A Serious Man

Written and Directed By: Joel and Ethan Coen

Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Aaron Wolff, Sari Lennick, Adam Arkin, and Jessica McManus

Director of Photography: Roger Deakins, Editor: Roderick Jaynes, Production Designer: Jess Gonchor, Original Music: Carter Burwell

Rated: R for language, some sexuality/nudity and brief violence.

    Anyone who has studied the Old Testament of the Jewish faith at length has probably come across the Book of Job. Job, a man of great faith who is put through trial after trial in an attempt to see if he would denounce his faith, is easily the most frustrating lessons taught in Judaism. That brings up the question of life: Why are we given misfortune, and does that mean we have done something wrong?

    Although Joel and Ethan Coen, the Minnesota-born directors who have made countless masterpieces, have finally made a film about Judaism, and pretty much about Job, it could be said a number of their films are about these stories. Miller’s Crossing is certainly a test of faith, as well as No Country for Old Men, Raising Arizona, and even The Big Lebowski.

    But their latest, and one of their most complex films, A Serious Man, is the first to directly acknowledge this fact, and explore it. The film, after a brief prologue of a Yiddish-parable about a man who might be a dybbuk (which I am told translates to a ghost of a righteous man), we are thrown into Jefferson Airplane, and 1967 Minnesota in a small Jewish community. This might be seemingly a personal biography of the Coens, but Danny Gopnick isn’t really the Coens. Played by Aaron Wolff, with a meticulously funny understanding of facial expressions, Danny is a hippie-loving, pot-smoking, young boy about the enter his Bat Mitzvah.

    But the Coens aren’t about to focus on themselves, and instead focus on the father Larry, played by New York theater actor Michael Stuhlbarg. Larry, a small-town college physics professor, is in some sort of a crisis, but its hard to describe. His wife plans to leave him for a good member of the community (an excellent Fred Melamed), his brother (Richard Kind) is both insane, yet may have discovered the secret of the universe, and a mysterious envelope of money has appeared on his desk.

    To go on and explain the events of A Serious Man would be useless. It is most reminiscent of Barton Fink in its ability to simply set of a Rubik’s Cube of ideas and throw it out there. To some, this may be frustrating, but the Coens do it with such absurdist humor and brilliant construction (the cinematography by Roger Deakins is simply impeccable, as well as the sound design). While it may lack of blatant humor of a film like Burn After Reading, A Serious Man dares to be seen and enjoyed again and again, in order to understand each hilarious puzzle.

    What is it about? Its certainly about uncertainty, both in faith and science (Larry attempts to explain Schrödinger’s cat more than once). It is definitely a puzzling film about a man put to the test of the limits, but thankfully Mr. Stuhlbarg is such a wonderfully comic actor that plays deadpan so well, that even when we are lost in the mystery, he makes it wonderfully entertaining.

    Are the Coens mocking the faith and community they grew up in? If they are, they certainly are willing to mock themselves in the process. A Serious Man is much too complicated to be simply a tirade against God, but it certainly, like Job, is a question of this God character, and his influence on the divine forces. I think people who pay attention to these clues, will pay close attention to the final few sequences that end the film, and discover a possible meaning for the Coens understanding of the subject.

    Of course, maybe A Serious Man is simply an examination of the brothers and their films, which all in their own way, are about the moral tests of man. Man is given the impossible task of life after all, but the way the Coens do in all of their films, is make the final line send the audience into laughter. Life may be tough, but comedy makes it harder.