A Serious Man

I have been waiting to watch the Coen Brothers' first film after 'Burn After Reading' for ages. I missed it when it was out in cinemas nearly 3 years ago, and I have waited patiently for almost as long for whatever embargo the distribution company has against LoveFilm renting it to vanish - finally last week a DVD copy entered my possession. The story of 'A Serious Man' has Coen Brothers written all over it. Michael Stuhlbarg (imdb's spelling) plays Larry Gopnik, a middle-aged Jewish man living in late 60s, middle class, middle-of-the-road Americana has a crisis of humanity and faith when a series of things in his life all go wrong at the same time. His wife wants to divorce him, his son cares only about TV reception, one of his students is trying to bribe him and his neo-nazi looking redneck neighbour is trying to encroach on to his land.

At first this sounds a like it might sit in the 'Jewish man struggles to understand world' canon of the Coens' films like 'Barton Fink', but the film has a fairytale quality to it that probably puts it in the same part of the Venn diagram as 'The Man who wasn't there'.  The setting is sort of a slightly skewed fantasy world of 1960s middle America, a Jewish purgatory in which our protagonist is being tested to his limits.  It's a film that opens with a pre-credits sequence set in rural 18th century Poland (or somewhere Eastern European & Jewish) in which a Jewish couple appear to encounter a sort of undead riddler who they chase out of their house. The scene is never referred to again.  When Larry encounters each of the priests from whom he seeks guidance throughout the film, they each tell him slightly non-sensical stories in attempts to help - stories not unlike the one told to us by the Coens in the open scene.  What to read into these stories?  Who knows?  As a film though, as well as being mysterious and off-the-wall, it is funny and darkly comic in all the ways you would expect a Coen brothers film to be.  Scene-to-scene it's an excellent watch, with very little coming across as filler.

'A Serious Man' is whatever you want to make of it. It can be a blackly comic throw-away tale about 2 weeks in one man's life, or just as easily be a modern re-telling of the story of Job (and of course Job was Jewish - so why not Larry?). For me it is a parable about the difficulty of doing the right things in life, while at the same time fearing what will happen if you give into your real desires. Thus Larry tries too hard to be the Serious Man; always unwilling to make the sacrifices to do what is right, but too worried of the consequences of doing what he wants. The film ends at an unexpected moment, a moment that provides several questions, the answers to which the viewer is invited to decide upon. Either Larry is a man living at the whims of random chance, or a man being tested by some unknown external force. Whether that force is God, the Coen brothers messing with their character or mere happenstance is up to the viewer to decide. Much like how we all must decide upon the existence or not of divine providence in the real world.

After all that though, it might be that the Coens actually don't expect us to take their film too seriously at all. It could be that the mysterious opening scene is there simply to make us realise that what follows is meant to be something of a joke.  One of the priests Larry visits tells a similarly unbelievable story about a dentist seeing a message from God etched in the teeth of his patient. I think the implication of the priest's tale is that all these stories and religious beliefs are two sides of the same coin, i.e. nothing more than stories that we are free to interpret, believe or dismiss as we choose. This could be the ultimate irony of a film called 'A Serious Man' - that the message is to not take things seriously.

Whatever the truth behind the Coen Brothers' intentions, I found 'A Serious Man' to be a fascinating film that was funny, thoughtful, interesting and engaging. It sparked a debate between myself and housemate Andy afterwards, as we tried to work out why the film ended so abruptly as it did. Personally I thought the ending was excellent, and the way it posed its big question about religion and faith was subtle without any overt attempt to preach either way. If I had to rank the Coen films (which I don't, but now I've thought of the idea I think I'm going to have to at some point), 'A Serious Man' would easily push its way into the upper echelons.