A Serious Man

Release Year: 2009

Director: Joel and Ethan Coen

Review: There is no such thing as a conventional Coen brother film.  I'm at a loss at how to categorize what type of movie 'A Serious Man' is exactly.  I left the theatre with one question on my mind: "What the heck did I just watch?".  This isn't anything against the movie, but it certainly challenges the viewer to take what they want from it.  The Coen's aren't going to hold your hand through this story about an unfortunate Jewish mans struggles.

The film is an unrelenting purge of all things good in in Larry Gopnik's(Michael Stuhlbard) life.  The Coen's seem to take joy in pointing out that no matter what god you pray to, no matter what kind of a person you are, no matter how much you plan, all of its for not, since bad things can still happen to you.  What you perceive to be your problems now, are nothing compared to what they could be.  Perception being another key theme which the Coens play with throughout the film.  There is a lot heavy, bleak, material presented here.  This is a comedy however.  To make this misery bearable it should be masked under a veil of humor.  This was my problem with the film.  The comedy didn't work for me.  The Coens did a brilliant job immersing the film in Judaism.  To the point where they convinced me that I was Jewish and anyone in the film who wasn't Jewish was an abrasive abnormality.  It's not that I couldn't identify with the material, its just that it wasn't that funny.  Being mildly amusing isn't enough to balance out this type of work.  The ending is what saves this from running off a cliff.  Right when I was questioning what exactly the Coen's were trying to say they, run out a fantastic ending.  An ending which says so little, but so much at the same time.  With this capstone it made me view the entire film in a different light, bringing so much more to the table.  This is a thougroughy Coen brothers movie, which while may not be the most entertaining film, gives an impressively dark moral lesson. 
Rating: 3/5