A Serious Man

Ah, the pleasure in settling into a theater seat to watch a film by Joel and Ethan Coen. Since their debut, Blood Simple (25 years ago!) I've seen every one of their films upon release, and aside from a few clunkers (even Joe DiMaggio struck out occasionally) I don't think anyone has a better track record over that time period.

There latest film, A Serious Man, may be their most personal. It's set in a Minneapolis suburb during 1967 among the Jewish community, which is where they grew up. And while parts of the film are raucously funny, at heart it's a grim fable, a contemporary spin on the Book of Job and a serious (natch) reflection on the nature of God and man.

The protagonist is Larry Gopnik, a mild-mannered professor of physics. He should be feeling good--his son is about to be bar mitzvahed, and he's up for tenure. But then everything starts to go wrong: his wife announces she's in love with another man (the supercilious Sy Abelman, played by Fred Melamed), the tenure committee is receiving anonymous letters casting aspersions on his moral turpitude, he's getting collection calls from the Columbia Record Club, he feels vaguely threatened by his Aryan neighbor, and his brother is arrested for soliciting in a gay bar.

Gopnik is at his wit's end, but takes this all passively, moving out to a motel (his moocher brother joining him) and seeks counsel. Being a somewhat spiritual man, he consults his rabbi, starting with the junior rabbi, who looks to be just out of school, working his way up the chain of command, but finding no solace anywhere (in the Book of Job, the afflicted man seeks the counsel of three friends). The two younger rabbis offer him bromides or a meaningless anecdote (a sequence involving a dentist and a secret message on a goy's teeth, a remarkable five minutes or so of filmmaking). The entire universe seems to be conspiring against him.

It's unclear what sets this off. The Coens offer a prologue, involving an old-world shtetl and a family possibly being cursed by a dybbuk (a wandering evil spirit in Jewish folklore), but Gopnik's crisis isn't as easily defined (and are the people in the prologue his ancestors? Again, unclear). He's tempted throughout by moral questions--should he take a bribe from a student--but his destiny seems pre-ordained. No amount of philanthropy would seem to help him.

The Coens view all of this dispassionately, in fact, they seem to be rooting against him. I know there are folks who don't like a film in which the creative team delight in tormenting their main character--this happens a lot in the work of Alexander Payne--but if done well there is a certain majesty to schadenfreude. What may be troubling in A Serious Man is that Gopnik in no way, shape or form deserves any of this, but then again neither did Job. This is the randomness of the cosmos--a man rolling snake eyes several times in a row. No reason for it, just the vagaries of chance.

So if this film may be distasteful to some, I enjoyed almost every second of it. To start with, the attention to detail is sublime, particularly of life in these United States in sixties suburbia. The poster, which depicts Gopnik as some kind of warrior doing battle with a TV antenna, is perfectly imagined. There are also magnificent touches like his son's friends, one with his shirt buttoned up to the Adam's apple, taking special relish in calling everyone a "fucker." Or the glassy-eyed temptress (Amy Landecker) who lives next door (while adjusting his antenna Gopnik spies on her sunbathing in the nude). Or the unmentioned leg braces on a confidant of Gopnik, whom we never learn the identity of. Or the almost mystical use of the Jefferson Airplane song, "Somebody to Love." I look forward to seeing this film several more times to discovering new touches.

The performances, mostly by unknowns, are terrific. Michael Stuhlbarg is Gopnik, and he brings a certain blandness to the project that a star couldn't have. Richard Kind, familiar to TV audiences, is the brother, who kind of reminded me of R. Crumb's brother in Terry Zwigoff's documentary, feverishly scribbling in a notebook while losing what little grip on sanity he has. Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff, and Jessica McManus all do good work as the Gopnik clan, and in very small but exquisitely attuned roles are George Wyner as the second rabbi and Ari Hoptman as Gopnik's colleague on the tenure committee.

My only caution involves a reliance on gotcha-ism in the form of dream sequences, which is a bit cheap given the quality of the rest of the material. If I never seen another film in which something outrageous happens, only to be followed by a character bolting upright in bed, I won't be disappointed.

In reading up on Job this morning, I see that God spoke to Job as a whirlwind. This film ends with a whirlwind bearing down on a character. I'm going to have to think more about what this film is trying to say--are we at the mercy of an unfeeling deity, or are we in control of our fates? I fear the Coens suggest the former.