"A Serious Man" is as disturbing a film as one can imagine making. More disturbing than "No Country For Old Men?" Yes - blatant violence is absent from this film except for one unexpected moment that turns out to be a dream but what makes this film so hard to watch is the same thing that makes a newspaper so difficult to read - the random nature of life and the seeming non-logical nature of our existence.
"Why me?" Behind this simple question in this black comedy is a demon of epic proportions lurking - one we try to push out of our lives and deny. But at the edges of a silent scream it waits doing nothing but sitting there with a smug smile and the power to completely destroy our lives.
The story revolves around Larry Gopnik perfectly played by Michael Stuhlbarg, a professor of physics whose life is ruled by the certain logic of the Universe through his math. He does his job, comes home, takes care of his family and is a decently observant Jew. This is all of us at some point - taking our lives to a place we can't know and can't see so we just do the things we're supposed to do every day.
Things begin to unravel for Gopnik when one of his students tries to bribe him into changing his grade. Gopnik explains to the student that he has no knowledge of the math behind the physics and so he can't possibly give him a passing grade. The student says "But I understand the cat" refering to Schrödinger's cat, a thought experiment, often described as a paradox It illustrates what Schrödinger saw as the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics applied to everyday objects. The thought experiment presents a cat that might be alive or dead, depending on an earlier random event. The student is arguing here that he gets the paradox, intuitively and doesn't need the math. He understands the duality of our lives, both good and bad. To Gopnik this is incomprehensible - until his life goes out from under him and he he begins to understand that logic isn't applicable here; he needs to try to understand the cat, something he won't be able to do for most of the film.
This goes to the very nature of the film which feels like it's mostly about the uncertainty of life - that we cannot possibly know in which direction we're heading because all directions are random based on a thousand minor interactions. I kept
seeing raindrops in this film - raindrops that collasce and form into floods that can drown us or sweep us along willy nilly to another reality.
The story narrative is loosely based on the Book Of Job who was beset by Yaweh by so many trials that he nearly lost his faith in God's will but in the end was rewarded for his staunch faith.
I won't recount the various events that lead to Gopnik's ruin but suffice to say that they are both mundane ("Dad, 'F-Troop' is fuzzy") to the profound ("Hashem (God) hasn't given me shit!")
Gopnik tries to get answers from attorneys and rabbis alike. Most are inane, one drops dead. Gopnik might as well ask a wandering dog for answers - those answers will not be not forthcoming.
Some see this film as relentlessly bleak and discouraging. And perhaps that's the point. The Coens wrap it in their sly humor but they aren't joking around here. Or maybe they are since trying to figure out The Universe is like an ant trying to figure out where its at after being stuffed into a series of dozens of nesting boxes and then buried 1,000 feet underground. Woody Allen had a great quote about this: "When you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."
It's amazing to me that the Coens, for all their exalted and priviledged status as filmmakers can still find the common man. Some would say they sit in judgment of these characters they create, laughing at them, showing us how superior they (the Coens) are to us all. I think that's wrong-minded. The story feels intensely autobiographical especially the Gopnik son who goes through the movie stoned and unaware of the bigger questions facing his father. I think the Coens are channeling, not sitting in judgement. At the same
time, their movies deftly point out that they have done some serious thinking about religion, God and these paradoxes of our existence and have come to no good conclusions, just more questions. Who has? Anyone who says they have the answers, these films seem to say, is a fool. Agnosticism is a robe the Coens pull on every time they sit down to create a movie.
The film is amusing and so very clever in its approach. It teaches and informs without being overly preachy. Okay, some of the scenes are thematically sledge-hammered into your brain but on the whole, there is enough cautiousness presented here that you're able to sit and allow the film to roll over you as you slowly develop this sense of growing horror that this is your life they're talking about - everyone's life in fact.
Nature plays a big part in the Coen films and this one is no exception. Whether the natural forces are just that - nature - or God - isn't ever really made clear but there is a hint in the book of Job where God appears as a "whirlwind." As it sits, you can interpet the ending any way you choose and it's valid. That, in itself, is quite an accomplishment since it's rare in today's Hollywood that an audience is allowed to make up their own minds about how they feel (Mr. Speilberg, are you listening?)
I choose to see the agnostic message here: Since we can't know we just have to act right toward each other and hope for the best. Yaweh, God, if he exists is unknowable and unreachable. Trust your fellow man, as bankrupt a philosophy as that can be made in some people's hands. Does Bernie Madoff get pay-per-view in prison I wonder? I think he needs to see this film.
The song "Somebody to Love" by Jefferson Airplane sums up the film to a neat degree:
When the truth is found to be lies
And all the joy within you dies
Don't you want somebody to love?
Don't you need somebody to love?
Watch "A Serious Man" and remember that no one in Hollywood, since Woody Allen went south on us, is making these types of films anymore. All right, perhaps the lightweight and self-serving Charlie Kaufman - but otherwise no one seems to be searching for these deeper answers in film and making that search as public and personal as the Coens.
Allen did it in the 80's - the Coens are doing it now; twenty years from now someone else will be doing it again because it doesn't matter how many people do it, we all come to the same conclusions: if you're not sure that your religion or philosophy has all the answers then you can search until you're dead and you'll never be able to say with certainty that you've figured it out.
Even if you're a serious man.
