Slothrop did not denigrate the film; rather, he found issue with it being called a miraculous film on par with one that is.
Allow him, then, to remind the Ass-Head that not all frames are created equal, nor do they all serve the same purpose. The frame used in The Big Lebowski was integral to the film because, well, it was integrated into the film. The Stranger represents a particular genre of film that’s way out of place in 90s L.A. and the character performs that dislocation. “What’s a hero?” is not far from “What’s a movie?” and so the frame functions both thematically and in terms of the narrative’s movement.
The introductory vignette in A Serious Man was a prologue to the film and raised some of the film’s major thematic concerns e.g. can we ever truly know about things that work on levels beyond the empirical? It’s a useful introduction, but not an essential one because without it the main narrative of the film remains the same. I can see the Ass-Ears piqued and incensed. But the claim that the historical disappearance of the vignette’s setting and language etc. plays a large part of The Serious Man is a critical reading into the movie that isn’t supported by the film. A historical critic has a right to investigate such ideas, but a movie-goer doesn’t unless the movie demands it by virtue of its structure. And A Serious Man deliberately does not do this. And whether the frame is accounted for or not, it does not in any way elevate the movie to a higher aesthetic and artistic plateau. Merely accounting for something is the job of the IRS, not art. And so I think you’re a bit harsh: “without that frame you got nothin”--no, what you have is a fairly conventional and smart modern-day interpretation of a Bible story.
The Ass-Head’s second point rests on a subjective evaluation: A Serious Man is a terrific movie because it is painstakingly allusive and not merely one-dimensional. But “painstakingly allusive” sounds to Slothrop like something a graduate student film maker would painstakingly attempt in his films. Since when does crafty allusion raise the level of a film to the miraculous? Though Slothy doesn’t think it’s true in this case, (for A Serious Man was sharp, funny and enjoyable) couldn’t the allusive factor actually work to the detriment of the movie: that it alienates many of its viewers who aren’t as well versed in the Old Testament as an Ass-Head is? The counter-argument, that The Big Lebowski alienates viewers who are not movie connoisseurs, or at the very least, connoisseurs of noir, doesn’t hold up as well because The Big Lebowski is itself a movie; A Serious Man is not a critical interpretation of the Old Testament. And if it is, then it’s at the cost of being a good movie.
The Ass-Head’s concluding argument seems to define “miracle” as something that is unexpected and unique. If that were true, then Slothrop’s erections would qualify him as a walking Messiah.
Now, Slothrop hates Prancer and Dancer and Goober and Schtuper as much as anybody from the Old Testament would, but let’s not go deriding the New Testament to “a marketable imitation...a magic answer” shall we? If only because that last zig-zag of reasoning has nothing to do with the movie itself, which Slothrop is noticing the Ass-Head has little to say about: let’s talk about history, let’s talk about allusiveness, let’s talk about the Bible, let’s talk about how the Old Testament is free of Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, but let’s avoid talking about the film. I suspect this is because, as Crisite pointed out, it’s less a film than a fable. But regardless of what it is, Ass-Head has yet to even come close to providing a good reason for the Olympian Headquarters in which he positions the film.
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