Ah, God bless the Coens. After No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading they continue their stunning role in such style it is easy to imagine that The Ladykillers was merely a bad dream!
A Serious Man is at once hilarious, touching, intriguing and confounding – everything the brothers do so well.
After a funny, Yiddish-language parable shot in a different aspect ratio which opens the movie like a Pixar short film – connective to the main film but not really directly related – we launch into the story of college professor Larry (the excellent Michael Stuhlbarg).
Larry is a vintage Coen character. Like a 1960s, lead character version of Steve Buscemi’s Donnie character in The Big Lebowski. He is a somewhat hapless, put-upon character. A character going through life minding his own business who would happily avoid conflict or difficulty at every turn, but whom, like a cat to the allergic, conflict and difficulty is inexorably drawn. Problems beyond his control arise in just about every possible aspect of his life and he greats each one as best he can, while displaying the accumulating weight of this world on his shoulders.
Stuhlbarg is fantastic. As the film heaps more and more bad luck and misfortune on him you can see the despair in his eyes, the weight on his soul. You feel that sense of how close he could teeter on the brink of a breakdown, just hanging on as best he can, struggling for meaning in world that offers none. He is fair-minded, just, honest, hard-working, caring, practical, yet nothing he seems to do helps. The sense of his being overwhelmed grows so naturally that it is hard to believe more is not being verbalized, so clear is Stuhlbarg’s internal feeling.
But this is not a depressing film and it is not one of the Coen’s straight, more serious films. Tonally it probably has most in common with Barton Fink, but it is much funnier. A series of meetings with various Rabbis are highlights, especially the second which contains the relating of a story so brilliantly Coen in both imagination and delivery of dialogue that you kind of know how the joke is going to work but you’re enjoying getting there and so happy when it does.
It is very much Stuhlbarg’s film. Beyond Larry the world is the character. It is the Coens world, but also cinematographer Roger Deakins’ world. After skipping out on Burn After Reading Deakins is back with the Coens where he belongs and the world of A Serious Man is typically beautiful. Deakins has done period, suburban beauty with the Coens before in The Man Who Wasn’t There, but here he can also add a colour palette and the result is stunning visual that belie the unflashy setting.
Carter Burwell’s score is also deceptively well judged, to the point you almost forget it’s there but it resonates beyond the film. It’s no Fargo score, which really plays well divorced from image on CD, but it is another crucial part that makes the Coen world seem whole.
The best decision here though was to abandon their regular stock company, not just the “star” names like George Clooney but also the regular character actors like Steve Buscemi, Jon Polito, Frances McDormand, John Turturro, John Goodman, Peter Stormare, Michael Badalucco, etc. About the most recognizable name in the movie is Richard Kind (at least recognizable to fans of the Michael J Fox sitcom Spin City) and Barton Fink’s Michael Lerner does turn up ever so briefly. But Lerner’s brief appearance almost feels like it serves to say, “no, this is not one for the regulars”!
Stuhlbarg is so convincing in the lead, and seems so suited to the Coens world (much like Billy Bob Thornton stepped so easily into the barbers shoes of Man Who Wasn’t There) that while this film doesn’t feature the Coen regulars it did leave me hoping Stuhlbarg becomes one of them.
Some will no doubt find the conclusion frustrating but it feels like the end the film deserves. The Coens have never strived to make a ‘Hollywood’ happy fit movie, they have consistently shown Hollywood what can be done.
A Coen film is also a must see but A Serious Man does not disappoint. It is certainly one of the highlights of the year so far and, given the Coens heightened awards profile post No Country, should at the very least garner strong awards attention for Stuhlbarg if not for the brothers and their behind camera colleagues.
A Serious Man is at once hilarious, touching, intriguing and confounding – everything the brothers do so well.
After a funny, Yiddish-language parable shot in a different aspect ratio which opens the movie like a Pixar short film – connective to the main film but not really directly related – we launch into the story of college professor Larry (the excellent Michael Stuhlbarg).
Larry is a vintage Coen character. Like a 1960s, lead character version of Steve Buscemi’s Donnie character in The Big Lebowski. He is a somewhat hapless, put-upon character. A character going through life minding his own business who would happily avoid conflict or difficulty at every turn, but whom, like a cat to the allergic, conflict and difficulty is inexorably drawn. Problems beyond his control arise in just about every possible aspect of his life and he greats each one as best he can, while displaying the accumulating weight of this world on his shoulders.
Stuhlbarg is fantastic. As the film heaps more and more bad luck and misfortune on him you can see the despair in his eyes, the weight on his soul. You feel that sense of how close he could teeter on the brink of a breakdown, just hanging on as best he can, struggling for meaning in world that offers none. He is fair-minded, just, honest, hard-working, caring, practical, yet nothing he seems to do helps. The sense of his being overwhelmed grows so naturally that it is hard to believe more is not being verbalized, so clear is Stuhlbarg’s internal feeling.
But this is not a depressing film and it is not one of the Coen’s straight, more serious films. Tonally it probably has most in common with Barton Fink, but it is much funnier. A series of meetings with various Rabbis are highlights, especially the second which contains the relating of a story so brilliantly Coen in both imagination and delivery of dialogue that you kind of know how the joke is going to work but you’re enjoying getting there and so happy when it does.
It is very much Stuhlbarg’s film. Beyond Larry the world is the character. It is the Coens world, but also cinematographer Roger Deakins’ world. After skipping out on Burn After Reading Deakins is back with the Coens where he belongs and the world of A Serious Man is typically beautiful. Deakins has done period, suburban beauty with the Coens before in The Man Who Wasn’t There, but here he can also add a colour palette and the result is stunning visual that belie the unflashy setting.
Carter Burwell’s score is also deceptively well judged, to the point you almost forget it’s there but it resonates beyond the film. It’s no Fargo score, which really plays well divorced from image on CD, but it is another crucial part that makes the Coen world seem whole.
The best decision here though was to abandon their regular stock company, not just the “star” names like George Clooney but also the regular character actors like Steve Buscemi, Jon Polito, Frances McDormand, John Turturro, John Goodman, Peter Stormare, Michael Badalucco, etc. About the most recognizable name in the movie is Richard Kind (at least recognizable to fans of the Michael J Fox sitcom Spin City) and Barton Fink’s Michael Lerner does turn up ever so briefly. But Lerner’s brief appearance almost feels like it serves to say, “no, this is not one for the regulars”!
Stuhlbarg is so convincing in the lead, and seems so suited to the Coens world (much like Billy Bob Thornton stepped so easily into the barbers shoes of Man Who Wasn’t There) that while this film doesn’t feature the Coen regulars it did leave me hoping Stuhlbarg becomes one of them.
Some will no doubt find the conclusion frustrating but it feels like the end the film deserves. The Coens have never strived to make a ‘Hollywood’ happy fit movie, they have consistently shown Hollywood what can be done.
A Coen film is also a must see but A Serious Man does not disappoint. It is certainly one of the highlights of the year so far and, given the Coens heightened awards profile post No Country, should at the very least garner strong awards attention for Stuhlbarg if not for the brothers and their behind camera colleagues.
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