Larry Gopnik is a serious man. Well he would be if he were given a chance. His wife Judith is cheating on him with a family friend, his son is in debt to the Hebrew school drug dealer, and his daughter is stealing money for a nose job. If that’s not enough, his brother Arthur is loafing on his sofa, draining his cyst and trying to win big in mob card games.
At the university where he teaches physics, Larry is up for tenure but an anonymous letter writing campaign is close to derailing his future. A flunking Korean student is simultaneously trying to bribe him and file a lawsuit against the bamboozled Larry. He’s having a boarder dispute with his anti-Semitic, Commie hating, buzz cut neighbour and wet dreams about a glamorous Mrs. Samsky.
On top of that little lot the humdrum problems of life continue unabated. A record club keeps pursuing him for money he knows nothing about and his son can’t get “F-Troop” on the television. Oh, and Larry is waiting for some test results from the doctor, lost and forgotten amongst the whirlwind of his life.
Take a breath. Got it. Ok, now relax.
Because the Coen Brothers are relaxing. Like expert plate spinners, they keep the whole lot from crashing down around them by their leisurely but assured direction. Larry is no schmuck, but events bombard him like thunderbolts hurled from the screen in the shape of the dynamic credits. Every actor’s name symbolises another dilemma he will have to face. Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody To Love” blares out “When the truth is found to be lies and all the joy within you dies,” we know Larry is in for a tough time.
Larry faces each mounting crisis with a perplexed stoicism. His physics makes sense of the universe but not of his own situation. Where science fails him he turns to religion and consults three different rabbis. Each is as cryptic as the last but none enlighten him beyond, “The boss isn’t always right but he’s the boss.”
Any fleeting moments of happiness, a sneaky joint with Mrs. Samsky or watching his son’s bar mitzvah with a fatherly pride, are stolen away from him as soon as he relaxes. Michael Stuhlbarg’s performance as Larry makes us root for him all the way through, but however attached we become to him will not have any bearing on the final outcome. The Coens will not be shaken from their path just as God won’t in the Book of Job, even if Larry is completely innocent from sin.
This is the Coens’ most personal film and one of their best. They are always better when they are at their most serious and “A Serious Man” takes it place alongside “Miller’s Crossing” and “The Man Who Wasn’t There.” It also shares the inevitability of defeat with their Oscar-winning “No Country For Old Men.”
That’s not to say it isn’t funny because it is, but there is a dark desperation permeating Roger Deakins’ wonderful cinematography. The 1960’s Midwestern setting has a “Wizard Of Oz” familiarity about it, but this is no dream of Dorothy’s. This is Larry’s stark reality. Belatedly, we get the impression that the Coen brothers are only now fully maturing as filmmakers.
With age, they are becoming serious men.