Directors / writers / editors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Photography: Roger Deakins
Music: Carter Burwell, Jefferson Airplane, Band of Gypsys
Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, George Wyner, Amy Landecker, Adam Arkin, Peter Breitmayer
I wanted to make a point about A Serious Man being underrated, but every time I go looking for ranked lists of Coen brothers movies it’s chaos. I keep running into opinions I can’t believe anyone really has. A Rotten Tomatoes list that is aware of Ethan Coen’s solo Drive-Away Dolls from last year, for example, has True Grit #1 and Blood Simple #2 before getting to Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and Miller’s Crossing. The Big Lebowski is down at #14 in that list of 20 while A Serious Man sits comfortably in the middle at #11. That’s not exactly underrated but this list and many of the others strike me as weirdly perverse in any number of significant ways each.
Maybe Coen brothers movies appeal on a range of inscrutable, deeply personal points that may be difficult to discern. I know that’s at least partly the case for me with A Serious Man, which features, though not by name, the western Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, the growing up home of the Coen brothers. St. Louis Park was the next school district over from mine (Hopkins) and it was where my Dad taught 9th-grade physics and reported he’d had one of the Coens in a class one year. Many of the exteriors in A Serious Man were actually shot in Bloomington, a southern suburb. But I know St. Louis Park in the ‘60s when I see it. They are dead-on, these flat treeless squared-off suburban developments. The trees are all grown up now but this is what it looked like there 60 years ago.
I wanted to make a point about A Serious Man being underrated, but every time I go looking for ranked lists of Coen brothers movies it’s chaos. I keep running into opinions I can’t believe anyone really has. A Rotten Tomatoes list that is aware of Ethan Coen’s solo Drive-Away Dolls from last year, for example, has True Grit #1 and Blood Simple #2 before getting to Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and Miller’s Crossing. The Big Lebowski is down at #14 in that list of 20 while A Serious Man sits comfortably in the middle at #11. That’s not exactly underrated but this list and many of the others strike me as weirdly perverse in any number of significant ways each.
Maybe Coen brothers movies appeal on a range of inscrutable, deeply personal points that may be difficult to discern. I know that’s at least partly the case for me with A Serious Man, which features, though not by name, the western Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, the growing up home of the Coen brothers. St. Louis Park was the next school district over from mine (Hopkins) and it was where my Dad taught 9th-grade physics and reported he’d had one of the Coens in a class one year. Many of the exteriors in A Serious Man were actually shot in Bloomington, a southern suburb. But I know St. Louis Park in the ‘60s when I see it. They are dead-on, these flat treeless squared-off suburban developments. The trees are all grown up now but this is what it looked like there 60 years ago.
It's also relevant to this movie that St. Louis Park was known for a large Jewish population. Mail addressed to “St. Jewish Park” and even “Hebrew Heights, MN” reportedly made it to addressees if all the other data was good. A Serious Man may be the most self-consciously Jewish-themed movie the Coens have made, though they’ve never been particularly shy about their ethnicity. It opens on a 19th-century scene in Eastern Europe and a visitation from a dybbuk, a ghost in Jewish folklore that wanders around and does no one good. It has nothing to do with the story that starts after the titles, set in the 1960s, but it sets up the whole movie somehow to feel ancient, foretold, allegorical—deeper than the events it shows, let alone mere entertainment.
At the same time, it’s in the nature of the Coens to be sardonically funny, which produces a weird and fascinating stew. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a physics professor in his late 30s or early 40s with a wife and two kids. A nerdy math-head, he is about to be tenured, but a ridiculous pile of troubles is descending on him. His wife Judith (Sari Lennick) wants a divorce. She wants him to move out so her lover Sy (Fred Melamed), a mutual friend, can move in. Someone is sending poison-pen letters about him to the tenure committee. His brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is mentally unstable, living with him, stealing from him, and cracking up. His son Danny (Aaron Wolff) is into smoking pot and starting to deal it.
The structure of the movie, such as it is, beyond Larry attempting to claw his way out of his predicaments one at a time, is based on three visits he makes (or attempts to make) with three rabbis, looking for counsel. The first is a callow junior rabbi who thinks Larry just needs to stop and enjoy the views along the way, like the view out his window of a parking lot. The second, Rabbi Nachtner (George Wyner), is full of useless wry irony but he has a great story about a dentist who finds the Hebrew for “help me” inscribed on the backs of the lower teeth of a patient (not Jewish, a “goy”). There’s no point or explanation for this long wonderful elaborate story, which is the whole wryly ironic point of it. It’s good for a philosophical chuckle and wondering shake of the head, but not helpful to poor Larry.
The third rabbi, Marshak, is more self-consciously absurdist Coens business, as he is a very old man who seems to be into Jefferson Airplane on mystical levels (specifically, “Somebody to Love”). Go figure. There’s also a neighbor, Mrs. Samsky, who lacks only a Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack to be the legendary Mrs. Robinson. The dynamics of the Benjamin/Mrs. Robinson relationship from The Graduate are unmistakably all over these scenes but almost a little show-offy as such. I suppose it’s relevant in sidewise manner to the late-‘60s period and doesn’t feel entirely without point, but mainly it feels random.
And then there is the last image of the picture, where tornado warnings have been issued and Danny’s school building is evacuated. As they step outside, they can see the tornado on the horizon—a massive one, as it happens. The cinematic stillness of the moment, without panic before the extremity of the danger becomes apparent, looming as close as the horizon, is extraordinary. It sends the movie out on a high note of wonder and awe. So tornados and St. Louis Park—if they don’t factor in for you the way they do for me you may not find A Serious Man as thrilling and transporting as I do. I have to put it #4, after Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and Miller’s Crossing, and just before The Big Lebowski. In my Coen brothers rankings, no O Brother, Where Art Thou? or Inside Llewyn Davis need apply. But True Grit is acceptable for #6.
At the same time, it’s in the nature of the Coens to be sardonically funny, which produces a weird and fascinating stew. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a physics professor in his late 30s or early 40s with a wife and two kids. A nerdy math-head, he is about to be tenured, but a ridiculous pile of troubles is descending on him. His wife Judith (Sari Lennick) wants a divorce. She wants him to move out so her lover Sy (Fred Melamed), a mutual friend, can move in. Someone is sending poison-pen letters about him to the tenure committee. His brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is mentally unstable, living with him, stealing from him, and cracking up. His son Danny (Aaron Wolff) is into smoking pot and starting to deal it.
The structure of the movie, such as it is, beyond Larry attempting to claw his way out of his predicaments one at a time, is based on three visits he makes (or attempts to make) with three rabbis, looking for counsel. The first is a callow junior rabbi who thinks Larry just needs to stop and enjoy the views along the way, like the view out his window of a parking lot. The second, Rabbi Nachtner (George Wyner), is full of useless wry irony but he has a great story about a dentist who finds the Hebrew for “help me” inscribed on the backs of the lower teeth of a patient (not Jewish, a “goy”). There’s no point or explanation for this long wonderful elaborate story, which is the whole wryly ironic point of it. It’s good for a philosophical chuckle and wondering shake of the head, but not helpful to poor Larry.
The third rabbi, Marshak, is more self-consciously absurdist Coens business, as he is a very old man who seems to be into Jefferson Airplane on mystical levels (specifically, “Somebody to Love”). Go figure. There’s also a neighbor, Mrs. Samsky, who lacks only a Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack to be the legendary Mrs. Robinson. The dynamics of the Benjamin/Mrs. Robinson relationship from The Graduate are unmistakably all over these scenes but almost a little show-offy as such. I suppose it’s relevant in sidewise manner to the late-‘60s period and doesn’t feel entirely without point, but mainly it feels random.
And then there is the last image of the picture, where tornado warnings have been issued and Danny’s school building is evacuated. As they step outside, they can see the tornado on the horizon—a massive one, as it happens. The cinematic stillness of the moment, without panic before the extremity of the danger becomes apparent, looming as close as the horizon, is extraordinary. It sends the movie out on a high note of wonder and awe. So tornados and St. Louis Park—if they don’t factor in for you the way they do for me you may not find A Serious Man as thrilling and transporting as I do. I have to put it #4, after Fargo, No Country for Old Men, and Miller’s Crossing, and just before The Big Lebowski. In my Coen brothers rankings, no O Brother, Where Art Thou? or Inside Llewyn Davis need apply. But True Grit is acceptable for #6.
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