20) A Serious Man

A Serious Man (2009)

Directors: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen

Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus


This was a two-birds-with-one-stone viewing today. The Coen brothers are two of the filmmakers I will be looking at in detail later in my thesis so I needed to see this, their latest film, however it is also one of the nominees for Best Picture at this years Academy Awards and as I had mentioned in my earlier Oscar related blog, I was keen to try and see as many of the nominated films as I could. So a doubly productive morning for me.

Larry Gopnik is an average Jewish guy leading an average suburban life. He has a wife and two kids, a job as a physics professor at the local university. However when his average life starts to unravel, Larry is left seeking answers. Is God punishing him? Is he a good man? A serious man (a "mensch" in Yiddish, someone of good purpose and character)? Is God even paying attention?
Over their career, the Coen brothers tend to operate in one of two modes; either quirky comedies (The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading, O Brother Where Art Thou?) or dark, film-noirish thrillers (No Country for Old Men, The Man Who Wasn't There, Miller's Crossing, Blood Simple). A Serious Man tends to align more with the former, although it is not a perfect feel. The film is much more tragic in tone with the comedy tending to come from moments of absurdity in Larry's search for answers as to his run of bad luck.

You may not recognise any of the names listed as starring in this film. Truth is, most of them you'd be lucky to recognise their faces. In the past the Coen's have tended to enlist either A-list stars (George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Jeff Bridges) or top quality character actors (Frances McDormand, John Turturro, John Goodman) to bring their stories to life. For whatever reason (perhaps budgetary) in this film they have opted for no names. However this does not become a weakness, but rather a strength of the film. The anonymity of the actors helps the viewer to fully engage with the character. Michael Stuhlbarg in particular puts in a marvelous performance, opting to portray Larry as a hopeful man who is simply bemused by everything that is happening to him, rather than as a sad sack or a whinger. The supporting cast put in some really funny performances as the hopelessly pathetic support network that Larry turns to to help him through his questioning.

A Serious Man is quite an intellectually dense film. It explores big themes such faith, fate and reason. Larry is a physicist (ironically one who is an expert in the Uncertainty Principle) whose profession is based on reason and logic, however the Jewish community he is a part of renders his rationality irrelevant in favour of faith in his quest for understanding. The Coens are also not afraid to leave you with "Who knows?" instead of trying to present clear cut answers to these big questions. The film also raises questions about perspective. While Larry is convinced that his life is going down the drain, his brother Arthur still asks why God has chosen to bless Larry so abundantly while showing no favour to him, and in a rather comical scene the juniour Rabbi tries to show Larry that his sense that everything was crumbling was merely evidence of the fact that he had forgotten how to see the beauty in the world. The mere fact that the film is set in the late 1960s serves as a reminder that not too long ago things a lot worse for the Jewish people. Having read a few reviews it would appear that if you have some familiarity with Judaism or with quantum mechanics (particularly with the famous 'Schrodinger's Cat' thought experiment) you will find even more levels within the narrative, but despite having only a limited knowledge of Jewish traditions and practices and absolutely zero knowledge of quantum mechanics, I still found it to be a very stimulating and thought provoking film.

Todd McCarthy wrote of this film in Variety that, "This is the kind of film you get to make after you've won an Oscar." That's a pretty spot on call. A thematically dense film with a plot which doesn't provide a great deal of closure, brought to life by a cast of absolute no names, it can only have been the prestige associated with the Coen brothers which would have convinced a studio that this film was a worthwhile investment (albeit a relatively small one with a reported budget of only US$7 million). That being said, it is wonderful that the Coen brothers were able to get this film made because it is fantastic.