Movie Review: A Serious Man

THREE THINGS I LIKED:

1. PILING ON THE RIGHT WAY — Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a college physics professor in the flat Minnesota suburbia of 1967. In addition to anonymous poison-pen letters being sent to the tenure committee just before his review, his wife is leaving him for his widower friend, his daughter is stealing money from him for a nose job while his son in turn steals that money from her for the pot he's smoking when he should be studying for his bar mitzvah, and his unemployed brother's sleeping on his couch. One of his neighbors is a gun-nut while another sunbathes in the nude. A student is trying to bribe him and blackmail him while the collections department from the Columbia Record Club is calling, and none of the three different rabbis he consults for guidance seems to offer him the answer he so desperately needs. If you're a fan for how the Coen Brothers turn human suffering into comedy, then A Serious Man comes fully-loaded.
   
2. A REAL CAST OF CHARACTER ACTORS — After finally taking home a Best Picture Oscar for No Country for Old Men, the Coens turn to a cast made up completely absent of any recognizable A-list talent (Richard Kind might be the "biggest" name if you don't count the cameo from Fyvush Finkel) in making the most autobiographical work of their career. The move works in emphasizing the setting, which is also bolstered by the cinematography of longtime collaborator Roger Deakins.
   
3. IT'S STILL DISTINCTLY A COEN BROTHERS MOVIE — Nobody does a series of comic catastrophes quite like the Coens. And while the comparison to the Book of Job is fairly obvious, A Serious Man really serves as one more example of the multiple levels the filmmaking brothers have always been capable of working on with scenes that are suspenseful or funny—or both at the same time.

THREE THINGS I DIDN'T:

1. KEEPING IN MIND WHAT I SAID ABOUT A SINGLE MAN, THEN A SERIOUS MAN WOULD BE THE FILM MADE BY THE JEWISH MAN, FOR THE JEWISH MAN — Oy vey. I suppose the heartiest laughs about 1960s suburban Jewishness will come from those who lived it. For the rest of us, the overload of references risks being overkill.
   
2. SOMETHING'S MISSING — In their best work, the Coens could at least get you to connect with their heroes. But A Serious Man leaves the audience feeling more strangely removed than usual, closer than usual to just being the overly gratuitous misanthropy their critics have always accused them of .
   
3. OH, THAT ENDING — I've tried, oh believe me, I've tried to like it. A part of me can see what the intended point might have been (maybe?), but even then, the final credits started rolling too soon and ultimately I'm left to dwell too much on the real absence of a resolution.
   

25 WORDS OR LESS:

Isn't likely to change opinions one already has about the Coen Brothers, but it does breathe new life into Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love."