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Visual:		8.0
Audio:		8.0
Acting:		9.0
Writing:		9.0
Score:		9.0

Director(s):	Ethan Coen • Joel Coen
Writer(s):	Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
Starring:	Aaron Wolff • Fred Melamed • Michael Stuhlbarg • Richard Kind • Sari Wagner Lennick
Genre:	Comedy • Drama
Website:	http://www.filminfocus.com/focusfeatures/film/a_serious_man
Release Date:	October 02, 2009
Rated:

Thanks in large part to their often fatalistic films, the Coen Brothers have a reputation of being cynical and presenting a jaded view on humanity. Yet while they dabble in human suffering—be it in the cold harsh world of life-and-death chases or the suffocation of suburban complacency—they never forget to slip in their quirky sense of humor between the folds of pain, as if it’s the only logical way to cope with the inevitable.

With A Serious Man, they return to their childhood environment, the middle-class Jewish suburbs of Minneapolis. Not that it’s an autobiographical or personal journey film or anything like that. It’s more of a 1960’s set retelling of the story of Job (of the Old Testament), but just as Fargo isn’t really based on a true story and O Brother Where Art Thou isn’t really based on The Odyssey, A Serious Man isn’t really the God-affirming test of faith that the Book of Job is. The film refuses to be so… serious.

Our passive hero Larry Gopnik (played with precise sympathy and bafflement by Michael Stuhlbarg) is tormented by a series of financial and personal challenges that seem to pile up suddenly for no reason. His live-in brother (Richard Kind) keeps getting in trouble, he’s facing a tenure evaluation, his pot-smoking son (Aaron Wolff) is having his Bar Mitzvah, there’s financial hardship, and on top of it all, his wife (Sari Wagner Lennick) is seeing another man (Fred Melamed) and demands a ritual divorce. The different Rabbis Larry goes to for advice don’t seem to help.

Larry is a physics professor, but also a man deeply rooted in his Jewish background. Faith in both seem to be the source of a clash within him. The mathematician in him believes in equations. “Actions have consequences,” he tells a South Korean student who tries to bribe him for a passing grade. But what about consequences without actions? Larry doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong. Why him, he wonders throughout the movie like Job wondered, trying to figure out what Hashem wants from him. “I haven’t done anything!” is the most repeated line in the movie.

The Coen Brothers have a tendency to leave certain things ambiguous, but with A Serious Man, they’ve constructed a spiritually subversive story that’s more ambiguous than anything they’ve done before, starting with an ancient prologue in Yiddish that may or may not feature an appearance by a dybbuk—a malicious spirit from Jewish folklore. It’s a parable for what follows, and what it does is set up a sense of ambiguity that carries over to the main story. Do events have meanings behind them, or do they just happen? Just what is really going on?

From the film’s opening proverb (“Accept with simplicity everything that happens to you.”) to the highly amusing (and pointless) story of a dentist’s divine message told to Larry by his second Rabbi, the film illustrates that a definite answer cannot be deciphered by us. Formula man that he is, Larry is obsessed with finding the answer, which is possibly why things keep getting worse. As he quips earlier in the movie, he doesn’t understand Schrödinger’s dead cat, but he understands the numbers. In this case, he’s more lost than ever.

In the film’s funniest scene, the English-challenged father of the Korean student threatens to sue Larry for defamation for accusing his son of bribery, but keeps insisting that Larry should take the money and change his son’s grade anyway. “That doesn’t make any sense,” Larry protests. “Either he tried to bribe me or I lied about it. It can’t be both.” The father’s response?

“Please. Accept the mystery.”

It sounds an awful lot like the Coens advising their audience. The film is deliberately styled like a mystery, even though there’s really no mystery at all behind it. There are title cards like “The First Rabbi” to highlight the importance of Larry’s spiritual visits, but those sessions end up with silly results. Mundane comments like the fresh air at the beach is shot and edited in a way that makes it seem like an important declaration, when really it’s not. People even drop dead inexplicably as if there’s a significance there. It’s the kind of tricky filmmaking that’s truly unmistakably theirs.

Putting the pieces together is tempting, but you risk being sucked into a confusing torment that Larry found himself in. If you just go along with it, you’ll discover fascinating characters and the Coens’ quack dialogue. Hilarious, engrossing and just a little bit frustrating—as the best of Ethan and Joel’s movies usually are. It’s great cryptic fun, and definitely invites multiple viewings.

No Jews were harmed in the writing of this review.