A SERIOUS MAN
Focus Features
106 min., dir. by Joel and Ethan Coen, with Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, and Sari Lennick
It feels dangerous territory to criticize the Coen brothers. Without a doubt, they are intelligent and extremely well-versed in the language of cinema. Even when they misstep, it is only in the eyes of the viewers. Their films are made so deliberately, each perfectly capturing whatever vision they set out to make. In this way, what they make is most surely some of film’s finest examples of art. However, like all artists, some works transcend others. Films like Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, Where Art Thou all represent the Coens at the height of their filmmaking prowess.
Here, with their most recent film, A Serious Man, they attempt to flip a cardinal rule of filmmaking on its head. They choose to center their film around Larry Gopnik, a middle-aged professor, who is the definition of passive. Passive people rarely have films made about them because, well, they just aren’t all that interesting. We like to watch people accomplish things, watch them change, or at least change others. Here we have a central character who things happen to — the journey is about forcing him out of the passivity.
But is that an interesting journey to watch? I believe the Coens’ intentions were to make a comedy, but the film barely managed to pull a smile out of me. I found the entire affair utterly depressing. I’ve never been shy to the genre of dark comedy and depressing humor, but here the Coens move so far in that direction that they negate the comedy entirely. Instead we watch a sad man have a sad life. We hope he breaks from his ways simply to change the pace of the film.
The script is brimming with fully-formed characters and biblical allusions, but when they aren’t ones you want to stay with anyway it feels pointless. By the time the film ends I was happy to leave. Even the smirk that is present in usual Coen brothers’ films seems bizarrely absent here, as though they failed to see the humor in all of this as well.
One problem, bizarrely, might be with the cinematography of Roger Deakins. If you know his name, you know why this is strange. Deakins is responsible for some of the most amazing and iconic looking films of the last 20 years — from The Shawshank Redemption, to The Assassination of Jesse James, and all of the Coens’ works. He is undoubtedly brilliant. And while A Serious Man does look absolutely beautiful, it doesn’t look like a comedy. The look fights against the laughs, making one feel more like the characters than an observer. And in this world, that’s not a good thing.
That might be the biggest problem with A Serious Man — it never quite knows what tone it wants to strike. It battles back and forth with feeling, never arriving at a solid and agreeable ground. However, as said before, the Coen brothers are artists. This is the exact film they set out to make, for better or for worse. If it’s the story you want to hear then you will be thrilled. But for the rest of us, it’s a film that feels too depressing, empty, and passive to want to return to. Is it worth seeing? Perhaps once. But I can’t see myself ever wanting to watch it again.
