01/13/10 - A Serious Man

A Serious Man (2009, 105 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1019452/

A Serous Man becomes the next film I watch in anticipation of Oscar season. A Serious Man seemed to come and go pretty quickly at the theater but looking on some of the "Best of 2009" lists it was frequently mentioned so I wanted to check it out. Looking at Oscar predictions it seems right on the verge of getting one of the Best Picture nominations though, so I didn't really know what quality to expect.

A Serious Man follows Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) as his life falls apart. That's basically the whole plot right there. Along for the ride are: Uncle Arthur (Richard Kind), wife Judith Gopnik (Ari Lennick) and her lover Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), and finally Larry's kids Danny Gopnik (Aaron Wolff) and Sarah Gopnik (Jessica McManus). As is true in pretty much every other movie by Joel and Ethan Coen there's about twenty other people with speaking roles but I'm only going to mention these to keep it simple.

The acting in A Serious Man is okay. The film is led by Stuhlbarg and he does great as we see the piling frustration and growing anguish grow on him. Sadly, I thought most of the other characters just ran around screaming at each other and cursing. The exceptions to this were Kind's Uncle Arthur and Melamed's Sy Ableman. Kind doesn't really say much but he creates an odd character anyway and when he does get to play a part in a scene he does a great job. Similarly, Melamed doesn't have many lines but he makes every one that he says count for a lot. These three were all very well acted characters. The remaining cast did okay but didn't do as well as these.

Looking back on A Serious Man, it really seemed like a movie I wanted to like but just couldn't. When the whole "punchline" of the film is to reflect on what really matters by introducing a killer tornado in the final five or so minutes, I just look back with apathy on the whole film. I want to like it, I really do. Just like I want to love The Big Lebowski but I just can't bring myself to love it. Sadly though, A Serious Man doesn't live up to being as quotable as The Big Lebowski. I also feel that in this film we get oddball characters created by the Coens seemingly for the sole intent of being bizarre.

I'll admit that I after I watched this film I felt a great sense of "Well, I didn't 'get' that one." I looked up some thoughts and comments on it before writing this though so that I could at least understand some aspects of the film. I pretty much reserve this practice for special occurrences as I like to write about my thoughts free from other influence. Anyway, from what I gathered reading up on A Serious Man, the film is about not caring about the punchline. Yet each film has to have an ending to deliver this punchline home so for A Serious Man we have a huge tornado that just comes seemingly out of nowhere. Sure it puts the previous 100 minutes into perspective as not all that important in the face of a huge tornado but I still just don't "get" this belief. The other parallel in the film is that of Job from the Bible. I can see it interesting to turn this into a modern story and put it on film but I still don't "get" what the Coens are aiming at here. I guess it's also possible to interpret the film as mocking or analyzing religious discussions and the like. I feel stupid saying I want less ambiguity in the way the film is presented but I just felt like everything could have been tied together nicer or something. But maybe this is exactly what the Coens are mocking with the story of A Serious Man.

Overall, I gave this film a 5/10. Sure, it made me chuckle a few times and the characters were unique (as always) but when I stepped back and put everything together it just didn't work for me. Like Dr. Strangelove, I feel that this movie is extremely hit or miss in its humor. Unfortunately for me, it was mostly miss. Combine that with an overall uncaring attitude I had towards the end and it's not that great. But I have to give it a 5/10 because there is a lot good here (and even more if the film hits with you) but it's definitely not one that I plan on rewatching soon.