A SERIOUS MAN

The Coen Brothers have made a career out of producing bleak, emotionally-distant films about faith, hope, loss, and endlessly onrushing roadways. Usually, though, they include enough warmth in the characters to make their relentless nihilism go down a little easier.

Not so with A Serious Man, easily the bleakest and coldest film in their chilly catalogue.

Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a Jewish professor saddled with a life that seems out to get him. His wife (Sari Lennick) wants a divorce in order to pursue a romance with their touchy-feely friend (Fred Melamed). His daughter is a screeching harpy, his son is a pot-smoking brat, and his brother is a bum who is constantly draining a cyst in the bathroom. One of Larry’s students is threatening him because Larry was forced to flunk the kid in physics class. The next door neighbor is building a shed on Larry’s property. And on and on and on. Larry shuffles through all of this with the resignation of a dying man.

Today’s movie audience would rightly expect that the script would have Larry finally bursting with rage against his accumulating misery, but the Coen Brothers keep piling on the tortures without any relief. They top it off with the blackest imaginable ending, something so nasty and heartless that even the most masochistic moviegoer might cringe a bit. It’s clear that the Coens are trying to say something about the careless cruelty of God with this story, but it is a bit unnerving to see them dismember this poor creature and then piss on the pieces with such abandon.

Stuhlbarg is excellent for what he’s required to do; he mopes, he shrugs, he stares blankly into space. The character is a hole in the universe, a blank spot. The rest of the cast aptly fleshes out a typical Coen universe of weirdos and strange birds. I particularly liked Melamed’s smarmy Sy Ableman, a walking group therapy session who lies through his teeth.

This is easily the Coen’s most Jewish film, and it is filled with all sorts of fascinating details. The Coens also do wonders in recreating the atmosphere of 1960’s suburbia, which feels clean, hopeful, and slightly tacky. They are helped tremendously by another brilliant bit of cinematography by Roger Deakins, who gives the film a hazy, subdued look that perfectly replicates the photograph stock of that era.

Ultimately, though, this film misses its mark. Intended as a black comedy, the Coens forgot to add much actual humor. Instead, the film feels like two boys torturing a rag doll just for kicks, and we’re forced to watch. Their ideas are sound, but this bitter and chilly film leaves little to love.