A Serious Man Film Review
Coen Brothers Wreak Holy Retribution All Over Jewish Middle America
Oct 15, 2009
Just like that -- the Coen Brothers are back at the top of their game. Not that Burn After Reading was any sort of epic failure, but in going so concept and star heavy, the Coens compromised in really delivering a great story.
There's a common thread running through the lower tier of the Coen Brothers' films -- they come off more like exercises in filmmaking than actual films. When it comes down to it, The Big Lebowski is a dissection of Raymond Chandler stories and Los Angeles -- a heady frame work on more than one level, but not first and foremost. Before anything else, it's a terrific story brimming with colorful characters, emboldened by the Coens' cinematic wit.
With A Serious Man, the Coens go big on concept (or do they? more on that to follow...) in what may go down as the duo's most challenging picture, and in some ways, their most personal.
Getting Biblical With The Coens in 1960s Minnesota
Few protagonists in recent memory have been dragged through the mud quite like Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Jewish physics professor whose life crumbles before our eyes. Marital and family problems balloon into existential woes as Gopnik goes from rabbi to rabbi searching for meaning in his misfortunes.
As one character suggests, Gopnik should just "accept the mystery" and to a certain extent, it's the guiding principle behind most of the film. In transposing biblical stories and concepts (The Book of Job, Abraham and Isaac, the sins of the father, love thy neighbor) to 1960s Minnesota, the Coens put a tripped out spin on these seemingly ageless ideas, questioning the relevance of fables that were never all that comforting to begin with.
The Testament of Larry Gopnik
Before our introduction to the ailing Gopniks, the film's preface begins in a Polish shtetl, a century earlier (shot in full frame). A man's wife stabs a man she believes to be an evil spirit, back from the dead and invited for a bowl of soup by her unknowing husband. The relation the sequence has to the rest of the film is hardly concrete (very little in A Serious Man is), but it underscores both the importance of luck/fate in a larger tale of coincidence versus divine intent.
Gopnik -- before his efforts to examine his existence and remain a good man -- has taken a lot for granted. When we first meet him, he is at the doctor's, given a clean bill of health. He's on the brink of receiving tenure as a professor, and at least on some level, is living out the American Dream so to speak. By comparison to his brother Arthur (Richard Kind), who has no family and must tend to his cyst everyday while depending on Larry's good will for shelter, Gopnik has everything.
And yet, outside of his work as a professor, he's done nothing of any real significance. To say he's a bit pathetic is a vast understatement -- Gopnik is the walking embodiment of nerdy Jewish timidity.
The Coens deliberately posit Gopnik's search for meaning -- and the circumstances ensuing -- as absurd, so we're signaled from the get-go that it's OK to laugh at Gopnik through all his woes, which proves a little troublesome down the final stretch. At times, the cosmic joke seems levied as much at the audience as it is at poor Gopnik, but in a truly Jewish frame of mind, the misery and humor are intertwined.
Jefferson Airplane and All of Life's Answers
There's something hysterically funny about Gopnik's unintentionally self-destructive quest when viewed against his son Danny's (Aaron Wolff) parallel stumbling through adolescence. With his bar mitzvah approaching, Danny gets stoned while practicing Torah, under thinking where his father chooses to over think. At the same time, both of them seem to miss the simple life philosophy in Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" (used to great effect throughout the film), which one rabbi reiterates to Danny on the day of his bar mitzvah:
"When the truth is found to be lies/ And all joys within you die/ Don't you want somebody to love?" This, followed by the rabbi's own piece of invaluable wisdom: "Be a good boy."
Easier said then done, especially as A Serious Man casts aspersions over what being good or serious actually means. Someone worthy of respect? One who helps others? A thoughtful man? Plenty of questions go unanswered, even as the film's finale wraps things up a little too tidily, thematically speaking if not narrative-wise.
That the Coens are self-aware doesn't necessarily excuse the shortcomings here and there, but A Serious Man comes to the table packed with ideas and talent (great performances across the board and not a star in sight). It's something of a mind maze with no clear way out, a Jewish conundrum of a film, both of its time and timeless.
RATING: 4 out of 5 stars
VERDICT: This one certainly is a head trip. It's not quite one of the Coens' best, but it's certainly one of their more intriguing efforts -- a screwy, anti-existentialist ode to the chosen people, and where that supposed responsibility leads or doesn't lead.
Previous review: Where The Wild Things Are
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