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A SERIOUS MAN
(****)
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Movie Review by:
Jim "Good Old JR:" Rutkowski |
Written & Directed by:
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen |
Starring:
Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed |
Running time:
105 minutes
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Released:
10/02/09 |
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Rated R
for language, drug use, some sexuality/nudity and brief violence. |
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“A Serious Man” is one of their (Cohen's) very best films to date and reconfirms
that they are among the most daring and audacious filmmakers working today”
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 If there is one thing about the career arc of Joel &
Ethan Coen, it's that they certainly respond to success and acclaim in decidedly
offbeat ways. When their 1985 debut “Blood Simple” put them on the map as
neo-noir stylists of the highest order, they followed it up a couple of years
later with the broad slapstick silliness of “Raising Arizona.” When the small,
dark and highly metaphorical art film “Barton Fink” scored the Palme D’or at
Cannes in 1991, securing their positions as artists of the highest rank, they
would return with the fairly expensive and cheerfully silly fable “The Hudsucker
Proxy,” When their 1996 effort “Fargo” became one of the most unexpected
award-winning hits of the decade, they responded with “The Big Lebowski,” a
movie which has since become a huge cult hit but which was largely written off
at the time by many people as nothing more than a weird bit of hazy-headed
fluff. Therefore, when 2007’s “No Country for Old Men,” their
uncharacteristically straightforward adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel,
became their biggest box-office hit and swept the Oscars to boot, their fans
probably assumed that they would once again respond to that unexpected success
with something decidedly offbeat and wholly unexpected (last year’s “Burn After
Reading” doesn’t count because it was already in the works before the “No Country” juggernaut began). Even so, it is unlikely that any of them pictured
the brothers coming up with something along the lines of “A Serious Man,” a
brilliant and bracingly original work that is funny and thought provoking in
equal measure and which is one of the finest and most fascinating works of their
entire careers.
Set in 1967 in a Minnesota suburb in which the cultural changes of the era have
yet to arrive, save for the exception of the sounds of Jefferson Airplane’s
“Somebody to Love” emerging from the occasional teen-wielded transistor radio,
“A Serious Man” gives us a glimpse at a couple of weeks in the life of Larry
Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Jewish academic who teaches physics at a local
college and whose life, as the story opens, is about to take a series of grim
and unexpected turns both personally and professionally. At home, his
brilliant-but-lazy brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is sleeping on the couch
without any evident intention of finding a job and moving out, his son, Danny
(Aaron Wolff) is supposed to be studying for his upcoming Bar Mitzvah but would
rather get stoned and listen to rock music, his older daughter (Jessica McManus)
is complaining that she wants a nose job and his wife, Judith (Sari Lennick)
pole axes him one morning with the unexpected news that she wants a divorce,
that she has begun a friendship with the gruesomely unctuous widower Sy Abeleman
(Fred Melamed) and that it would be better off for everyone if Larry left the
house and moved into a nearby motel. At work, things aren’t much better. He
isn’t a particularly inspiring teacher--he even admits that he doesn’t
completely understand some of the principles that he teaches, though that
doesn’t stop him from insisting that his students know them for their exams--and
that realization begins to weigh heavier upon him now that he is up for tenure.
A Korean student insists that Larry change his failing grade because it is
“unjust” and even goes so far as to offer him a bribe to make it happen and when
Larry refuses it, the kid’s father threatens to sue him on grounds that are
never quite made clear. To top things off, the tenure committee has been
receiving a series of letters denigrating Larry and while the head keeps blandly
assuring Larry that the letters will not influence the decision in any way, the
mere fact that he repeatedly mentions that fact is proof positive that they
will.
This is not merely a bad patch that Larry is experiencing--this is a string of
bad luck to rival the trials of Job--and for someone whose entire life is based
upon the notion that actions have consequences, he is dumbfounded as to why all
of this is befalling him. After all, he is a good and decent man who has tried
to live a life of strong moral and ethical standards--steadfastly refusing
temptations ranging from that aforementioned bribe to those offered by a
beautiful next-door neighbor (Amy Landecker) who enjoys sunbathing in her yard
in the nude, smoking pot and otherwise taking advantage of what she refers to as
“the new freedoms”--and is always eager to do the right thing, even if (as in
the case of his increasingly annoying brother) doing so only causes him more
anguish, even in his dreams. What he doesn’t understand is why God would make
someone who follows all the rules of decency suffer so much--even to the point
of being hounded at work by a collector from a record club that he knows nothing
about--while others seem to get away with anything they want. Needing answers,
Larry seeks out advice for his spiritual and secular problems from a variety of
rabbis, lawyers, colleagues and other allegedly learned people but in every
case, all he gets in return is either long-winded parables that have nothing to
do with his situation or revelations that will either get him into more trouble,
cost him more money or dangle a brief bit of hope before cruelly snatching it
away from him. Perhaps if Larry had heard the Hebrew proverb that opens the
film, “Accept with simplicity everything that happens to you,” those words might
have been the thing to give him solace in his time of need. Unfortunately for
Larry, they are immediately followed by a bizarre prologue set long ago in a
Polish shtetl in which a couple is visited by an old man that they know who may
or may not have died and transformed into a malicous spirit--by the time the
focus finally shifts to him, the proverb has been long forgotten.
Because the Coen Brothers grew up in a neighborhood not unlike the one seen here
at the same time that it is set and because they were from an academic family,
there has been much speculation that “A Serious Man” is a far more
autobiographical work than their previous efforts--at the very least, it has the
look and feel of the kind of small-scale and highly symbolic personal project
that a filmmaker is generally expected after coming up with a commercial and
critical hit along the lines of what they achieved a couple of years ago with “No Country for Old Men”. (Their actual follow-up to that triumph was last
year’s “Burn After Reading,” though it was already in production before the “No
Country” juggernaut began.) While the sequence involving young Danny trying to
make it through his Bar Mitzvah while stoned has a verisimilitude to it that
suggests that it wasn’t invented entirely out of whole cloth, it seems absurd to
think, after building an entire career on films, save for “No Country for Old Men,” that are arch and irony-drenched commentaries on various film genres (even
the beloved “Fargo” was a bit of a put-on of the true-crime docudrama genre)
that they would suddenly open up and let viewers into their lives by celluloid
proxy. (Besides, if that were true, it would stand to reason that Danny would be
the central character in that case instead of his dad.)
Instead, it feels like it is an arch and irony-drenched commentary on the kind
of small-scale and highly symbolic personal project that filmmakers are expected
to make after a massive commercial and critical hit. If there is an
autobiographical aspect to “A Serious Man,” I would say that comes in the way
that the film serves as a way for the Coen's to respond to their critics who
complain that their films are cynical constructions in which they jerk their
characters around from one bizarre situation to another with the detachment of
cruel and dispassionate gods who let their creations suffer for no particular
reason and with no satisfactory explanations for either the characters or the
audience members observing their plights. Read in this light, the film stands as
a fascinating meditation on the responsibility that artists have towards their
creations and their audiences--by not explaining things in detail and wrapping
everything up in the end, are they encouraging viewers to engage with the story
that they are telling or are they just being smirky jerks? I won’t tell you the
answer but I will say that the denouement is especially brilliant in the way
that it seemingly wraps things up while still coming across in such a
fascinatingly oblique manner that it makes the controversial end of “No Country for Old Men” seem like a studio-demanded reshoot by comparison.
Even if you don’t necessarily subscribe to this particular interpretation of “A
Serious Man” (and even though I am the one proposing it, I am not entirely
convinced myself that it is completely accurate), there are plenty of other
reason to admire it. Although it may not contain the most straightforward of
narratives, the screenplay has the charm of a rambling shaggy dog story
containing plenty of oddball divergences that don’t really add much to the story
proper but which are nevertheless absolutely essential to its feel--I especially
love the sequence in which one of the rabbis (George Wyner) recounts the parable
of “The Goy’s Teeth.” The direction is pitch-perfect in the way that it
transforms material that could have been painful to behold in the hands of
others into the kind of hilariously discomforting and mordant comedy that is
rarely seen these days. All of the performances from the relatively unknown cast
(this is not the kind of film that would benefit from the presence of people
like George Clooney and Brad Pitt) are spot-on as well in the way that they
perfectly capture the deadpan attitude that the Coen's are truly striving for--as
Larry, stage actor Michael Stuhlbarg turns in one of the best pieces of acting
that you will see this year and Fred Melamed is absolutely hysterical as the man
who cuckolds Larry and then insists on making it up to him with a bottle of wine
that he then uses as a ham-fisted metaphor for justifying his behavior.
Amazingly, there are even a few moments that cut through the dark humor and hit
upon simple emotional truths in an affecting manner without making a big deal
out of it--after spending most of the film offering the rabbi characters as
people who are out-of-touch with those they are supposed to be helping, the
chief rabbi gets a moment with Danny in one of the closing scenes in which he
finally and unexpectedly offers advice that is direct, to the point and helpful
to boot.
As an enormous fan of the Coen Brothers, I feel that “A Serious Man” is one of
their very best films to date and reconfirms that they are among the most daring
and audacious filmmakers working today. However, I am also a realist and I am
willing to concede that, due to the lack of stars and the outré subject matter,
the film will probably not catch on with a mass audience to any degree. However,
if you just sit back and accept everything that happens with simplicity, there
is a very good chance that you will respond to it as strongly as I have. Even if
you don’t, there is no way that you are going to walk away from it complaining
that you have seen it all before--this is an original through and through and
while I may not fully understand what drove the Coen's to make it, I am very
grateful that they did. This is on the short list of the best of 2009. |
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A SERIOUS MAN
© Focus Features
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2009 Alternate Reality, Inc.
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