Film Review: A Serious Man (2009)
The Coen Brothers, arguably the most successful screenwriter-producer-director partnership in contemporary Hollywood, have built their reputation upon a singular ability to tread the narrow tightrope between black comedy and deadly serious drama. With A Serious Man (2009), they return to their native Minnesota in what amounts to their most autobiographical work to date—a film that revisits the territory of Fargo yet finds itself hamstrung by a curious indecision regarding its own intentions.
Set in 1967, the narrative centres upon Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg, then a relatively unknown Broadway actor), a Jewish physics professor whose life begins to unravel in accordance with Murphy's Law. Like the Coens' own father, Larry is a man of learning and faith, deeply religious and moral—a self-described "serious man" who finds himself besieged by domestic chaos. His dysfunctional family embroils itself in adultery, gambling, sodomy, theft, and marijuana consumption, leaving Larry to navigate an increasingly absurd succession of misfortunes whilst desperately seeking divine explanation for his suffering.
The film's technical craftsmanship is, as one expects from the Coens, impeccable. Carter Burwell's score deftly interweaves ancient Yiddish songs with Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love," whilst the largely unknown ensemble cast delivers performances of considerable nuance. Yet these virtues cannot resolve the fundamental question that haunts the picture: are the Coens attempting to impart genuine philosophical truths about suffering and faith, or is this merely a darkly humorous exercise in audience provocation—the sort of self-indulgence that Oscar laureates may afford themselves?
The evidence points troublingly toward the latter interpretation. A pseudo-folkloric prologue concerning Polish Jews in the nineteenth century feels disconnected from the narrative proper, whilst the deliberately "unfinished" conclusion—clearly indebted to No Country for Old Men—suggests a reluctance to commit to meaning where mere ambiguity will suffice. This tonal inconsistency, this refusal to declare whether the film is profound or merely playful, ultimately undermines its claim to classic status.
A Serious Man remains a technically accomplished and intermittently compelling work, but one suspects that the Coens have here confused crypticness with depth. For a film so concerned with the search for meaning, it proves remarkably unwilling to offer any of its own.
Rating: 7/10
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