A Serious Man
A Serious Man is more brilliance from Joel & Ethan Coen the brothers who won best picture for No Country for Old Men in 2008 and like that film this will leave you with the expectation of a follow-up sequel that will not likely be forthcoming. That and implausible but life altering car crashes are about the only similarities. Where “Old Men” was gritty and violent this hysterical and insightful study of Jewish guilt and forbearance under persecution isn’t so serious After a curious opening sequence that, thanks to the Jefferson Airplane, comes full circle just as curiously in the end we meet Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg, excellent in his first lead role) a square, early middle aged Midwestern physics professor in swinging 1967. He lives in a somewhat anti-Semitic suburb where his hot neighbour is prone to torturing him by sunbathing in the nude. His unemployable brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is camped on his couch and his kids steal from him and each other for drugs and plastic surgery. Add to that his churlish wife Judith (Sari Lennick) is planning to run off with Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed) an unappealing much older man who insists on being patronizingly civil to Larry. At his college where he has to dodge bribes and lawsuits from an overseas student Larry is eagerly awaiting word about his tenure which seems in jeopardy because of someone’s anonymous poison letter campaign. Any man would see red in the face of this kind of degradation but Larry is resigned to acceptance. If I kept kosher I might be a little less confused about what transpired but what I’m most curious about is how many children of Israel are like me and long to see A Serious Man again just for clarity.