#3: A Serious Man
Of District 9 I said, "most people will find something to enjoy about it." I won't make the same claims for the Coen brothers' A Serious Man. That said, so long as you're not in the large chunk of people that might find the film too "slow," "unsatisfying," or (as I've even heard) "Jewish," A Serious Man is a meticulous, engaging, fascinating film with a great script and great performances.
Larry Gopnik (played immaculately by Michaey Stuhlbarg) is not a hero. In fact, he's barely even likable. He is harmless, accommodating, and nice, so there is really no reason to dislike him, but he's the antithesis of charisma. Instead of the usual formula of "likable protagonist challenged by obstacles" the Coens shift it slightly over to "not unlikable protagonist challenged by everything in his life going wrong." And it works. As such, we want Larry to succeed or, at least, sludge his way back to the state of neutrality he inhabited before.*
* All right. So I need to talk about the specifics to really explore this movie so, if you haven't seen it (and you should), but don't want it ruined, call it a day and come see me for #2 (or maybe skip to the last couple of paragraphs). Otherwise, read on.
And boy oh boy does everything go wrong, not in an entirely depressing way, but in a darkly comic way. Most of the comedy hinges upon the tacit, wussy acceptance of these ills by Larry (that and Richard Kind's hysterical turn as Larry's even-more-pathetic brother). Mainly, Larry's wife leaving him for the emotional, articulate, and hilarious Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed) is so feebly disputed by Larry, and compounded by the fact that Sy wants to move into Larry's house while Larry lives in a hotel until the divorce is finalized, that there isn't much to do but laugh at Larry getting talked into this nightmare. Then, when Sy dies, and Larry has to console his wife for her loss of the man she was leaving him for ... it's just all so delightfully bizarre. This is the basically the tone of the whole movie. And it works.
Which leads me to, The Ending. When I first watched it, I was left with a few moments of disbelief, stunned that the movie could end on such a traditionally unresolved note (kind of like No Country for Old Men), until I thought about it for a few minutes, or maybe it was over the course of a few hours, and realized that, like NCFOM, while the ending was unexpected, it wasn't unresolved.
A Serious Man is, the modern, Jewish version of the book of Job*, though, like in District 9**, don't take that comparison too far. Essentially, Larry is being tested by God. He searches for the meaning of all these disasters and consults a handful of rabbis, but nobody can answer anything for him. So Larry just keeps trying his best to be a good person, or, as it were, a serious man.
* Funny side note, I was once in the band for a production of a modern, black version of the book of Job called Jobriel. Gotta love Baltimore.
** By which I don't mean that District 9 is also a version of Job. Read yesterday's post if you're confused.
And, while the bad things keep happening, Larry is firm in his convictions. That is, until the end. Larry is a college professor seeking tenure, and throughout the movie, one of his students (a foreign student who is failing and afraid of losing his scholarship [or something]) and his student's father have been trying to bribe Larry into passing the student, with a substantial sum nonetheless. At the very end, when it looks like Larry is going to receive tenure and everything may work out, Larry suddenly finds himself owing $3000 to his (or maybe his brother's) lawyer. After deliberating one last time, Larry finally changes the grade to a C-. Instantly, the phone rings and his doctor tells Larry he needs to come into his office to discuss his x-ray results. Quite simply, Larry has failed. And now he's probably going to die. At least, that's my interpretation of the ending. And I thought it was great. Clever, unexpected, and darkly comic.
The Coens also, in my reading of the film, tease this ending or, at least, the idea of life not really having endings. At one point, Larry goes to see a rabbi who tells him a lengthy story about a dentist who finds a message in Hebrew on the backside of one of his patient's front teeth. The dentist is consumed by finding out what this message means, but cannot, no matter how hard he tries. Eventually, the dentist just goes on with his life. Larry, naturally, finds this wholly unsatisfying advice, in the same way that many viewers are frustrated to only have a vague doctor's phone call and tornado to discern final meaning from. I'm a sucker for microcosms and I'm pretty sure that rabbi story is one.
Even in a larger sense, the film is a perhaps a metaphor for religion in general. Everyone in the world lives, literally speaking, on the same planet. Everyone is a human being, born from other human beings. Despite this, our readings of the world and our relationship with a God or non-God are entirely, entirely different. Bafflingly so at times. Here the audience can view Larry's experience and his confusing relationship with God/non-God and come away with disparate meanings. Is it coincidence? Karma? Is a God testing Larry somehow the simplest and therefore most logical answer? We all look at the same world and some us see God in it and others don't. So much that people will even use that same world as proof and evidence supporting their own belief. In A Serious Man it's hard to be certain -- Larry sure isn't.
If nothing else, A Serious Man is a couple of the world's best and most talented filmmakers telling an unusual, layered story. Even if the various elements of it may leave some feeling unfulfilled (though this wasn't my experience) there is much to admire in the direction, dialogue, characters, and, well, practically everything.
"The Uncertainty Principle. It proves we can't ever really know what's going on. So it shouldn't bother you. Not being able to figure anything out. Although you will be responsible for this on the mid-term." - Larry Gopnik
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