A Serious Man

Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen (2009) ***

A Serious Man could have been called, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People? The Coen brothers’ answer seems to be: who knows? In this regard, A Serious Man is a comedic version of a movie they had made recently, No Country for Old Men (2007). In that film, people’s lives rested on the coin toss of a maniac who seemed to represent mindless, random fortune. The film ended ambiguously, with no moral and no resolution. A Serious Man‘s Job-like story ends with a similar question mark — or does it?

Set in the clean-cut suburbs of Minneapolis in 1967, A Serious Man is the Coen’s most autobiographical work, a deliberately Jewish work. They grew as children in the same place and the film meticulously recreates that world in impressive detail. Yet the film begins with a prologue set long ago in an Eastern European shtetl. The parable is intriguing, funny, unsettling — and unresolved, setting the tone for what’s to come.

The “hero” of the film is Larry Gopnik (a name which sounds like it could have been lifted from Mad Magazine or Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove), played by Tony-winning Michael Stuhlbarg. Stuhlbarg’s an actor with broad range; his befuddled Gopnik is the opposite of his cold, smug, scheming crime boss Arnold Rothstein in Boardwalk Empire. Gopnik just wants to survive and live a good life, but from the minute the film opens, that life begins falling apart. His wife, Judith, (Sari Lennick) wants to leave him for the patronizing, new age tinged Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed). (One of Gopnik’s counselors is equally incredulous: “Sy … Abelman?”.) His tenure is being thwarted by mysterious and damning letters being sent to the university council. A student is trying to bribe him for a passing grade. These are just a few of his increasing torments, not helped by his self-centered and obnoxious son Danny (Aaron Wolff) and his self-centered and obnoxious teen-age daughter, Sarah (Jessica McManus). Gopnik’s visiting brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), spends hours in the bathroom draining a cyst on his neck and calculating mysterious figures in a sketchbook which promises to predict and reveal secrets of the universe. Then there’s the seductress next door and the increasing calls from the Columbia Record Club.

A Serious Man is a comedy, but a very bleak one; it inhabits the world of Kafka and Woody Allen. Gopnik’s attempts to find truth from rabbis result in hilariously sad non sequiturs. A surrealistic subplot involves an absconded cassette tape and words of wisdom concerning Jefferson Airplane from a senior rabbi.

A Serious Man‘s ironic ending (not told here) is left to interpretation. One could say it implies a malevolent or, at least, disinterested universe. Another view could be that evil deeds have consequences both specific and cosmic. Rarely has such dire material been handled with such a funny, ironic touch. The Coens have worked hard in the film to create a very specific time and place, with a message to be debated by their audience.

—Michael R. Neno, 2016 February 23