I have dreamt of approaching tornadoes quite often throughout my life. Suddenly, the sky is darkening, and the funnel begins to descend, swirling and snaking towards the ground. The color of this cloud changes nearly every time, and I often wonder if these altering hues have anything to do with my conscious life as much as I am sure that the tornado’s appearance does. At its nearing, there is fear and an overwhelming sense of inevitability. This force of nature declares that shit is going down.
In A Serious Man, Larry Gopnik’s troubles look something like a fast drawing near force of nature. The funnel is dropping towards earth and taking aim. It starts off kind. He is a professor at a small college in suburban Minnesota during the 60s. He has a wife and two children, a nice one-level home, and he is up for tenure at work. But the Coen brothers, being themselves in the fullest, have other plans for Larry, plans that only they can understand. The film leads with a darkly comic preface in Yiddish set in a time long before Larry Gopnik; it leaves us scratching our heads, but wonderment is the space that the Coens want us in.
The main story and the dirt begin when Larry’s wife says she is leaving him for his best friend. Then a student attempts to bribe and blackmail him simultaneously. His lecherous brother is living on the couch in his home, getting into trouble at seedy bars and casinos. A bully continuously chases his young son home from school. The tenure committee at school is receiving defamatory unsigned letters about him. His daughter is stealing money from his wallet. The doctor’s office is desperately trying to get a hold of him. It seems that God suddenly doesn’t like Larry. But why, when he has always tried to be a good, serious man? The Coens may know, however, they aren’t letting us in on it too easily. This film could have a message, but it’s intentionally unclear.
A Serious Man shares that with the last film they made, No Country For Old Men for which the brothers won the Oscar for Best Picture. This film is quieter, though, less of a crowd pleaser, at least in terms of violence and action, and it leaves more loose ends than it ties. Larry’s best friend Sy Ableman, the man his wife is leaving him for, attempts to counsel with sincere words of sympathy and understanding. There is a sexy neighbor who has taken to sunbathing naked in just the right place for Larry to spy on her. His son is studying for his Bar Mitzvah. There are good things in Larry’s life, but how does he see through all the bad to the good? How do any of us do this? Are we all like Job in the Bible, put through many arduous trails by God on the basis that it forces us to still believe?
Larry goes to several different rabbis to see if he can glean some answers from those who are said to know much more than him. Each gives him more convoluted responses than the last. The Coens show that they can laugh at the mystery they have developed in a way both thoughtful and with appreciation for that which is beyond understanding. I value this in a film, bolstered by wonderful performances, excellent production and exceptional writing. Even the very ending of the film leaves us in a state of awed puzzlement that is both goading and satisfying.
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