit, wearing flip-flops on their way to work, that is something I would never see where I come from.

I never realized how important fashion is to me before I got here. I usually don’t reflect about how i express myself through my cloths, but since being here  I realize that fashion is a very big part of me, and I miss the whole fashion atmosphere which is natural in Stockholm.

Everything is so… Black, grey and beige here in a preppy way, nothing wrong with that, but it wouldn’t kill to have a broader market. I’m also surprised in the variety of stores, there is non. You have to go to Maryland to get the real range.

It feels like I am in a desert without any water…

I’m going to New York soon, and I’m so looking forward to being around fashion again.

//Stephanie

So, last time I told you about the U.S. – but what about Sweden? In the Swedish parliament there are seven parties with quite different agendas in the daily life, even though I have told you in my former contributions to this blog that they are mainly only divided into (and has been more and more over the last years) two alternatives for building a majority government upon. These seven parties initially represent each of the larger historical ideologies that have created the standing spectra that we see in the world today. We have – and you may forgive me for generalizing (since there are of course also some nuances to this divide) – the Socialist Social Democrats, the Communist Left Party, the Green Environmental Party (all of whom are to the left), the Liberal Centre Rural Party and Liberal People’s Party, and the Liberal-Conservative Moderate Party and Christ Democrats (all of whom to the right).  

For a newly-initiated into Swedish politics this spectra might look as a base for very harsh ideological differences and everlasting conflicts. But this isn’t actually the case since Swedish politics in my view, and through my experience of other parliaments’ tough duels in their highest chambers for societal debate, are not that conflict-centered. I have been to the plenum in Stockholm many times over the latest years and it has above all been quiet and not filled with raised fists and boisterous voices, but more of a silent calm. This is maybe because of that most of the political decisions are not tried on the floor without being settled a forehand. But this doesn’t make the calmness less valuable as a description for the lack of ideological debate in Sweden.

I believe that the main reason for this lack is that the Social Democrats have been in power for over 60 out of 75 years. They have had plenty of time to create their social “welfare state” with high taxes, many decisions centered to the government and its bureaucracies plus (as I have described) no room left at all for any individualism. The Social Democrats have promoted a Socialism built upon the rule of Jante, lagom and state funding. They say that Swedes wouldn’t have been able to build this state just by themselves – which is the same as to decrease the true value of individualism and the hope of people to see the ability for building a better tomorrow, since they can’t complain when all is lagom.

This Social Democrats’ policy has dragged Sweden into a corner where it at first is even hard to see ideological differences between the alternatives because the Socialist rule has been so incorporated into the whole of society. Because of that it is also extraordinarily hard to challenge the Socialism of the Social Democrats – when the centre-right parties occasionally are voted in since people believe that the Social Democrats has done something really bad (and by that I mean really bad!). Today and yesterday it has been hard for Swedes to see the policies of others since the dominance of Socialism has been so systematic. Many Swedes tend to ask themselves “shouldn’t they always stay in power because they always have?” when going to vote on the Election Day in September every fourth year.

So if you want to challenge the Socialism in Sweden you have to win more than just one election. For since the Social Democrats rule of ideology is so thick they only have to use it sometimes to explain their own practice of politics. Since this ruling ideology is so systematized you have to reform it with practical politics before going on to the more ideological shifts in standpoint. That is why I have most recently explained that ideological debates are more individualism-building than practical politics. It is also why the present Swedish government of the liberal and liberal-conservative parties are going for reform in small steps since they have the Social Democrats’ long ruling to consider and break with before trying to build an individualistic and ideology-inviting society where one can question a party that has been in power for too long and political shifts can be more practically transformed once in a while. If that would be the case Sweden would have moved away from collectivism to individualism, thanks to a reformation on practical daily policymaking which has led into an ideological awakening after more periods in office. Without it Sweden would basically stick to the Socialist model forever.

So this lack of ideological “radicalism” has led to a culture where the practical policies and ideological differences has been tied to the Social Democratic left and it cannot go further than into the centre, where the Moderate Party (the largest of the centre-right which is lead by present Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt) cannot get into power with a more traditional liberal-conservative policy through which they will be yelled at as “det gamla högerspöket” (“the old conservative ghost”) but instead has to market themselves as and transform into “det nya arbetarpartiet” (“the new workers’ party”) to break Social Democratic-rule today, and where day to day collective policies are more interesting to people than longer-term ideological thinking. It is – when compared to the words of Peter Gabriel – the Platonic cave of “drowning in fear” and being “bottled in a strong compression” within a great loss of individualism and obsession on collectivism. In my belief one has to reach out for ideologies to break free from this dense cave. It also means to be able to reach the light filled with higher goals and standards plus a much sounder political climate instead of staying in the darkness of distortion.

When compared to the political and ideological spectra in the United States I hope that my message is clear. Even though the U.S. “only” has two major parties in the Democrats and the Republicans I did in my last contribution to the blog explain their “liberal” and “conservative” ideologies, and also decide on that the Republican side is the much more individualistic and therefore also the one that has a goal in the longer term except for just ruling the people. So, since I have already concluded that the battle of politics in the U.S. is that of a fight on ideology and individualism I would like to remark that the President and Congress are more of elected from the turns of the tide than because of their daily politics. So even if the president for instance only can stay in office for a total of eight years I do think that the more individualistic Americans look more into the future when they make their choice than many Swedes do. That is also why the practical differences in U.S. politics can be so astounding, since they are much more built on the perspectives from ideologies which are free to have their fight on society and over the public. In Sweden this fight is just to pick at each other and not bring up the boxing gloves to settle it, which is also why we have a lack of individualism in our country. Americans do not in fact have to worry about which is used to cling to power since it is more up to the individual boxers and since they usually tend to follow upon each other if the other side has made some really bad punches. Americans do not have to worry about being too progressive when it comes to reform. Americans do not have to keep ideologies and day-to-day politics separated. That is why America has a much sounder political ring for settling long debates and developing the nation within and without.

That is also why Swedish liberals are more to the left than Americans, why Swedish conservatives are more to the left of American and why Sweden has been under the Social Democratic collective power for over 60 of the last 75 years. So if we Swedes want individualism, which is the best way to walk the path of development with the help of the compass of ideologies, we will have to fight for it the same way Americans have done. But if we cannot think outside the box and strive to break free we are doomed to stay in any cave or cage – “drowning in a liquid fear. Bottled in a strong compression” with a “distortion” that “shows obsession”. If that would be the case I will be the first to get even more convinced that I am actually in that kind of place and as an individual therefore cry out: “get me out of this cage!”.

- Daniel