I've been stewing over this review for a while now. Part of me wants to wait until I've had time to sit down and watch A Serious Man again, rather than just parts of it (specifically, the beginning, which I've been through three times), but eventually you have to put something out there. A review today won't be the same review three months from now, and certainly not ten years from now.
What you should know before I start digressing about the particulars of Joel and Ethan Coen's latest film is that I really loved it. It's a dense film, one that I suspect you cannot possibly pick up every element of in one viewing (if you can, then you are a better person than the Cap'n, and I tip my hat to you). It's possibly their most autobiographical film to date, and not simply because A Serious Man is about a Jewish family living in Minneapolis in 1967.
I'd say there's fair cause to suggest that A Serious Man is linked to The Book of Job, although regular reader Adam D. has a theory that the "dybbuk" folk tale that opens the film is also linked in some way to the story of the "Wandering Jew", and he may have a valid point there.
The story of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is, in some ways, very simple: he's a Physics professor awaiting tenure at a suburban Minneapolis college, with a wife, a daughter, and a son whose Bar Mitzvah is approaching. However, when we peer a little deeper, things get complicated: Larry's wife Judith (Sari Lennick) wants a divorce and a gett so that she can marry Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), another professor and "serious man". This may have something to do with the fact that Larry's brother Arthur (Richard Kind), has been living on their couch and constantly draining the cyst on the back of his neck. Rather than looking for a new place to live, Arthur is working on his Mentaculus - a mathematical formula that explains the universe, or helps him gamble... and worse.
His daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) doesn't seem to do anything but wash her hair and hang out at "The Hole", but desperately wants a nose job. Danny Gopnik (Aaron Wolf) is less interested in his bar mitzvah and more intent on getting stoned and listening to Jefferson Airplane. When one of Larry's students tries to buy a passing grade, things start really going awry.
From here on out, I could spoil the whole film and I don't think you'd really notice while watching A Serious Man. The compounding of horrors in Larry's life are incidental, because the film is more about how he deals with them and what it all means. The film opens with a quote by Rashi: "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you", advice that Larry does not take. As his life spirals out of control, he seeks meaning from three different Rabbis. It should come as no surprise to fans of the Coen brothers that Larry is more confused leaving than in coming in.
A Serious Man is packed with un-or-barely-known names with recognizable faces, all of whom leave an impression (I could be quite wrong here, but the only Coen brothers "repeat" performer I noticed in A Serious Man was Michael Lerner, who played Capital Pictures mogul Jack Lipnick in Barton Fink). I'd really like some more time to pick apart the religious imagery in the film, or to try to digest Larry's dreams, but I wouldn't say that the film is hard to follow. Several reviews - especially on IMDB - attack the film for saying nothing, but I disagree.
It's true that there doesn't seem to be much more to follow than the series of unfortunate events that befall Larry, but I think there's quite a bit beneath the surface. It's the opposite of Miller's Crossing; a film I love because it fools you into thinking the story is harder to follow than it is, so that once you've "cracked" Tom's plan it all falls into place. There's at least one hook to Larry's story, although I'd be willing to say that in going back and revisiting A Serious Man, I might not find some other threads. Like I said: dense.
But not impossible. A Serious Man is quite funny, if painful, to watch. It stands alone as perhaps the least "auteur"-ish of Coen brothers films, but could not possibly be the product of other directors. I have a hard time pointing out exactly what it is that separates A Serious Man from their other films, but even where you can see the stylistic origins of No Country for Old Men in Raising Arizona and Blood Simple, A Serious Man appears to have no kindred traits with its ancestors.
Rather, characters share their names with childhood friends of Joel and Ethan Coen. Their parents were both professors, and they grew up in a suburb of Minneapolis. It's been mentioned that Santana's Abraxis and CCR's Cosmo's Factory were released in 1970, and not 1967 - when the film takes place. Allow me to posit a theory that fits into the semi-autobiographical reading of A Serious Man: if Danny Gopnik is a substitute for Joel and Ethan, then his bar mitzvah in 1967 puts him at Joel's age (born 1954). However, Ethan was born in 1957, and his bar mitzvah would have been in 1970 - when Abraxis and Cosmo's Factory were released. It's possible that they intentionally left this anachronism in because it reflects their ages respective to Danny's story.
I highly recommend it to all of you, realizing that some will ask me if I am mad. Perhaps so, but A Serious Man did not merely appeal to the film critic in me; it entertained and surprised me, which is more than I can ask for of most films today.
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