A Serious Man

Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Sari Lennick, Fred Melamed, Aaron Wolff, Richard Kind and Amy Landecker
DVD release: 24 March 2010
Rated: M

Patience is a virtue

Hollywood’s brilliant mavericks, the Coen brothers, are no strangers to classical literature. Their 2000 film, O Brother Where Art Thou? Was based on no less than Homer’s Odyssey. Now they delve into Biblical (or, if you prefer, Talmudic) literature – specifically the Book of Job – for their latest, A Serious Man.

Now, I appreciate the Book of Job is something that many (including me) aren’t familiar with; and indeed it took me some time to do the research. So to save you the same trouble, bear with me while I give you a quick rundown. Basically, the whole book is a parable about why bad things happen to good people. Job has it all – a nice house, wealth, a large family – but is also the most pious man around. When God asks Satan (who may or may not be the entity we know as the Devil) about this, his response is that Job is only pious because he can afford to be. God therefore gives Satan permission to “test” Job; which he does by systematically destroying everything he has. Sitting on the ground with three (or maybe four) friends pondering all this, Job utters the famous line, paraphrased as “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”. Despite the urging of his friends, Job refuses to renounce God. The puzzling question of why these disasters have been visited on Job is answered by God essentially telling him that he can’t possibly know the mind of God and should therefore accept his fate and continue to believe. This Job does and is ultimately rewarded by having an even better life than he had before.

In A Serious Man, the Job figure is Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor who’s seeking tenure at a Minnesota college. While Larry can produce the most extraordinary calculations as “proof” of abstract theories, his life is otherwise falling apart at the seams. His wife Judith (Sari Lennick) tells him she’s leaving him for Larry’s friend, the unctuous Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed); his son Danny Aaron Wolff) is up to all sorts of shenanigans while approaching his bar mitzvah; his possibly insane brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is sleeping on his couch and making a nuisance of himself; his neighbour Mrs Samsky (Amy Landecker) is tempting him; he’s getting strange phone calls from a record club he doesn’t know existed and someone is writing ‘poison pen’ letters about him to the college’s tenure committee.

In desperation, Larry consults two rabbis to try to sort out his unravelling life; but their answers leave him even more bewildered. Much like Job, neither he nor they know the mind of God.

Like O Brother Where Art Thou? if you know the story behind the film, it makes understanding it so much easier and more meaningful. I can imagine people going into A Serious Man ‘cold’ and being absolutely befuddled as to what’s going on and what it all means. If you have even a rudimentary knowledge of the Book of Job however, the whole thing actually makes perfect sense; and more than that, it becomes one of the most intelligent and profound films of the year.

The Coens build up the tension in the film slowly, allowing the audience to take a rather uncomfortable journey with Larry. When the ending comes, it’s both perplexing and, in a sense, brilliant – a point to which I’ll return a little later.

The film’s setting is rather ambiguous. It’s certainly Minnesota (probably on the outskirts of Minneapolis) at some time in the past; but just when is rather unclear. One visual clue suggests it might be the summer of 1967, but a verbal clue would indicate possibly 1970 or 1971. Much of the action is set around Larry’s home, a comfortable but nondescript house in what seems to be a relatively new suburban development.

Regular Coens cinematographer and collaborator Roger Deakins recreates both the period and the setting with some wonderfully crisp imagery. Indeed, the visual and acting style chosen by the Coens goes beyond the realistic and into the hyper-real, arguably even the grotesque. While that may sound strange, it actually works for this film.

Lesser known actors feature in the cast; but all are excellent. Michael Stuhlbarg carries the film as Larry, making him a character you might not necessarily like, but can’t help but feel for. Fred Melamed is superb as Sy; while Sari Lennick is fiercely acerbic as Judith. Young Aaron Wolff is entirely believable as Danny, Richard Kind is suitably repulsive as Arthur and Amy Lanecker is nonchalantly, but slightly scarily, provocative as Mrs Samsky.

So what about that ending, which (without giving anything away) involves a ‘great wind’? Well, a ‘great wind’ appears twice in the Book of Job; on one occasion it destroys a house killing all of Job’s children and on the other, it holds the voice of God. Which is the one depicted in the film? I’ll leave that to you to decide.

David Edwards