Job and the new freedoms: Joel and Ethan Coen's "A Serious Man"

Have you ever had one of those days when regardless of your best intentions everyone just seems to get more and more pissed off at you no matter what you did?  Have you ever wondered what it all means?  The Coen Brothers have perfectly captured these universal experiences in a mysteriously entrancing & hypnotic comedy that is as profoundly entertaining as it is  entertainingly profound.     

The Jefferson Airplane's earth shaking album Surrealistic Pillow with it's hit songs Somebody to Love (a cover written by Grace Slick's brother in law) and White Rabbit, perhaps the most accurate of the multitude of depictions of the psychedelic trip in the 60's pop rock songbook, has through overuse gone from an innovative ego-shattering mental reset in musical form to a cinematic synonym for the late 60's, mind expanding experiences, and the hippie revolution to becoming such a tired film and television cliche as to strip it of all meaning and musical existence, it has become instead a kind of mental and musical void, such a cliche that our ability to perceive it's original musical brilliance seemed lost forever.

In their only film set overtly in the world of their own youth, (in case you haven't heard, as part of a rapidly growing and assimilating Jewish community in a middle class suburb in the American midwest in the 1960's) the mostly  transcendently brilliant and eclectic Coen brothers have among many other impressive achievements succeeded to some degree in restoring  the song, along with a significant chunk of the now shamefully forgotten and overlooked seminal album on which it appeared originally, when it blew everyone's minds so severely as to make it the obvious choice for generations of movie and television music supervisors.  As a true fan of the record, born two years after the the date of this story,  I was grateful and moved by the choice of such an exquisite and personally affecting choice for this unusual and eccentric focus on a single album in a movie soundtrack.

It is, given the uses in previous films, a bold choice,  yet conventional in that it represents here the surging undercurrent (or dangerous undertow?) of the burgeoning psychedelic subculture that is only beginning to touch this midwestern suburb after redefining places like San Francisco's Haight Ashbury and New York's East village.   The social revolution engendered by a bunch of young freaks testing the limits of culture and consciousness created a world shifting explosion of change, described by one intriguing and enigmatic supporting character in this film as "the new freedoms". 

In many ways this deep inner and outer exploration of possibility and meaning is both a temptation and a mirror for the journey taken in this piece.  At the time it defined a vast schism in our society, between those who see goodness and right living as defined by conformity, obedience and spartan chaste sobriety, versus those who see goodness and right living to require personal growth and change, and to be measured not by an arbitrary adherence to traditional norms, but rather a radical present-moment focus on what is universally right (love,  peace, harmony, freedom and universal brotherhood...  sisterhood was still an alien concept even to most hippies, and oh yes, Cannabis smoking, repeatedly featured in this film) and what is wrong (war, social rigidity, segregation, the strict punishing father paradigm, and the man trying to bum out my mellow trip).   The use of this music and the continual intrusions of the counterculture into this prim suburban setting brings to our attention both the contrasts and the parallels between the old world personified as Rabbinical scholarship and suburban conformity, and the new world symbolized by sex drugs and rock and roll, and the renewed search for ethics and meaning that grew out of the psychedelic explorations of the time.

A much greater and more completely realized achievement of "A Serious Man" mirrors the unique accomplishment of the Airplane record, that is to initiate for the audience a mental experience that reflects both the experiences depicted therein and the experience of the inquiring artists themselves, exploring questions that are universal, and rarely addressed in cinema.   

These are in the eyes of this reviewer, twofold.

Primarily "A Serious Man" asks the ultimate questions of meaning and faith that are unavoidable in a world that is often cruel, sometimes randomly wonderful, and rapidly changing.

Secondarily it luxuriates in the Jewish American experience as it's rarely been depicted, with a holographic glimpse of it's many facets, from the secular suburban cultural desert of the 1960's,  vapid yet fertile with the possibilities of "the new freedoms" to the rich and pungent  cultural stewpot of the rarefied inner world of Rabbinical scholarship and it's more widely known microcosms, Hebrew School and the Bar Mitvah.

Our woebegotten and confused hero is Larry Gopnik, (probably coincidentally the slang term for a modern "thuggish" Russian male subculture) a regular schmoe,  a bit of a schmuck but basically a mensch, or a essentially good person who wants to be a mensch. (the yiddish word which translates approximately into this film's title)

There is not much yiddish in the film, but enough to warrant a playful video glossary on the DVD which is worth watching but not needed to understand the film.    Jews don't believe in Hell, so what motivates a jew to behave well in life?  The idea is that one should be a good person, be a real man if you are male, ie a mensch.  This being the rough translation of the title of the film it is reasonable to assume that the Coens are telling us that one should strive to be a good person for it's own sake, regardless of any consequences in this life or the afterlife.  This attitude is reflected in the opening quote, don't blink or you'll miss it, at the start of the film.

One small element of the film that is particularly interesting is a tiny subplot, casually thrown aside, which vanishes as mysteriously as it appeared, involving the ancient cabalistic quest for a code or formula in which letters and numbers can be arranged so as to understand the essential hidden patterns of the universe and even predict the future.   Specifically the mechanism of this predictive magic involved some kind of mystical method of calculating probabilities.   The determinacy of this idea contrasts Gopnik's teaching his physics class the indeterminacy of the universe with a comically immense chalkboard proof, which ironically looks pretty much identical to the scribbled mystical formulas of the aforementioned semi-magical predicting book.  Gopniks story seems to suppor the latter theory, that life cannot be accurately predicted, that encoded rules may not apply to real situations, yet in the movie, the predictions are correct. "It works!" we are told, and we are shown tangible proof.   So even indeterminacy itself is not reliable.

This idea was the primary focus of the strange and delightful but painful and grotesque 1998 film Pi by the eccentric and controversial genius Darren Aronofsky, and seems superficially out of step with the rest of the Coen Brothers work, much like the UFO subplot of "The Man Who Wasn't There". 

Perhaps the similar titles of these two strange and subtly hilarious suburban period pieces is not a coincidence.  The mood and aesthetics are similar (partly due of course to their reunion with their brilliant long time cinematographer Roger Deakins, whose work here is as beautiful and bold as ever) and the focus on a single main character, a middle of the road suburban husband finding himself strangely at odds with his environment and family, seeking a deeper meaning that seems elusive.   And in the middle of all this mundane profundity comes a bizarre and wonderful element that would be at home in science fiction or fantasy.   Are we to think that these odd subplots are dreams, fantasies or hallucinations of a mind at the end of it's rope?      I really don't know.   I find both these elements puzzling, though symbolically sensible.  

If our long suffering hero Larry Gopnik could find a book that encoded answers to all of life's most unanswerable questions, he would be victorious in his quest for understanding, and the movie would be over.   Is this another element, however obscure and occult, of  Jewish culture, and the Jewish cultural imperative towards obsessively studious bookishness? Are the Coen bothers telling us not to expect answers, because they only exist in fantasy?   Certainly they have here a great symbol for the overall theme of the film with this weird and wonderful little red herring.

Why is this moderately paced, quiet, dry film so funny and thrilling to watch?   Why does it seem so much more satisfying than their most similar work "The Man Who Wasn't There", a fine piece in it's own right, rich with mystery and atmosphere, with the same eerie yet hearty humor and the same kind of unresolvedness?   This was only the first of many questions that "A Serious Man" brought up in me. 

I can't think of another film that so effectively presents seemingly contradictory viewpoints in such a seamless and unified way.

Is it a love letter to faith, and to Judaism in particular, a retelling of the biblical story of Job, inspiring us to see that religion is a practice whose greatest possible application is to cultivate goodness in a person,  independent of any heavenly or earthly reward, and not an answer to all questions or a system of fair punishments and prizes for our bad and good deeds?

Is it a darkly comic and unvarnished view of the cruelty of fate and the arbitrary facelessness of religion,  used by each person for their own self centered purposes, whether good evil or indifferent, no more imbued with values than a hammer which can build an orphanage or bludgeon an innocent person to death?

Is this the most explicitly religious comedy film ever made, or the best argument for atheism in the history of fiction?

Is it an absurdist or existentialist declaration of nihilistic meaninglessness? 

Or is it an argument for altruism for it's own sake and zen acceptance of all things?

Is it a bold hyperrealistic attempt to capture the confusing, baffling yet enticing nature of real life in film?

Or is it a stylized over the top revival of the Borsht Belt aesthetic of the broad but affectionate caricatures of self depreciating Jewish humor?

And what does it all mean?

The movie, yes, and life itself!  What does it all mean?

The Coens don't offer us one simple answer, which should be no surprise.   What is a surprise is how this unique film is so pleasing and fun to watch from the first frame to the last.   I've never had a better time questioning all my philosophies in life.

Conclusion?

Don't let the title put you off,  "A Serious Man" is seriously funny,  carrying the viewer along for an unceasingly entertaining joyride through life's most confounding questions.

"A Serious Man"  USA,  2009

Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Writers: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Very highly recommended.  Available on DVD, Blue Ray, on-demand, etc.  

The cinema activist: a statement of purpose

As long as I can remember and even before that, I and most likely you and most all of us have been immersed in film, television, and now online video.

The long promised convergence is old news to many, and increasingly most of us share our mental landscape with a mosaic of real life experiences and real people interlaid with the images, words, sounds, ideas and characters we have experienced only through audio-visual storytelling in it's ever more myriad forms.

 Not long ago it seemed we were forever starved for entertainment and media, with only three national tv networks and a handful of local stations to choose from, with physical trips to the video store an absolute necessity, where we would pick amongst what now seems like a miserably small selection of movies, trying to find something make us laugh, cry, scream, think, learn or wonder and marvel.   Something even to make us question.

And how often did we make our choice knowing that we could do better but unable to access the wide world of media from our tiny local video outlets.

Today we can choose from a seemingly infinite buffet of films and shows from any time or place in the world, although when searching for more obscure titles and subjects on the web, one realizes that with all it's pandora's box of treasures the internet is still relatively so young and incomplete that it would be a foolish oversight to assume that the great electric oracle of our age is all knowing.  Many the out of print VHS only films that I treasure did not make it to DVD and with the transition to blue ray seem unlikely candidates for release any time soon.

But how to know, with all these dizzying choices, the best and most entertaining ways to spend our limited lifetimes, and fulfill our evolutionarily mandated need for visual stories as told and acted out so long ago by flickering firelight.

Which films and shows will change our lives, enrich and provoke us, allow us an escape from our mental routine and in doing so deliver us right into the center of life and it's realities both joyous and agonizing, and which ones will burn a searing hole into our brains, leaving a smoking hole in our precious short lifetimes, leaving us feeling empty, betrayed and infected by mediocrity or worse?

This blog was created to house a series of cinema essays, both critical and uncritical, examining some of my favorite and least favorite films, television shows, and audio visual media of all kinds.

I hope to draw your attention to some you may have overlooked, some which may be hard to find, and give a different perspective on some we all know, or should know.

I hope to occasionally provide amusing warnings of cinematic potholes in the road, helping the reader to avoid the soul scarring that can result from films made without care or love, save the love of lucre.

If at all possible I hope to inspire you to treat yourself to the luxury of truly well made work, and especially to reflect upon it's impact and relevance to ourselves and the larger world.

My writing comes from the perspective of an engaged artist.   As a filmmaker and musician myself, I am on thin ice allowing my inner critic to run rampant over the works of others, but I hope to bring to my cinema essays the empathy of a fellow hack,  the knowledge such as it is gained in a life overloaded with viewing and excessive study of the art and craft, as well as some personal experience.

Most importantly I want to engage you in a discussion of how cinema engages with the issues of real life, and how it can move us to become more engaged in our world.

I am not someone who believes in the old Hollywood adage attributed to Sam Goldwyn that "if you want to send a message, use western union".   I think that all art sends a message, intentionally or not, the art we create expresses directly or holographically our perspective on our subject matter, and in subtext our perspective about whatever we were dealing with when we made it.   Sometimes well crafted art can send a message within a message, as in satire and classical tragedy, where the message is implied as the opposite of the one overtly presented by the characters involved, other times it's right out front.

The quality of a piece is not dependent on whether or not it seeks to send a message.   Message movies can be well done or poorly done, like any genre, but we are fools if we think that we can make or watch a movie without teaching something or learning something.    

Often, however, the best teachers leave us with more questions than answers, and I'll be taking a special interest in the films that do this,   To paraphrase Deadwood's brilliant creator David Milch, life's problems are not solved by the end of the movie or the episode, and especially not by simply finding a bad guy and killing him, literally or metaphorically, as is all to often the lazily oversimplified way that films and shows resolve the complexity implied by their stories.

What we bring to a viewing experience so greatly determines what we get from it, that we may find completely different reactions inside ourselves to the same films when seen on different occasions, so if you disagree with my opinions, great!  But watch it again later and you might feel differently, as may I.

So enjoy, watch TCM whenever you can, and engage with me.  Tell me when you agree or disagree with what I've written, as each person brings a different world of perspective to what they watch, and each person's differing opinions are valid from their point of view.