The Coen Brothers’ movies tend to be either love ‘em or hate ‘em and “A Serious Man” is no exception. The depressing world of protagonist Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Job-like character, is populated with such unpleasant people. Larry lives in a middle-class Jewish neighborhood in a suburb in the Midwest in the 1960s. And his troubles fall like rain: his wife plans to leave him for an odious man named Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed); someone has been writing anonymous letters to the tenure committee maligning him; a student has tried to bribe him for a better grade; his son, about to be Bar Mitzvahed, is more interested in pot and F Troop; his daughter spends all of her time in the bathroom washing her hair; and his unemployed brother (Richard Kind), who has a continually draining sebaceous cyst, is an albatross around his neck. All Larry wants to know is why he’s so sorely tried because he’s done his best to be a serious man and his visits to three rabbis provide no solace or insight.
From what I’ve read, the movie is strongly autobiographical; however, the Coens’ characters range from dislikable to despicable, with very little sympathy to redeem them. Even Larry seems to be a caricature rather than a real person. And if you don’t care what happens to the main character, then what? You leave the theater with a host of questions like why the Coens inserted the story about the dentist and the goy or what the preface, a Polish fable with Yiddish subtitles, means. At one point, Larry lectures his class about Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, stating, ‘…we can never know what’s going on.’ Is that the point? 10/4/09
1 comment:
After watching "A Serious Man" for a couple of hours I really haven't a clue as to what the Coen Brothers are trying to tell us. I think they should have added subtitles to each scene with some kind of explanation, maybe that would have helped?!
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