A disappointing if fascinating new film from the Coen Brothers.
A Serious Man is a dark comedy in the vein of the Old Testament Job, set in a Midwestern Jewish community in 1967. Based on their title and short trailers, I was looking forward to an existential Coen movie, up there with Barton Fink (John Turturro) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (Billy Bob Thornton).
It begins with a fascinating Yiddish fable, set apart like a prologue. So a philosophical tone of mystery is established with a captivating story on the uncertain risk of helping others, and even the nature of truth. I also liked the first act and most of the second act, even if the sorrows and multiple stressors experienced by the nebbish hero Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) started to get a little noisy and distracting.
But then something in the telling fizzles out. On one hand, anyone who grew up in a middle-class, religious subculture will be drawn into this film for its humorous yet accurate depiction of small-town religious sincerity. But on the other hand, something about the way it ends flies off the tracks disappointingly.
The first time we see Larry Gopnik in his role of teacher, the Coens choose to emphasize his ridiculous posture at the blackboard. It’s nerdy, theoretical physics. He teaches the “uncertainty principle,” which proves uncertainty as the order of the universe. Not so ironically for the Coens, we soon find Larry in his office preaching the certainty of moral consequences to a student he believes is trying to bribe a passing grade out of him with an envelope of money. Pride goes before a fall, and at home his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) tells him she wants to leave him for the family friend and widower Sy Ableman (a deliciously creepy Fred Melamed). The kids Sarah and Danny (Jessica McManus and Aaron Wolff) don’t really show a hint of emotion (they already know) but prefer to complain and quarrel about the same old teenage stuff like wasps around his head. Larry’s response is appropriate flabbergast, but then he too quickly asks, “Where should I sleep?” as if to himself, to keep his own sanity on track and to make way for people to run over him.
Never mind the additional stressors that he is up for tenure and his brother—with a schizoid personality and a loud cyst pump—is squatting in their home (a perfect “Uncle Arthur” played by Richard Kind). I could continue with a list of sufferings to do with Danny’s bar mitzvah, a neighbor building a boat-shed and so on, but that would give away the non-plot of senseless anxiety.
Although there are mannerisms similar to Fargo’s Jerry Lundegaard, Larry Gopnik has no caper in mind, only (mostly) clean thoughts … if only he wasn’t so worrisome and vulnerable to the misdeeds of others, and vulnerable to nightmares. I think the movie would be better with a greater show of strength in Larry, even if it’s only a show. The plots of most Coen films are like mousetraps, accidentally and not-so-accidentally contrived by the mice themselves.
The story is fascinating on a few levels because the Coens are really trying something new; Larry’s consistent mantra is “But I didn’t do anything,” so we are left with the mystery that the only mouse-trapper here is “Coens’-God.” The best thing about A Serious Man is that the Coens strip away a good measure of human action to make some room for a spiritual quest of sorts, a patient study of random life events and their connection to transcendent purpose.
With A Serious Man, the Coens give serious time to Coens’-God and spirituality, but I can’t decide if it is merely a long-winded morality tale or something more profound. The second act is thorough in Larry’s efforts to seek counsel from three different rabbis (in the Coens’ world, there not much difference between rabbis and comedians), his lawyer, family friends and neighbors, with little to no satisfaction. At the same time, he does try to follow advice in his own way, and this keeps the religious elements and spiritual quest grounded in sincerity. He also grows closer to his brother, and both gain perspective on their differences and their mutual fate. But the mousetrap must go on ...
Eventually, despite the delicious satire, dark comedy and interesting characters, the stale theology let me down, and I don’t think that necessarily comes from my Christian faith alone. If the rabbi’s blessing to Danny is just “be a good boy,” we know that this is not the Coens' best work, theologically or otherwise; the struggles of Danny’s father are too real, too complex, and too felt by the audience. The Coens shoot their narrative in the foot with this cheap comic wink, and with almost everything that follows.
In terms of cinematic style, the ending fascinates and even punches you in the gut, but thematically, it does not resonate. A Simple Man is thought-provoking to a point, but then you might realize that Coens’-God is just an old trickster of doom, like the Bounty Hunter in Raising Arizona, like the way they de-spiritualized the Ed Bell character/narrator in No Country for Old Men for the sake of the more fascinating monster in Anton Chigurh.
If you’re a fan of the Coens’ work, A Serious Man will provoke discussion for you—especially if you like mixing dark comedy and religion. But the Coens and their Coens’-God got it backwards somehow; it should have started where it ended—simply—and it should have ended where it started—profoundly.
