Monday, March 8, 2010
[5] A Serious Man (2009)
A Serious Man (2009) (review is heavily spoilerish)
This latest outing from the Coen’s is a somewhat puzzling movie on first watch. It's as if it is missing an ending but the open-endedness of this original screenplay easily trumps the metaphysical speculations that were left over after 'No country for old Men' - as this movie ensures it has the component parts to deliver in after-thought, all the right motives for its abrupt and intentionally unresolved ending.
Our protagonist Larry is a physics teacher who has done nothing yet seems to be on the receiving end of a string of misfortune. His wife is very suddenly divorcing him, a Korean student is blackmailing him (the father of which asks Larry to 'accept mystery') a neighbor, who is encroaching upon Larry's property and a son and daughter that are constantly embroiled in conflict. And when his co-habiting oddball brother is not spending his time in the bathroom draining a cyst he's completing his Mentaculus, a book on resolving probability.
The eminently pleasant Sy Ableman is slowly taking over Larry's life until they are both involved, synchronistically, in car crashes. Sy doesn't survive and just like that he's out of the movie. Later in a dream sequence Larry and Sy kind of merge as the eponymous 'serious man' casting doubts as to the existence of Sy.
Larry finds himself at his lowest ebb and seeks help through an ever ascending order of rabbis, the last of which he never gets an audience with; but when his newly barmitzvah'd son does the fabled rabbi recounts only the following Jefferson Airplane lyrics
"When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies"
before handing him back his tape player (confiscated at an earlier part in the movie)
containing the song 'somebody to love' which the Rabbi, we are led to believe had become somewhat fascinated by.
The rabbi then tells our young man to
'be a good boy'.
There are no mysteries resolved here and even the legendary rabbi hasn’t got any words of hope for Larry. Larry is left somewhat defeated and perplexed by his situation as the worlds of science and religion ultimately offer him very little assistance.
Furthermore Larrys luck continues northwards and he is left on edge when an anonymous detractor continues to send letters to the school advising them not to grant Larry tenure-ship at the college. He has dreams about teaching 'Heisenberg's uncertainty principle' and admits that even he doesn't understand the classic Schroedinger cat experiment but he reiterates his faith in the math nonetheless.
It's while Larry is standing on his roof (after attempting to fix an aerial) absorbing the sights and sounds of the local community that we realize just how vulnerable and desperate he really is. A naked sunbathing neighbor draws his attentions and you just know that this will be yet another temptation (the first being the offer of a bribe from his Korean student) that Larry will be faced with; I found out afterwards that the movie is actually based in part on the ‘Book of Job’.
I got the feeling that the movie is primarily concerned with the randomness which underpins our lives with Larry's profession (theorethical physics) resonating through with a cruel irony. When Larry does give way to temptation however, real punishment sets in via a call from his doctor who, having previously pronounced him in good health at the beginning of the movie, seems to have contradictory news now.
This potential bad news is superseeded however by the ending which delivers the death knell, a random disaster or faithful encounter; the Coen’s are clearly having fun.
This movie is effortlessly complex yet remains a pleasure to watch (not like Synecdoche New York for example) and ultimately contains all the component parts of a real masterpiece. It wasn't until I really went over the movie in my mind afterwards that I not only accepted the ending, but reveled in it.
The early 70's era Jewish suburbia is captured beautifully and all the acting is top notch featuring a cast of relative unknowns.
I thoroughly recommend this movie and it's one that I plan on seeing again very shortly. It will demand and I suspect, reward multiple visits.
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