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Joel and Ethan Coen make movies like nobody else's, but even by their standards A Serious Man is in a class by itself: a complete original that's one of the brothers' best. After a deeply weird Yiddish folk-tale prologue set in 19th-century Poland (and framed in the old 1.33:1 format), the picture shifts to the region and era of the Coens' own upbringing, a Minneapolis suburb in 1967. Larry Gopnik (a superbly concentrated portrait in comic anguish by Michael Stuhlbarg) is a college physics prof facing a welter of crises and distractions: review by the tenure committee, son Danny's bar mitzvah, a cryptic-verging-on-sinister protest from a Korean-American student, the alienation of wife Judith's affections by widower Sy Ableman, the ongoing encroachment of brother Arthur and his sebaceous cyst--and don't even mention the proto-Nazi who lives next door. All these, and more, form a screenplay of such intricacy that the blackly comic tensions of one shaggy-dog narrative strand leap synapse-like to another; the movie becomes a symphony of metaphysical dread. Working again with world-class cameraman Roger Deakins and editing, as always, under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes, the Coens maintain impeccable control over the movie's look and timing. This is more crucial than ever, given that in the precarious universe they define, "actions have consequences." Then again, so does nonaction; not ordering "the monthly main selection" from the Columbia Record Club means you've ordered it. The main-title credits almost flaunt the fact that most of the cast members will be unfamiliar to us (though they all deliver); best known are Richard Kind as Arthur, Adam Arkin as Larry's divorce lawyer, and Michael Lerner (the studio boss in Barton Fink) doing a hilarious, wordless cameo as Solomon Schlutz. Special praise is due Fred Melamed, seizing the role of a lifetime as the unctuous Sy Ableman; Amy Landecker as Mrs. Samsky, the multifariously zoned-out siren who's Larry's other next-door neighbor; and Avi Hoptman as Arlen, Larry's mealy-mouthed academic colleague who can't resist hinting at the latest rumblings from the tenure committee, even if he can't really say anything. --Richard T. Jameson
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Accept the mystery,
By
This review is from: A Serious Man (DVD)
Throughout an illustrious career Coen brothers Ethan and Joel have crafted some very outstanding and gripping movies as writers and directors.Humorous movies, such as Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski; Intolerable Cruelty, and the allegorical O Brother, Where Art Thou? based on Homer's Odyssey, both featuring George Clooney in two of his best roles. Gripping and more serious movies include Millers Crossing, Blood Simple, Fargo, and No Country for Old Men. In so doing they have received numerous nominations and won 5 Academy Awards for Best Director, Writing and Picture for No Country, and Best Director and Writing for Fargo. Actors working with them have won Academy Awards: Frances McDormand for Fargo, and Javier Bardem for No Country. Frances is married to Joel Coen. A Serious Man marks a continuation, a departure, and a progression in their work. In No Country, thematically, people died randomly, and suddenly, and as a friend remarked. 'they never saw it coming.' Sometimes neither did we. People spoke of a nihilistic philosophy underpinning the movie. Nihilism proposes that life and events have no inherent meaning or purpose, no rhyme or reason. In a contrasting philosophy when someone dies one might say that's karma, or they got what they deserved, or in the greater scheme of things, it makes sense. It's 1967, midwest suburbia. Larry Blotnick, physics professor, up for tenure, has it all figured out or so he thinks, then things happen which make him search for meaning and answers. His blackboard is filled with formulas. Shrodingers Cat can be reduced to a formula, but he admits he does not understand the story. A failing student understands the cat, but not the math. Anonymous letters threaten Larry's tenure bid. Blackmail, bribery, Sy Ableman happen, and throw him into crisis. No formula, no uncertainty principle, can explain what's happening. Larry is immediately recognisable as the everyman protagonist. If you're like me you recognise yourself as having walked in those shoes, and yet it's all done with humor, and you will root for this guy. You hope that he gets it on with the attractive nude sunbathing female neighbor. His quest for answers take him to three different rabbis, with three different responses, and maybe Jefferson Airplane has the answers, and maybe there is no answer, maybe there is no point, and maybe you need to 'accept the mystery.' I predict that you will scratch your head and wonder about the first scene, and how it relates to the rest of the movie. I don't know. Maybe there is no point, and that's the point. Even though on the surface it may not be as universally appealing as No Country, if you look a little deeper it may be the most universally relevant movie they have done. I hope this was helfpul.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mazel tov! A seriously great movie,
By
This review is from: A Serious Man (DVD)
I watched A Serious Man and all the accompanying bonus features last night. Fans of the Joel and Ethan Cohen will love this one. I think the thing that I enjoyed the most about it was that I was not familiar with a single one of these actors before. When I watched it, I was able to immerse myself in 1967 and these characters, and believe they were real. Amazing performances by Michael Stuhlbarg et. al. didn't hurt.A Serious Man is a film about Larry Gopnik, a Jewish man who realizes one day that his life seems to be falling apart. His brother is sleeping on the family's couch and constantly nursing a monstrous (presumably, we never see it) cyst on his neck. His wife is leaving him for a friend of his. His son is smoking pot and signed up for the Columbia Record Club (remember that?) under his name. His daughter is always either washing her hair or out with her friends. Within this setting, innumerable irritants and stumbling blocks fall in his way, usually within the same scene. Jefferson Airplane are the background music to a heap of problems he finds himself in. All that Larry wants is to make something of his life, and become "a serious man". Confusing advice from Rabbis, a neighbor who seems to tease him by sunbathing topless, a South Korean student offering him bribes, a neighbor encroaching on the property line, and his own faith seem to taunt him at every turn. It's not a complex story, it is character driven, comedic, dramatic and nostalgic all at once. In other words, typical Coen fare. As is par for the course with Coen films, special features are sparse. There is a brief bit explaining all the Jewish terminology in the film done as entertainingly as possible. There's a great feature on how they made the neighborhood look exactly like 1967, and how they got the cars, costumes and locations. Finally there is a feature with the Coens and actors on the film itself, what it means, and what inspired it. I particularly enjoyed the short story the opened the movie, some made-up Jewish folklore that the Coens came up with. It is unrelated to the rest of the movie, but is designed to act something like an opening cartoon which used to open movies in the 60's. Enjoy. 5 stars. I hope it wins Best Picture.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Quantum Coens and the Gnosis of Life,
By
This review is from: A Serious Man (DVD)
This is the Coens' masterpiece. Obtuse, perplexing, exceedingly clever and insightful. From the perfect synchrony between the physics concepts Gopnik teaches and the form and content of the film, to the great characters and perfect acting, A Serious Man doesn't miss a beat. It follows a physics professor whose life is falling to pieces. Ironically, his decline mirrors the very concepts he teaches to his students, but he can't quite grasp the application to the real world. He focuses on the math, but doesn't understand that the principles apply to life as well. As such, he refuses to SEE the reality of his situation, the causal factors that are leading to his crises, and that his lack of objectivity in this regard is the very thing that keeps things from getting better.At the end of the film there is a scene where Gopnik makes a choice and the consequences are immediate, as if the phone call he receives were a collapse of quantum probabilities determined by the state of him, the observer. He constantly refuses gnosis ("I don't want Santana *Abraxas*!"), sees only the chaos, and is thus at its mercy. He is slave to the law of accident, it the terms of Mouravieff's Gnosis. The dynamic is explained in depth in Laura Knight-Jadczyk's second Wave book. When everything he thought was true turned out to be a lie, then what? He did nothing, and his life was the direct result. The film is really a meditation on the truth of the Rashi quote which adorns the opening titles: "Accept with simplicity everything that happens to you."
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