A Serious Man (2009)

Maybe I can blame my long hiatus on this blog on Joel & Ethan Coen's elusive, yet somehow humorous, take on the Job story in A Serious Man. Let me put it like this: I don't know quite what to think. My relation with the Coen bros tend to be a shaky one. Some films I adore (The Man Who Wasn't There, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Barton fink), some confound me (No Country for old men, ) and some bore the shit outta me (everything with George Clooney, well basically O Brother Where art thou?).

Mid life crisis is looming over A serious man. Well, there are lots of crises here, but that's one for sure. Marriage, and all that - middle class life and all it takes of chicanery and self-made delusions. This is the mid-west and the 60's. A professor, Larry, is processing the latest news: his wife is leaving him (she's fallen for their mutual pal who tries to 'understand'). Their kid is abused by other children and life's a mess in general, but Larry is still fond of the equations he scribbles on the blackboard. He has decided that the best thing to do is to seek out some religious counselling by the ancient Rabbi - the Rabbi who never speaks or sees anyone it seems. Larry is unhinged, or let's face it, on the verge of deranged but perhaps in the sort of way that will suddenly put him on the right path again. But not much is going for him. The neighbor is too sexy, the brother is not of much use and he's got a problematic situation at work. Plus he might or might not succeed on the tenure track: his colleague paws into his office giving him ambiguous hints. In the end, I guess I give up and like this film - in its elusive humorousness, it opens up a perspective on life: it HAS to get better, goddammit, whatever it takes, but this messages is not delivered by means of sunny DYI aphorisms about you-can-do-it but rather through kabbalistic half-nonsense and one catastrophe after the other. All the time, the film remains sad, goofy and supercilious. How can one not be seduced by the strangeness of A Serious Man? Impossible. But let's not get into how and if the film goes from a belief in equations to a belief in God - Larry is not really a character for such traditional transitions. Nor do I have a clear-cut answer to the Coen bros' rendering of Larry's hopeful outlook. Is he supposed to look like a fool, or a deeply religious man, or maybe both at the same time? As I'm writing this, I realize I have an urge to watch this film again!