The Coen brothers continue the good work of Burn After Reading, but this tim liberally apply the glorious character idiosyncrasies of The Big Lebowski and the comic excesses of earlier works like Raising Arizona. The result somehow succeeds in vacillating between the absurd and the tragic to create a film at once about everything and nothing.

The film opens with one of the most cryptical scenes imaginable. In snowy scene in an Eastern European shtetl (a kind of small Jewish town that used to exist before the Holocaust) many years ago, a husband is welcomed home by his wife. But it is no ordinary evening here, a guest is soon to arrive who may or may not be a dybbuk (an evil spirit from Jewish folklore). Confusion ensues and, despite an event you might consider to be pretty final: there is no particular conclusion as to the nature of their visitor.

Cut to Minnesota in 1967, none the wiser about the Finkel affair. Larry Gopnik is having some marital troubles, in fact is wife wants a porce. She is tired of their relationship and wants to marry recently widowed Sy Ableman: a serious man who is intent on everything running smoothly throughout the porce (or rather Get – a special kind of Jewish porce) and subsequent separation arrangements. Meanwhile, the kids are running riot, experimenting with pot and hanging around with friends rather than studying, and Larry’s brother Arthur is staying on their sofa (but primarily spending hours in the bathroom draining a cyst in his neck).

To make matters worse, Larry is also being blackmailed at the college at which he lectures. A insane Korean father implores him to ‘accept the mystery’ of a bribe to improve his son’s grades rather than label it bribery, and a committee considering his tenure is far from comfortable with goings on.

There are so many beautifully crafted levels to this masterwork that I hardly know where to begin. But perhaps the best place is the simplest, most effective element of this film: a curse movie. Perhaps the Finkels are distant relatives of Larry Gopnik and all of the unfortunate events occurring, events which extend much further in magnitude and absurdity than I have outlined here, are unwarranted consequences of a generations-old curse. With so many crazy events played out hilariously eccentric characters A Serious Man can be enjoyed as a unique and original, if slightly mysterious, concept comedy.

Beyond this, the film is so rich that indulges dozens of additional theories as to its ultimate meaning. A favourite of mine is that it’s a film about how to decipher meaning from life itself (an excellent way to use a film). All of the events, dreams and acts of God that are inflicted on Larry can be seen as attempts (possibly by a higher power) to highlight some sort of meaning to a man who is struggling in the face of adversity. One particular scene has lodged this theory in my mind, that is, without giving to much away, a story told by a rabbi which proves to be most frustrating for Larry: and most amusing to the rest of us.

The beauty of that theory is that it can be concluded that we are all too lazy to read meanings being hurled at us by some sort of comic order, or that attempts to read meaning into these apparently haphazard events is so hard that it is utterly pointless and we may as well not see them!

 

The fact that there are so many more ways to see this, ranging from a commentary on religion and faith to parenting and love, speaks volumes about the Coens as filmmakers. To expound all of the angles and intimacies would still fail to do them justice, not to mention ruin the fun of finding your own readings when you see it. But suffice to say that this is yet another work of genius by a duo who easily rank among the greatest filmmakers of our time, you won’t see a better film all year.

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By: Mike Edwards