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Review: ‘A Serious Man’
In many of their previous movies, Joel and Ethan Coen have subjected their protagonists to all manner of inanity and danger. At times these characters fall victim to their own faulty decisions, while at others they are battered by the uncontrollable forces swirling around them.
But never has a Coen brothers character suffered so greatly with so little in the way of response as Larry Gopnik (Tony-nominated actor Michael Stuhlbarg ) in “A Serious Man.” This fact could possibly be the impetus behind their tongue-in-cheek line in the credits that “no Jews were harmed in the making of this film.” That and the fact that many of the Jewish characters here are drawn as broad caricatures. But, then again, rarely are the Coens’ characters not.
Adhering to the quoted words of 11th-century French biblical scholar Rashi at the beginning of the movie, Gopnik attempts to “receive with simplicity everything that happens” to him. But even Job could only suffer so much before questioning God.
In 1967, far from the joy and liberation of the Summer of Love’s epicenter, trapped in a geometrically rigid Midwestern neighborhood, one seemingly reminiscent of the Coens’ childhood in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Gopnik is trying to live a dutiful life as a college math professor and married father of two, but he is constantly besieged by matters both trivial and serious that have left him in an existential funk.
After trying to explain the theory of Schrodinger’s Cat to his class, an apt metaphor for the ambiguity that surrounds Gopnik’s search for spiritual answers, the resigned professor admits to a student who has failed a recent exam that “the stories I give you in class are fables — even I don’t understand the dead cat.”
That which confounds Gopnik does not end with the cat. At home, his wife says that she wants a divorce, not because of anything that her meek husband has done, but simply because she has fallen in love with someone else, the pompous and absurd Sy Ableman (a pitch-perfect Fred Melamed).
Gopnik’s children, meanwhile, are doing nothing to make matters better. His young son, Danny (Aaron Wolff), in a haze of marijuana, TV addiction and Jefferson Airplane, is dragging his feet along the path to his bar mitzvah. His teenage daughter, Sarah (Jessica McManus), is consumed with vanity and the desire for a nose job, which she attempts to expedite by stealing money from her father.
To heighten the domestic aggravations, the Gopniks have been saddled with Larry’s brother Arthur (Richard Kind), who is sleeping on the couch, at least when he is not furtively and frantically working on his probability chart of the universe or hogging the bathroom to drain his sebaceous cyst. Yes, the uncle with a cyst on his neck is actually a pain in the family’s neck. Sometimes the Coens just can’t help but be cheeky.
Trapped in his familial nightmare by a hostile goy neighbor on one side and the sultry temptations of a beautiful neighbor on the other, a sin to which he will not let himself fall prey, Gopnik feels the world closing in on him. And when his wife suggests that he move with his brother to the Jolly Roger motel (more ironic winking), Gopnik hardly raises his voice in protest.
At work, things are no less treacherous. The aforementioned failing student attempts to bribe Gopnik for a passing grade.
Gopnik also discovers that an anonymous letter writer has been lobbying against his receiving tenure due to his alleged “moral turpitude.” And his office phone will not stop ringing with calls from a man at the Columbia Record Club, asking about late payments on Santana’s “Abraxas.”
Oy vey.
Confused and scared, Gopnik turns to his local rabbis for answers, but their tepid offers of assistance consist of obtuse riddles, much like the ancient (and made-up) Yiddish riddle with which the Coens begin their film, and empty rhetoric about Gopnik’s need to change his perspective.
Gopnik, who has made a living working in theorems and proofs, cannot accept that God might perpetually vex us with questions without providing answers. And there is no equation by which moral correctness plus humility equals peace or any other reward, no matter how serious a man one might be.
Despite being manipulated and deceived, Gopnik, betraying a mix of Jason Bateman and Woody Allen trapped in Joaquin Phoenix’s body, can only muster raised eyebrows and a pursed mouth in response to his many injustices. You want to grab the pitiful Gopnik by his shoulders and shake him into action.
The Coens’ script and the eye of longtime collaborator, cinematographer Roger Deakins, paint a surrealistically vivid world stuffed with symbolism and myriad spiritual dilemmas, where suffering is elevated to art.
But the overwrought sadism leaves one feeling not empathy with Gopnik and his universal struggle but disgust.
There is no doubt that the Coens, masters of this cinematic universe, want to see how much torment they can foist on one helpless man. But, after the chuckles die, the question is why?
And just when you think that Gopnik has found some respite from his many ailments, a new storm (or two) is brewing on the horizon. As it always seems to be. Why? That’s just life.
Oy vey, indeed.
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