A Serious Man (2009)

Review:

The obvious thing to say about the Coen Brother's "A Serious Man" would be that it poses the question why do good things happen to bad people? Figuring this out is the driving impotus of Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg), a jewish physics professor in middle America who is the Coen's subject this time around. Larry has found himself at the butt end of what seems to be a vast cosmic joke. Like Job before him, all Lary owns and knows seems to be coming under seige by forces well beyond his control. His wife Judith (Sari Lennick) wants a divorce. She's leaving Larry for his pious friend Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Larry's socially challenged brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is living on his sofa with no intention of leaving. Bills are mounting, Larry's tenure hangs in the balance and his children are indifferent to their family's disintegration...

The list goes on and Larry has not done anything wrong.

Most movies are structured around moralistic ideologies that we consider to ground society - the ideas that let us sleep easy at night. If bad things happen to good people in the movies, its usually because those good people did something bad or dumb. Thus, the bad things that descend upon them are the direct consequences of individual choices they have made.

Not so with Larry Gopnick. When a student who has recently failed his midterm tries to sweet talk Larry into giving him a better grade, Larry flatout refuses. Even when a mysterious bribe is offered from the student, Larry becomes incensed at the very thought of being bribed. Larry plays by the rules. He is a physics professor who has invested the entirety of his career (and faith) in the study of mathematics. I think he likes the certainty found in math and thats why he has nightmares about the uncertainty principle.

So when his life itself becomes an uncertainty principle and math no longer provides a solace, Larry looks to his religion, seeking out three rabbi's advice concerning his crumbling existence. Will the rabbi's have his answers? I will let you see the film to find out for youselves.

But I'll end with a conjecture about the ending (without giving it away). As I said at the beginning of the review, the obvious thing would be to say this is a film about why bad things happen to good people and so it is. But its about more than that, I think. For me, the end of the film suggests that no matter what you do, if you're holy or sinful, tyrranous or merciful, whether you've paid your debts or no, the implacable course of nature, the universe, god, whatever you want to call it, cannot be manipulated or altered.

Q: Why do bad things happen to good people?
A: Because.

The Coen's "A Serious Man" is not the question. Its the "because."

Rating:

On a scale of one to Casablanca this film is a "From Here To Eternity" (1953)

Rationalization:

As I admitted a few reviews ago, the Coen's hardly ever do wrong by me, so I was somewhat predestined to like this film. I'd say that among the Coen Brothers Canon, this film's counterpart would be "Barton Fink" (1991) in its analysis of a single man becoming unraveled by forces beyond his control. But "Barton Fink" is, in my opinion, more about the unknowable, the evil, mysterious driving force behind all things bad. We never do find out what is in that box, you remember. "A Serious Man," like "The Seventh Seal" (1957) before it speaks to something very knowable - its just something we don't like to admit to our kids...or ourselves.