A Serious Man

The Coen brothers have been making movies for a while, though this is the first time they've really dug into their Jewish heritage. I wasn't quite sure what to expect going in, with the mostly unknown cast and not a ton of hype, but I ended up enjoying it a ton, and I'd say it's one of my five favorite films by them. I can easily see why someone wouldn't enjoy it, as it seems to feature every weird and potentially annoying technique the Coens use, and honestly I'm a bit surprised it was nominated for Best Picture over some of their more accessible stuff, although the expansion to ten nominees helps. It's quirky, it has unnecessary violence, it has dead end plot points, it ends abruptly, and it's really only funny if you get their unique sense of humor. But these are all reasons that I enjoyed it. As a longtime fan of their work, it almost felt like a reward for years of watching and appreciating their style.

An easy problem to have with the movie I guess is wondering what it's actually about. It begins with a vignette in an European village some time in the past, where a Jewish couple has an unusual encounter, and the movie doesn't make a terribly strenuous attempt to connect it to the rest of the story. It stars Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnik, a physics teacher and family man in the late 60s or early 70s, and shows what is probably the worst period of his life. There's no single tumultuous event that changes everything, stuff just starts to go wrong and doesn't stop. Some problems are more mundane than others, but they all keep piling on. He has several misleading dreams that go nowhere, and as previously mentioned, the film ends right before anything truly significant actually happens, although more bad news is on the horizon. For some reason this sort of ending seems to be in vogue right now, and as much as it bothers other people, I kind of love it when done properly, and this was one of my favorite examples.

The question of the point of it still exists, and I'm not sure there is one. The Coen brothers love their allusions, and comparisons can be pretty easily drawn to various stories from the Bible (or Torah, I guess), where the wrath of god rains down on a poor soul for no real reason. Larry has something of a crisis of faith throughout the movie, turning to various rabbis for help and questioning his beliefs, in ways both obvious and hidden under tricky dialogue with double meanings. The Coen brothers' movies lately have tended to be pretty bleak even when they're being funny, and A Serious Man is no different. But it still is really funny, one of their most humorous if you're in the right mood. Characters are bizarre without being silly, and there's just the right balance of absurdity with the darker elements to keep it entertaining the whole time. It's hard to pick just one thing to highlight the comedic aspect, though I will say that Sy Ableman is definitely one of my favorite Coen characters. What an asshole.