“Jews are just like everybody else. Only more so.”- Dorothy Parker
What’s great about The Coen Brothers is that they never repeat themselves or pander to popular taste. They make movies they want to and are not afraid to mystify their audience. This is not done with any arty farty pretentiousness but out of a realisation that life doesn’t provide the easy solutions or self contained narratives that more mainstream cinema presents.
After their star-studded comedy ‘Burn After Reading’, the easy option would have been to repeat the anarchic slapstick formula and laugh all the way to the bank. The Coens preserve their reputation for independence, innovation and all round strangeness with their latest movie ‘A Serious Man’.
Set in 1967 in the American mid-west, it centres on the Jewish subculture which has obvious connections with the Coens own upbringing. Although their own father – like the main character- was a University professor Ethan & Joel deny that it is intended as an autobiographical film. And as the disclaimer indicates (“No Jews were harmed in the making of this motion picture”), it is an affectionate portrayal of this largely hidden community.
The movie is deliberately un-star-studded as it features a largely unknown cast. At its centre is Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gobnik, a physics professor, who encounters a catalogue of mishaps that turn his safe suburban existence upside down.
We first see him having a medical check up after which he is told he has no health worries. Later he receives a phone message from the doctor which refers to ‘unjust results’. As the Kaftaesque series of minor catastrophes mount up, he becomes increasingly desperate. His domestic and professional life begins to fall apart and his attempts to get help from a legal advisors and rabbis fail to provide a solution.
His life could be seen as a metaphor for an unjust fate. Believers might argue that this was some sort of penance for past sins committed but it really just shows that however righteous and unselfish you are, terrible, tragic things can befall you anyway.
His increasingly desperate cry is “I haven’t done anything” and it is far from clear how we, the viewers, can interpret his plight. Is it the wrath of God or simply the consequence of his being a man incapable of overcoming setbacks?
Also, what are we supposed to make of the opening scene (in Yiddish) in which a wife suspects the man her husband has befriended is a dybbuk (a malevolent ghost) and plunges a screwdriver into his chest to prove her point? The Coen Brothers, in typically enigmatic fashion, have said that they chose this scene not because it had any link with what followed but because it set the right tone.
What’s the message behind a Rabbi’s tale of a Jewish dentist who discovers the message ‘save me’ written on the teeth of a non Hebrew patient?
Like the God Larry appeals to, there are many questions and no answers. The sum total of the advice he receives is to let the mystery be and try to get a sense of perspective is.
This great movie is further proof (as if you needed it) that The Coen Brothers stand head and shoulders above other film makers working today.
It is fair to say that 1909 was not a good year for Adeline Virginia Stephen. She was struggling to complete her first novel and was increasing fearful of turning into a frustrated spinster. Later, following her marriage to Leonard Woolf, she would look back and write: “I was unhappy that summer and bitter in all my judgements”.
