The idea of the Coen brothers delivering an autobiographical film is a strange one as despite their general warm reception from critics and gradually increasing box office success over the past 25 years the brothers have continued to plough the same furrow, turning in ambiguous, quirky comedy dramas more interested in playing with genre conventions than developing relatable characters. And, despite it reportedly being based on events from their childhood, A Serious Man fits this description pretty well.
Coming across like a Jewish counterpoint to the recent trend for tales of 60’s America (as exemplified by Mad Men and Revolutionary Road), the film takes place in the Minnesotan suburbs of the Coens’ youth and concerns itself with the trials and tribulations of Physics professor Larry Gopnik, played by relative unknown Michael Stuhlbarg. Which pretty much sums up the film’s plot - we are invited as an audience to see a man’s life spiral out of control, and keep doing so in an avalanche effect for almost two hours. Although the Coens kick start the film in a customary genre-bending manner by including a 19th Century set Yiddish tale of possible demonic possession which, while chillingly amusing, adds absolutely nothing to the film that follows.
A Serious Man does offer up their most interesting central character since Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski in mild-mannered and increasingly unfortunate Gopnik driven mad by a supporting cast that ranges from the whacky to the downright unpleasant (of which the stand-out is his lonely, obsessive brother played by former sit-com actor Richard Kind). Indeed, with his frequent outbursts of ‘I haven’t done anything’ Gopnik could act as a psychological litmus test, as it says a lot about an audience member whether they find him a good-natured man unfairly taken advantage of or a pathetic whining loser. Additionally, while the plot basically consists of one misfortune after another, there is a nagging sense of something deeper going on here, an attack on the decline of community values could be read into the film however, like much of the plot, this is left somewhat undeveloped.
Like practically all of the Coens’ films A Serious Man comes with its own bunch of surprise twists, and has much to admire in it, in particular its juggling of mood, flitting from the comic, to the tragic, to the downright terrifying and back again, often within the same scene. Unfortunately, with the brothers’ fixation on the ambiguous, and ultimately futile nature of existence (a theme that can be traced through most of their oeuvre), A Serious Man comes across as a moral fable with no moral and as such it probably isn’t going to satisfy a lot of people. That being said it’s still a hell of a lot more interesting than the overblown star vehicle that was Burn After Reading.
