Ben's Blindness
The rabbi is a symbol of religion and the codes of morality that religions have provided for man. Throughout the film, Ben is slowly going blind. By the end of the movie at the wedding reception he is totally blind. This is highly symbolic as it represents the slow fading away of the significance and value of religious observation and the commitment to its moral codes to society as it becomes more secular in its civilization.
The Eyes of Dolores Paley
The open eyes of the corpse of Dolores as she lies dead on the floor when Judah goes to her apartment are a direct symbol of the concept that the eyes of God are watching us at all time. God’s watchful eyes sees the wickedness and the good and delivers punishment or reward. This is what is believed through faith, but the reality is expressed through those dead eyes of Judah’s mistress: they seen nothing, but the void and the abyss and the emptiness that follows death.
Poop
Poop becomes a symbol of significance through the strange man who defecates on Cliff’s sister. This defecation serves to underline the theme of a meaningless and random universe where bad things happen to good people without any explanation provided. Absent any moral structure, things happen. And there is no adequate answer to the question of why.
The Doorway
Judah has a flashback (or possibly just an imagined vision) of his family back when he was a little boy sitting at the dinner table during Passover feast and having a lively debate over the nature of morality, free will and God. Judah’s dad believe firmly that living a good life brings rewards while committing sin brings punishment. Other family members disagree, positioning the Nazis and German collaborators who got away scot-free as evidence. An adult Judah is framed standing in the doorway watching this debate take place, thus positioning the doorway as a symbol through which Judah can enter either into the faith of his father or exit into the rejection of that faith. His guilt has been wracking him up to this point, but once he exist through the doorway, he seems much willing to forgive himself.
The Structure of the Film
The very structure of the film is an allegorical realization of a familiar symbol. That familiar symbol is the two silhouetted faces representing comedy and tragedy. The comparison and contrast that make comedy and tragedy commingle while also making them separate entities is alluded to by Lester’s pronouncement that “Comedy s tragedy plus time.” The structure of the film situates the tragic tale of Judah and his mistress against the comical storyline of Cliff and Halley. They do not intertwine, but are left separate: tragedy and comedy. Then four months and Cliff’s comic storyline takes on the dimension of tragedy (for him, at least) and the tragedy of Judah’s having his mistress murdered becomes fodder for a movie pitch that ultimately leads to a punchline about where to find happy endings.
