My Review: A Serious Man (7/10)

¨You can`t understand the physics without understanding the math. The math tells how it really works. That`s the real thing; the stories I give in class are just illustrative, they`re like fables, say, to help give you a picture.¨

(7/10) Those are the words professor Larry Gopnik tells one of his student`s who is trying to bribe him in order to get a better grade and that is perhaps what the Coen brothers were trying to tell us about this movie. The entire plot serves as just an illustration to something they don`t have all the answers to. Just like the story one of the Rabbi`s tells Larry about the Goy`s teeth which doesn`t have a resolution, but nevertheless that doesn`t mean it isn`t a good story. Larry seems so preoccupied in this film to discover the meaning of all the tragedies that he is going through that we are expecting to find an answer, but what the directors are telling us is that sometimes there isn`t an explanation for things that happen, they just do. This is the Coen brothers (Joel and Ethan also known as ¨The Two-Headed Director¨ because they tend to work together) latest film after their Oscar Award winning No Country for Old Men and their dark comedy Burn After Reading. A Serious Man is more in the line of Burn after Reading except that it doesn`t count with the big names and most of the actors in this film are unknown. It is a much more personal movie for the directors who themselves are Jews who grew up in Minneapolis. The humor in this film is dark and it isn`t a laugh out loud film, but it does have a lot of comedy in it that mixes well with the depressive mood the main character is in.

The story takes place near 1970 in a Minneapolis suburb. The main character of the film is Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg who had a small role in Body of Lies and is mostly known for working in plays) a Jewish Physics professor who explains most everything through mathematical equations. His life begins to turn upside down when his wife asks for a divorce because she has fallen in love with one of his best friends, while at the same time one of his students is trying to bribe him in order to get a better grade in his exam or sew him for defamation if he says anything, his son and daughter are a major headache, and to make matters worse his immature and unemployed brother is living in his couch. Things begin to unravel one by one for Larry and he seems to be falling into one debt after another due to the different lawsuits and problems he faces. Comparisons with the Biblical story of Job can`t be ignored at this point as he seems to be falling deeper and deeper into disgrace. Sari Lennick plays Judith, Larry`s wife who is tired of her marriage and is ready to live with Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). I didn`t know either of these actors, but they both did a great job, especially Fred who was probably the funniest character in the film. Larry´s son, Danny (Aaron Wolff, also a newcomer) is studying Hebrew because he is about to have his bar mitzvah, but he gets into trouble for listening to Jefferson Airplane in class and buying weed from one of his classmates. Larry`s troubled brother, Arther (played by Richard Kind from Spin City) who lives with him and always seems to be getting into trouble with the law, gives him as much headaches as his son. Everywhere Larry turns he seems to be getting himself into trouble so he decides to go visit the Rabbi, but he can never get a hold of Rabbi Marshak (Alan Mandell) so he first has to settle with young Rabbi Scott (Simon Helberg from The Big Bang Theory) and later with Rabbi Nachtner (George Wyner), but neither of them have the answers he`s looking for.

If we actually pay attention to the small clues that the Coen brothers leave we know that Larry will not find the answers he`s looking for. At first I wasn`t excited about the ending of the film, but after I thought about it I really loved it. It would have been so easy to end the movie a few minutes before it actually did and we would think that Larry would end up fixing his life, but the final parallel sequence between him in college receiving a phone call from his medic and the one with Aaron in his Hebrew class is just great and really has the Coen signature all over it. The movie is very entertaining although I wouldn`t say it is among my favorite Coen films. I think Fargo is by far their best movie to date. Anyways it is always a lot of fun to watch their movies and most any actor would work for them for free. The opening sequence only served as a mere illustration as did the story of Goy`s teeth. Rabbi Scott would say that both are simply different perspectives which don`t have a real purpose; you`re better off if you let it be. I recommend this movie especially if you are a Coen fan.