FILM REVIEW: A SERIOUS MAN
REVIEWED BY ADAM KAMIEN

THE Coens aren’t romantics, this we know. Even the love stories the pair has tackled in its 14-film career have been tragic, cynical and usually doomed.

But with their latest offering, A Serious Man, Joel and Ethan Coen plumb new, denuded depths, with mixed results.

Set in 1967, in a Minnesota suburb, the film charts the travails of physics professor Larry Gupnik (Michael Stuhlbarg in his first major role).

Larry’s wife Judith (Sari Lennick) leaves him for excruciating patroniser Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), his socially retarded brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is living on his couch, his daughter is stealing money from his wallet to save up for a nose job, his son is smoking pot instead of practising for his bar mitzvah and the promotion he so desperately wants seems less and less likely with each passing day.

With nowhere else to turn, Larry seeks the counsel of the community’s most respected elder, Rabbi Marshak (Alan Mandell), but can’t get an appointment.

On the advice of family and friends he tries other rabbis, from other denominations, but his quest for spiritual enlightenment is unfulfilled.

Stuhlbarg is brilliant, infusing Larry with enormous pathos and destituteness. He has a seemingly limitless threshold for emotional punishment, and the Coens slather it on with existential liberality. But even for them, this is bleak. They might have called it The Passion of the Jew.

There is no redemption or respite for Larry as he is continually beaten down, and if not for the Coens’ ability to adroitly negotiate pathos, fatalism and humour, the film might become quite unbearable.

The Coens’ signature mesmeric tempo, coupled with the foggy, sweeping camera work of long-time Coen collaborator Roger Deakins imparts Larry’s dislocation and isolation. He is powerless, desperately searching for the wisdom of the ages in shaman-like religious leaders and getting bupkis.

A stoned neighbour tries to lure Larry with the promise of freedom from his pitiful, emasculating suburban existence, but Larry is not looking for another life -– he is committed to finding a solution within the established, if wretched, framework of his life.

Adding to the inauspiciousness of it all, the characters in A Serious Man aren’t the caricatures of The Big Lebowski or Barton Fink. They are real and, for the most part, despicable in a very real-world way.

All this set to Jefferson Airplane and Jimi Hendrix, which hints at what is out there if Larry could look past his collection of Yiddish Tenor Sidor Belarsky records.

This could be the most Jewish movie since Yentl, but the comedy is sneering and the unrelentingly bleak nature of it all, might make it a bit of a slog for some.

But there is no denying the genius of the Coens and this clearly personal film is a wonderful vehicle for them.

A Serious Man opens in limited release on November 19.