A Serious Man

2009. Dir: Ethan and Joel Coen. Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick and Aaron Wolff. ●●●●○



Book a ticket to see a Coen brothers film and you know that they will try to subvert your expectations, from the grim tone of No Country for Old Men to the celebrity smug off that was Burn after Reading, it's probably best to leave those expectations at the door and their latest, A Serious Man, proves the case. Whatever you have heard, whatever you imagin this film to be, it can only be appreciated or understood through actually seeing it for yourself.

It's a meditation about what it means to be Jewish, a parable about middle class complacency and a intelligent comedy about family and relationships. It manages to all these things, and yet comes across as nothing. It is both highly entertaining and fearlessly opaque - if you have to believe one thing you've read in the reviews then trust me this is a film the Coen's have made for themselves.



The film begins with an reenactment of a Jewish superstition. This may seem disconnected to the rest of the film, however it sets up the theme of bad things happening to good people - we don't know who the good person is in the prologue, this will depend on whether you believe the husband or the wife, but we know that good deeds lead to misfortune. Flash forward to the 1960's, not the counter culture we explored in Taking Woodstock but to the buttoned down suburbia that populates the rest of America.

We meet Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) an academic who is waiting for the decision on his tenure. Like the biblical Job he is being faced with a catalogue of appalling disasters, his wife is asking for a divorce, his brother is sleeping on the sofa and getting in trouble with the law, he is being blackmailed by a student, threatened by a neighbour and a hate-letter campaign is being raged against him.

Faced with an extraordinary amount of bad luck he attempts to seek advice from the Rabbis. Each of these visits is a new chapter during which the advice he is given either assists or confuses him.

The performances are perfect, Stuhlbarg internalises much of his emotion which makes him a fascinting comic stooge and Fred Melamed steals every scene he's in as Larry's patronising love rival. The set-up may seem far fetched but the writing is so on the button that you go along with the Coen's punishment for Gopnik and each fresh obstacle for the character seems organic. Although the open-ended finish seems to indicate a running out of ideas rather than a perfect way to leave our characters.

Technically the film is top rate with Jess Gonchor's production design striking that fine balance between period and lived in.

Overall this is the best comedy I've seen in 2009, and one of the most fascinating projects within the Coen's back catalogue.