Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Running Time: 105 minutes
Rated: R

This is a review from the London Film Festival.  This film is currently playing in theaters in the US.

Bad luck.  Karma.  Fate.  The wrath of the god(s).  These are just a few of the basic terms that the human race has used to try and signify those terrible happenings that befall them whether it ranges from the trivial, such as that one morning Joe cannot find his keys and runs late for work, to the traumatic, where Sue makes a wrong turn and is stranded in the middle of the forest alone with no supplies.  It really is a fascinating study to try to really figure out the sheer range of beliefs and values people hold and that is a part of what the Coen brothers tackle in their latest film, A Serious Man.  The film may seem narrowly targeted with its Jewish references and 1960s background along with an utterly insane and sporadic plot, but those that can past the aesthetics will be pleasantly surprised at not only the dark hilarity of the chaos the protagonist runs into but the intriguing narrative arc the Coens string together with their commentary on life, karma, and the individual.

A Serious Man is centered on the life of Larry (Michael Stuhlbarg), a married Jewish professor who tries to do his best to live a stable life in both his job and family.  However, he soon runs into his ‘black cat’ of bad luck as everything in his life starts to run awry.  Larry’s wife, Judith (Sari Lennick) files for a divorce and wants to remarry his acquaintance, Sy (Fred Melamed); his son (Aaron Wolf) is getting high on marijuana with his school mates right before his Bar Mitzvah; and one of his students, a Korean, has bribed and threatened him because of a low test grade the student received.  And that is just the tip of the iceberg.  Larry’s journey soon takes him around town to get advice from the rabbis, his friends, his brother (Richard Kind), and many others while trying to figure how to solve one problem while into quite a bit more.

The film missteps itself, mostly, in terms of its structure and periphery characters.  The Coen brothers, intentionally, created a very sporadic film that is definitely linked in terms of several narrative arcs yet still are very loose in their connections.  Although the audience is supposed to link them all together by the end through their own intuition, there still does not seem to be a smart transition or clear linkage made clear to the audience that ends up being more confusing than enlightening.  Much like some of the brothers’ past films, some scenes seem too obtuse and perhaps included for laughs for the production staff, rather than having any value to the audience and narrative.

This bleeds into the lack of importance of many side characters.  There are a great deal of them throughout the film, each really serving as a specific plot device, yet again, the sheer number of them makes them seem underutilized and some brilliant conceptions seem more interesting than the bigger characters.  For instance, the story with Larry’s brother, Arthur, seems not as interesting as compared to Mr. Brandt, a passive-aggressive individual in which Larry develops a fear for as a Jew-hater, capped with a hilarious dream sequence.  However, his purpose seems to set up only for that one sequence rather than expanded into an actual role, which is unfortunate.  This rides on for several other strong, smaller characters where their strengths could have been played, not only for more laughs, but as conduits in strengthening the plot.

Yet unlike perhaps some of the more abstract or confusing films from the Coen Brothers, A Serious Man strikes the right chord with the audience in revealing their intentions and still giving room for viewers to muse at the core themes: the result of a smart script and main characters that melds the humor and symbolism concurrently.  The culture and background of the narrative is dipped heavily in the 1960s Jewish society.  There are a lot of terms thrown around that seem to fly over the heads of those not in the know of Jewish traditions, yet the Coen Brothers smartly do not use this to create an exclusive piece for the culturally sound but as a backdrop to parody, analyze, and criticize larger, broader institutions and beliefs while still giving those culturally enriched audience members even more to laugh about.

The script is really to thank for this.  Every scene is over-the-top in some form with little downtime in between yet not to the point where the film is considered completely fantastical but just exaggerated to the right degree.  The proof comes when the viewer is tricked, several times, between reality and the dreamscape in what makes for some of the film’s best sequences as the Coens are free to play with reality at will.  In addition, the humor, as dark and hilarious as it can get, always stands to complement, not overshadow, the central narrative point of these increasingly misfortunate events.  A scene involving Larry’s son smoking with one of his friends in the boy’s restroom becomes a wacky yet integral point later on that connects the father-son duo in more ways from the source of the drugs to the relationship that is implied.

This smart script is transferred to the richness of the main characters and a few of the important periphery characters along with the real actors behind them.  Melamed and Lennick, as Sy and Judith, make such a hilarious foil to Larry. Melamed’s rich and baritone voice in the beginning that is played on for laughs as it becomes completely angry and frightening by the end of the film, while Lennick plays the multi-faced wife who changes masks quickly dependent on the situation.  And yet, once again, even with all their sporadic humor, their presence all makes sense in Larry’s life.  This transfers over to the surprising main co-protagonist: Danny, the son played nicely by Wolf in a lackadaisical fashion.  He is a child that is constantly high and has a lack of much will power yet still unconsciously becomes an extension to Larry through his actions.  Plot points start to flow from Larry to Danny naturally right under the audience’s noses until their connection is revealed in the final act.  And Larry, who has been repeated enough times throughout this review is more than well-played by Stuhlbarg.  He starts off as such a simple figure of a man, living a ‘normal’ life that becomes more and more complicated and layered in which the audience could praise him in one scene and suddenly horrified by his actions in the next.  This tension of the character’s motivations is played all the way until the very end in which the audience has to pull all the scenes together and analyze exactly what happened.  And that is what makes the film so intricately brilliant and fascinating as Larry becomes this symbolic lighting rod for a bevy of themes from the purposes of religion in one’s life to the role of the family figurehead to the range or lack of free will in life, just to name a few.

A Serious Man starts off as a weird, disjointed dark comedy that ends up being a tightly bound narrative, filled with insightful commentary and a string of dark but hilarious scenes.  Some may have trouble with the seemingly aimless structure and the outer appearances of the film, set in a 1960s suburbia that seems targeted towards the American-Jewish population (and of course, being knowledgeable about these references makes the scenes all the more honest and amusing) yet more than anything, the Coens use all these parts simply as background props to execute their sadistic yet humorous story that anyone with some religious background and encounter with some misfortunate events can attest to.  A well-written script and a host of memorable characters help to add and elevate this film simply beyond just another niche dark comedy but one that gives weight and thoughtfulness to its outcome.

The Wie muses: **** out of *****

Ratings:
*****: Excellent
**** to ****½: Great
*** to ***½: Good
** to **½: Mediocre
* to *½: Bad
0 to ½: Terrible

A Serious Man Youtube Trailer

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