A Serious Man ****

A Serious Man is the kind of movie you must let wash over you. It is many things: religious fable, absurdist tragedy, surreal dark comedy. It’s no surprise that it’s also the new film by Joel and Ethan Coen, the consummate Brothers Grimm of eclectic moviemaking, their finished products more often than not a mix between First Edition Kurt Vonnegut and Bogart Noir. With A Serious Man we get something a little different, but it still incorporates many of their favorite themes. The single dominant trait of a Coen film is that the protagonist is in way over his head, and much of the time it’s not his fault.

In this film it’s Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg). Larry lives in a Minneapolis suburb in the mid-1960s. He has a wife and kids. He is a Professor of Physics. He’s Jewish. But all at once his life begins to fall apart. His wife wants a divorce, his daughter steals money from his wallet, he is simultaneously bribed and blackmailed by a student, and no rabbi has the spiritual answers he’s looking for. In a prologue to the film set in Poland some time ago, we learn that a family may have accidently invited an undead man into their home. The wife believes it cursed them. Is that what it takes to be cursed? Or was it because she stabbed the so-called dybbuk, and he may have just been a man? Maybe it doesn’t take anything at all.

Larry is inundated with so many irrelevancies throughout the film it makes for an incredibly relatable story. Every time he walks into his office he is harassed by Columbia Record Club seeking payment. His neighbor begins to slowly mow part of Larry’s lawn, effectively extending his property so he can add on to his home. When meeting with a rabbi, Larry receives a call from home. He quickly takes the call, thinking something terrible has happened. “F Troop is fuzzy again,” his son says. Jesus and Job, he can’t catch a break.

The film will no doubt have its detractors. It’s abstract, which doesn’t sit well with many people. The beginning sets the tone, but the ending never really comes. But it’s quite funny. “We can’t ever really know what’s going on,” says Larry at one point, and the movie continues to hammer on this point. Near the end of the film, we finally meet Marshak, the elder rabbi with whom Larry wanted to meet but was never granted the appointment. It is the day of Larry’s son’s Bar Mitzvah. When the son sits down, Marshak looks up and hands the young man his radio he had confiscated earlier in the film. The rabbi then says something profound, but we’ve heard it all before. Cue music.