A Serious Man (2009)
– It’s no secret around here that I’m a fan of Joel and Ethan Coen, but I
hadn’t remembered this movie well enough to prepare myself for how quickly it
would sink its claws into my brain and there prey upon my weakness for a good
puzzle box. Put another way, as its protagonist frequently laments, “What’s
going on?!” Michael Stuhlbarg stars as physics professor Larry Gopnik, up for
tenure amid a swirling cavalcade of calamity; his son’s bar mitzvah rests in a
hazy pot-clouded future, his shiftless brother (Richard Kind) lives on his
couch, a divorce looms with his wife and her ersatz beau Sy Ableman, and a
disgruntled South Korean student may have left a bribe in Prof. Gopnik’s office.
The film is Gopnik’s search for answers – from his family, his attorneys, and
his God – but as with most Coen movies, the result is a madcap romp seasoned
with light misanthropy, a dizzying world that makes increasingly less sense but
nevertheless transfixes the viewer. It shares some affinity with Barton Fink, whose glasses Gopnik seems
to have borrowed, and it carries a similar theme of a bewildered academic who’s
all the more frustrated by the feeling that all of this should be making sense to him. After a few viewings, I’m still not
sure if this is a modern-day story of Job or a postmodern search for answers in
a world unable to provide them, but two things of which I’m certain – it’s
irresistibly hilarious and eminently quotable. I don’t often hear this
mentioned among the best of the Coens, though I’m starting to think that’s a
weirdly exclusive list, since A Serious
Man is as good as any of their other comedies of errors.That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you next week!
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