Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
None (but it fits the tone of the movie)
Directed By:
Joel Coen
Ethan Coen
It's no secret that I'm a fanatic of the Coen Brothers. Movies like Miller's Crossing, The Big Lebowski , No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading would all fare well in an hypothetical Top 100 of my favorite movies of all time. They are smart, thoughtful, low key and passionate enough to keep my enthusiasm high movies after movies. There was no valid reason for me to miss A Serious Man.
I sat down of my couch, giggling like a school girl from anticipation and pressed play. A Serious Man is the story of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a science teacher in a Jewish high school. One fine day, his wife leaves him for a neighborhood widower and his life starts spiraling downwards at a frightening pace. He moves in to a motel with his brother Arthur, struggles at work with a student that offers him a bribe and seeks answers in the tradition-heavy Judaism. The movie is organized around his meetings with different Rabbis of his municipality, each one referring him to his superior.
You've all seen this story before. A Serious Man has the same narrative structure than American Beauty and other similar movies about men midlife crisis. A Serious Man smashes into pieces every stereotype of the genre though. It's a terrifying, grim and nihilistic reflection on the clash of religion Vs reality. They were never recognized for their light hearted happiness, but the Coen brothers are outdoing themselves in negativity.
Larry's quest to transcend his daily gloom is constantly stopped by hollow metaphors and religious none-sense, in which he only finds the energy to nightmare about. His multiple attempts to give a meaning to his growing pains will hit walls after walls, taking away from his energy level and his will to live.
A Serious Man is an angry movie. "Angry & Nihilistic" would be the comment I'd put on the cover. It's somehow billed to be a black comedy, but I fail to see the same wits that made Burn After Reading hysterical. The scene where Larry is battling over the phone with a representative of Columbia Record Store brought some of the "Coen Chuckle" out of me, but that's about it. The dead end metaphors and the existential pain of Larry Gopnik didn't make me laugh, they made me anxious.
I have read on the net that there's a good chunk of Jewish humor in the movie. That might be my agnosticism talking, but I didn't see anything funny. The weird cast of unknown actors (all Jewish...I think) doesn't do much to help. I found Fred Melamed interesting in the role of Cy Ableman, a manipulator that uses love and good words to bully people around and Michael Stuhlbarg does an OK job at showing emotional despair. No one will take your breath away the way Javier Bardem did in No Country For Old Men or Billy Bob Thornton in The Man Who Wasn't There.
That said, it's hard for me to give a bad score to A Serious Man. It's extremely depressing, but it's a well done movie, done in the quiet way of the Coens. The writing is violent, but it's short and effective, the scenes are vivid and make good use of the era's fashion to give it color and immersion (the 70's) and despite trying to wear people down, it's a movie that makes a strong point for what its trying to say: Don't even try to give meaning to your life, the universe's crushing none-sense will pummel you into submission if you dare giving it a shot.
There are lower points. The narrative is turning so much around emptiness that it's getting empty at some point and some characters are pale copies of the comic relief of their previous movies (Uncle Arthur). It also had a thick shell if you're not Jewish. The dialogues are good, but don't have the all around greatness of The Big Lebowski or the compact strenght of No Country For Old Men. Still, it's better than your average movie, but ranks low on their all-time achievements.
Watch it for the same reason that you would listen to a Khanate album, getting depressed. It's a bit slow (even for Coen brothers standards) but it's effective.
Score: 77%
