Lithograph titled "Lorna Doone" by Red Grooms, 1980
Gee - I know I do a "picture-unrelated-to-text" type format here, but sometimes the dissonance is a little much.
So I saw the new Coen brothers film, A Serious Man, and I have a lot to say about it. Unfortunately, most of what I want to say is pseudo-intellectual garbage about science, religion, and human nature, so I'll do my best to stick to describing the film's comparative merit as a comedy. And it's pretty good - setting the film in a Jewish community in Minnesota in the late '60s, the Coens are obviously making a film about their own childhood, so it's odd that it's so lacking in affection for its characters and subject matter. It's pretty vicious, but it's funny-vicious, kind of like the first half of the book of Job played for laughs at Job's expense. Structured somewhat like The Big Lebowski but with the sensibility of the Coens' darkest comedies (i.e. Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn't There), A Serious Man fits pretty neatly into their body of work, but it's certainly no Raising Arizona.
Larry Gopnik (played by Michael Stuhlbarg)is a physics professor with an unfaithful wife, a deadbeat brother, two selfish kids, and a debilitating conservatism that is not helping him deal with the fact that his life is falling apart. The college's tenure committee, a redneck neighbor, a Korean student failing his class, and even the Columbia Record Club are all trying to tear Larry down. As the title of A Serious Man suggests, the movie wrings laughs from a mindset and approach to life common to a certain kind of Jewish man, illustrating how rationality and faith are equally useless when the hammer comes down.
Oops - getting a little too "film analysis" there. Back to the basics - the first-rate cast of A Serious Man has no big names, but I think that's the best choice for the material, and it doesn't hurt the film (although it will make a big difference in the movie's box office success, naturally.) The visuals in the film have an austere brightness and cold feel reminiscent of Fargo but without actually being set in winter, and music is incorporated well into the key sequences. Speaking of "key sequences", A Serious Man seems more episodic than it actually is because its funniest bits are self-contained vignettes like the "parking lot" rabbi and "the Goy's Teeth". Nevertheless, I found the script consistently amusing with the exception of the pot-related scenes, a few of which were unfortunate misfires.
Even without a personal connection to the subject matter, I ended up feeling a lot of affection for A Serious Man, a movie that doesn't seem to feel much love for itself. I'd put it just below the top tier of Coen brothers movies, but it's the second-best movie they've made this decade and definitely worth seeing if you like their comedies.
"Random Rules" by the Silver Jews
0 comments:
Post a Comment