A Serious Man. by Joe! Coen and Ethan Coen This draft: June 4, 2007 Copyright © 2005 by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen Registered with WGA, East‘White letters on a black sereen: Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you. —Rashi FADE IN: AGAINST BLACK: SNOWFLAKES ‘The flakes drift lazily down toward us, Our angle looks straight up. Now an angle looking steeply down: the snow falls not quite dead away to collect on a foreground chimneypot and on the little set! street that lies maplike below us. Itis night, and quiet, and the strect is deserted except for one man who walks away from 1s, his valenki squeaking in the fresh snow. He carries bundled branches on one shoulder and has a hatchet tucked into his belt, ‘We cut down to street level. The man walks toward us, bearded, and bundled against the cold, Smiling, he mutters in Yiddish—the dialogue subtitled. ‘Man ‘What a marvel ... what a marvel, HOUSE INTERIOR As its door opens and the man enters. ‘Man Dora! Voice Yes... ‘The man crosses to the stove with his bundle of wood. The voice continues:.. Can you help me with the ice? The man dumps the wood into a box by the stove as his wife enters with an ice pick. - -- expected you hours ago. Man ‘You can’t imagine what just happened. I was coming back on the Lublin road when the wheel came off the cart— thank heavens it was the way back and I'd already sold the geese! Wife How much? Man Fifteen groshen, but that’s not the story. I was struggling to set the cart upright when a droshky approaches from the direction of Lvov. How lucky, you think, that someone is out this late, Wife Yes, very remarkable, Man But that’s the least of it! He stops to help me; we talk of this, we talk of that—it tums out this is someone you know! Traitle Groshkover! His wife stares at him as he beams. He takes the stare as a sign that she can’t place the name. ... You know, Reb Groshkover! Pese] Bunim’s uncle! ‘The chacham from Lodz, who studied under the Zohar reb in Krakow! Still she stares. Then, quietly: Wife God has cursed us. ‘Man