A Serious Man (2009)
Directed by Joel Coen
It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances Sy Ableman.
28 connections found
View:
28 films that influenced A Serious Man
What critics say influenced A Serious Man
The Coens' direction of their actors reminded me of the time Werner Herzog reportedly hypnotized his cast for "Heart of Glass" - everyone but their lead, with the exception of Jessica McManus, is preternaturally calm (or stoned) and speaks in a quasi-reassuring monotone.
This piling-on, no-way-out-but-down narrative strategy has worked for brilliant thriller-makers like Brian De Palma in "Carrie" and "Blow-Out" or inspired provocateurs like Luis Bunuel.
A Serious Man begins, after a gnomic prologue, with what might be the inverse of the beginning of David Lynch's Blue Velvet.
We've seen mayhem play out in this arena many times before, from Blue Velvet to American Beauty , Revolutionary Road and TV's Mad Men , and if you're a suburbanite it's easy to see the condescension coming at you in spadefuls.
At the end of Love and Death (1975) Woody Allen concludes that if God exists, while he may not be evil, he could be termed an underachiever.
Advertisement
In this sense, it's their "Amarcord" or "Radio Days," albeit less episodic and sentimental than Federico Fellini's or Woody Allen's reflections on their youths were.
In this sense, it's their "Amarcord" or "Radio Days," albeit less episodic and sentimental than Federico Fellini's or Woody Allen's reflections on their youths were.
As expressly Torah-informed as Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors , but without that film's genuine ethical gravity, A Serious Man is formed around the contest between the reasonless chaos of life and our traditional cultures' desire to see order in it; but there's not much real discourse on hand, and no larger metaphysical idea.
There’s a strong whiff of Woody Allen to this cultural contrast (think the split-screen family dinners in Annie Hall), though filtered through the darker lens of the Coens’ vision.
Advertisement
Like most Coen brothers movies, “A Serious Man” isn’t like most Coen brothers movies, although it’s reminiscent of “Barton Fink” in the claustrophobic way it burrows into the head of its main character.
After achieving perhaps their greatest critical success (and multiple Oscars) for No Country for Old Men and boffo box office for their inspired comic follow-up Burn After Reading, they've gone and made their most befuddling picture since Barton Fink.
While not reaching the heights of insanity of such films as “Barton Fink,” “Serious Man” remains a pretty strange movie for Joel and Ethan Coen.
3 1/2 Stars (out of 4) Tweet The Enigma of Teeth By Jeffrey M. Anderson The fourteenth feature film by Joel and Ethan Coen is a head-scratcher as puzzling as Barton Fink (1991), but at the same time, it's a humanistic and emotionally moving work, reaching some of the high points of Fargo (1996).
But at least now I get Barton Fink.
Even by Coen standards -- and I'm talking about the guys who made "Barton Fink," "The Big Lebowski" and "No Country for Old Men" -- "Serious" is opaque and inscrutable and indirect.
The film recalls Fargo (1996) in era and tone.
As they have done mostly in the years since winning the Original Screenplay for Fargo back in 1996, the Coens have found inspiration in a previously written work even when their screenplays are considered “original”.
"Fargo" is still one of their best pictures, and yet when you compare it to "No Country for Old Men," it looks a little obvious.
3 1/2 Stars (out of 4) Tweet The Enigma of Teeth By Jeffrey M. Anderson The fourteenth feature film by Joel and Ethan Coen is a head-scratcher as puzzling as Barton Fink (1991), but at the same time, it's a humanistic and emotionally moving work, reaching some of the high points of Fargo (1996).
“A Serious Man” can’t rely on the genre elements that made the Coens’ “No Country for Old Men” and “Fargo” thrilling, but there is creepy suspense in the way the world closes in on Larry.
Hard to tell, if only because—aside from Fargo 's Marge Gunderson, one of the great creations of American cinema—just about every character the Coens create is meant to affirm their own superiority.