Review: A Serious Man

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A Serious Man

The Coen brothers' latest film, A Serious Man, is hard to categorize. It's not one of the light-hearted funny films like Raising Arizona ... its comedy is far darker than Burn After Reading. I liked it much better than No Country for Old Men, which just didn't grab me. This is a low-budget movie that is obviously not meant to appeal to a wide audience, but viewers who are smart enough and interested enough to get involved with this story will find it extremely rewarding. And perhaps a little frustrating -- well, that's the Coens for you.

The cast of A Serious Man has no stars -- at best, the characters actors might look vaguely familiar to you. Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, the central character of the film. In the late 1960s, Larry is a mathematics professor at a small Midwest college -- up for tenure, but a little worried about his chances. He's having a run-in with a student who's dissatisfied with his grades. His brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is acting increasingly odd. And now his wife (Sari Lennick), apparently out of the blue, has decided she's in love with family friend Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed) and wants a divorce.

The background, and in a sense the heart of this film, is that Larry and his family are part of a close-knit Jewish community. During most of the film, Larry's teenage-pothead son Danny (Aaron Wolff) is preparing for his bar mitzvah, and this event is interwoven with the other plot elements. Larry seems baffled and even mystified by his goy next-door neighbor -- a kind of role reversal from what we've seen in more traditional Hollywood movies. And the advice that everyone gives Larry, as he tries to overcome a sudden onslaught of difficulties, is to consult a rabbi. 

Several reviewers have said that audiences will not understand A Serious Man unless they have a basic knowledge of Jewish culture. This New Orleans Catholic-raised girl disagrees. Admittedly my husband is Jewish and I have probably picked up a smattering of information about certain traditions, but I don't think that affected my viewing of the movie. My husband points out that he didn't know some of the terms being used, but that either the film takes pains to explain such things, or ensures that you don't need to know them to understand what's going on. If you grew up with a traditional religion, no matter which one, you can sympathize with these characters.

However, I do think that you need to be the kind of viewer who can draw conclusions, who can think about what you're seeing, and who doesn't need to have every little point spelled out for you in black and white. This is a movie for thoughtful audiences, the kind where you go have coffee afterwards and discuss the ominous ending, and how the prologue fits into the rest of the movie, and whether the movie is actually anti-religion, showing the ways in which a religion can tear someone apart instead of sustaining them. And how does mathematics fit into all of this? It's not an easy film to watch -- you want something easy, go see Whip It instead (a fun movie, but in no way deep or complex).

A Serious Man is difficult but not unlikeable, different but not so much that it's incomprehensible. The characters are all realistic and believable in the context of the film -- having no instantly recognizable stars helps with that. I picked out Adam Arkin and Michael Lerner as a pair of lawyers, but no one else. The score is a wonderful blend of Jewish music, rock music of the time, and some original music from Carter Burwell (who has scored many Coen brothers' movies). I can't say I enjoyed it, but it stuck with me for days afterwards ... and if y'all see it and want to go for coffee to talk about it, I'm still game.

Austin connections: Co-writer/director Joel Coen is an alumnus of The University of Texas at Austin, where he attended graduate school for a year. Former Austinite (and Alamo regular) Jarrette Moats was the film's art department coordinator.