Directed by: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen.
Written by: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen.
Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg (Larry Gopnik), Richard Kind (Uncle Arthur), Fred Melamed (Sy Ableman), Sari Lennick (Judith Gopnik), Aaron Wolff (Danny Gopnik), Jessica McManus (Sarah Gopnik), David Kang (Clive Park), Alan Mandell (Rabbi Marshak), Amy Landecker (Mrs. Samsky), George Wyner (Rabbi Nachtner), Steve Park (Clive's Father), Allen Lewis Rickman (Shtetl Husband), Yelena Shmulenson (Shtetl Wife), Fyvush Finkel (Dybbuk?), Raye Birk (Dr. Shapiro), Simon Helberg (Rabbi Scott), Adam Arkin (Divorce Lawyer), Warren Keith (Dick Dutton).
I
cannot help but think that in some ways, A Serious Man is a film the Coen
brothers made in response to some of their detractors. As more than one critic
at the time pointed out, A Serious Man is the type of film you get to make only
after you’ve won an Oscar. That’s when, if you’re smart, you try and get a long
gestating passion project made. Although between A Serious Man and their Oscar
winning No Country for Old Men, the Coens made Burn After Reading – that was a
film with two of the biggest movie stars in the world, and it debuted just
months after the Oscars – meaning it was already well into production when they
won. A Serious Man on the other hand has no movie stars, is set almost entirely
in the Jewish Community in Minnesota of the 1960s – when the brothers were
growing up – and is a painfully funny modern day reworking of the Book of Job –
Job being the man that God punished basically because God made a bet with Satan
that he could punish Job and he still wouldn’t lose his faith. The old (and
tired) criticism of the Coens has always been that they hate and mock their
characters – that like some cruel, detached Gods above them they toy with and
punish their characters for their own personal amusement. It’s a line I’ve
never believed – as I have quoted from The Dissolve more than once during this
series, I think the Coens “love their sinners, but don’t let them get away with
their sins”. Their characters, from Blood Simple to Burn After Reading (and
beyond, in True Grit and Inside Llewyn Davis) bring the wrath that befalls them
on themselves. The same is not true for Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlberg) – who
is punished in many ways even more severely than other Coen characters and for
sins he has not (yet) committed. It’s almost as if the Coens are responding to
two old criticisms of them – that they are impersonal, by setting movie in the
time and place of their youth, and that they are cruel Gods mocking and
punishing their characters for no reason, by doing exactly that – but blowing
it up to more epic proportions. In doing so, I think the Coens have made one of
their masterpieces.
When
the movie opens, Larry Gopnik is a mainly happy physics professor – married,
with two kids and about to get tenure. That he teaches physics is no
coincidence – physics attempts to explain the mysteries of the universe using
mathematics, and Larry is about to be faced with a series of problems that no
math can explain. A friend, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), wants to get in contact
with him so they can have a “good talk” – about what he has no idea, until his
wife Judith (Sari Lennick) gets infuriated with him for not talking to Sy. According
to her, they both know that things between them have not been right for a
while. It’s time to get a divorce, so she can marry Sy. But poor Larry knew no
such thing – he’s blindsided by this revelation. And when he finally does talk
to Sy, it’s impossible to get mad at him, because Sy is so even keeled, has
such a reassuring voice – and is able to say practically anything and make it
seem like you’d be a complete asshole to disagree with him. His career is also
in jeopardy – a Korean student, unhappy with a failing grade, has tried to bribe
Larry into passing him – Larry doesn’t want the money, but he’s almost stuck
with it. And someone has been writing the tenure committee about his “moral
turpitude”. His kids don’t seem to care about him – his son just wants him to
fix the TV so he can watch F-Troop, his daughter just wants Uncle Arthur out of
the bathroom so she can wash her hair. And Arthur is in the bathroom a lot,
because he has to drain a cyst. He is incapable of holding onto a job, but he
has some large scheme, writing in either incomprehensible gibberish, or
absolute genius, in a series of notebooks that allows him to win at gambling –
before the police show up for that, and more serious crimes. And that’s just
the start of Larry’s problems.
In
response to this crisis, Larry goes to see one rabbi after another – starting
with the youngest (Simon Helberg), who offers no concrete advice, but advises
him to see Hashem all around him – I mean, just look at the parking lot! Rabbi
Natchter tells Larry a long story – almost a short film in itself – about a
dentist who finds Hebrew words written in a goy’s teeth. Larry wants to know
the point of the story – “We can’t know everything” the rabbi tells him. Larry
wants to see the oldest rabbi – even goes to see him and after explaining his situation
to his secretary, sees her go back to see the old rabbi sitting still behind
his desk, only to be informed that he cannot see Larry because he’s too busy.
“He doesn’t look busy” Larry says. “He’s thinking” is the response het gets.
Larry
spends the movie searching for an answer as to why he’s being punished – and
never gets one. Everyone else in the movie seems to know he’s doomed – everyone
seems to regard him with sympathy, not anger. Perhaps he’s being punished
because an ancestor allowed a Dybbuk into his house, as we see in the film’s
opening scene. Or perhaps it’s something else entirely. The ending of the movie
certainly suggests that some force is testing Larry – seeing how far he can be
pushed before he breaks. The moment Larry does indeed break – and commits his
first real sin in the movie – is when Larry’s problems really start – an ominous
phone call from his doctor, and a final shot that suggests that Larry was being
tested on behalf of us all.
As
Larry, Michael Stuhlberg delivers a great performance. It would have been easy
to portray Larry as a pathetic loser or a Woody Allen-style neurotic, but
Stuhlberg and the Coens do not do that. Larry is a good man - one who is
striving to do the right thing, and just wants answers to the undeniable truth
that he is being punished for what appears to be no reason. That everyone is so
damned polite to him is infuriating and he tries to hold everything together
until finally, he just cannot do it anymore. He is surrounded by a cast of
actors that I mainly had never seen before – but all of whom seem perfect for
their roles. The film is stylistic, but more grounded in reality than many Coen
films have been. They are interested in recreating the world as they knew it in
the 1960s, and they don’t go for exaggerated effect in the film. The film is
quite funny – but not in the overtly comic way other Coen films have been. This
is a film whose comedy comes from a painful place – you laugh, or at least
smile, because the alternative is too painful. This is a comedy that makes you
wince.
How
anyone could watch A Serious Man and accuse the Coens of having no sympathy for
Larry – for simply being cruel Gods toying with the character for their own
amusement is beyond me. Larry is the most wholly sympathetic protagonist in the
Coens filmography. Even that doesn’t ultimately save Larry. Someone really has
it in for poor Larry.
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