Indelible experience: An exploration of religion and ethnicity in the films of Woody Allen and the Coen Brothers

Abstract

This article explores, within the peculiarly modern landscape of assimilation, how the Jewish culture/religion that engages in seemingly unending conversations (Talmudic thinking) encourages the writer/directors Woody Allen and the Coen Brothers, to question tropes of existing genres and conventional narrative structure, and to tackle challenging themes, many of which are connected to a specifically Jewish American response to a moral universe deeply affected by the post-Holocaust world-view.