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.
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