A Serious Man – directed by Ethan and Joel Coen. Drama. A helpless Jewish man is beset on all sides. 106 minutes Color 2009.
★★
A vehicle for a Jewish sad-sack – this is a Woody Allen movie without Woody Allen but with the characteristic Coen cruelty of temperament which Woody Allen mercifully does not possess. That cruelty was arresting in early pictures such as Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing, and held at bay by the presence of Frances McDormand in Fargo, an actor whose real humor displaces all such pretense – pretense because the Coen brothers have done nothing to earn such cruelty. For them it is a fad, the fashion of hard heartedness as hip, like wearing a neckerchief and hoping to be taken for a cowboy. This story is a Neil Simonized Job story of an ordinary middle class Jewish college teacher being beset by every woe imaginable. It is very well acted and produced and directed, of course. However, I found it tiresome because the teacher is written as a schmuck, a man who can never speak up for himself not just because he is surrounded by loudmouths but merely because the part is written that way – hopeless – which is not good enough. I would not mind this character being bulldozed; I don’t mind Bob Hope being bulldozed by Bing Crosby; but in A Serious Man I don’t believe it. I believe the Coen brothers think it’s funny or tragic or both, whereas he is simply annoying. If you are infuriated by a fly, get out of bed and find the fly swatter. Of course, there are some telling characters, who, while not real outside of a cartoon, give value for your buck: the neighbor lady with the mummy eyes, and his wife’s boyfriend. But his search for counsel with his rabbis is a put up job. He is never really looking for God, nor does he stumble upon God, nor is he even tempted by God. He goes to temple as one goes to a barbershop, as a form of social neatness. But the serious man is not serious, and movie is footling. The Coen boys have not had much to offer for some years now. I have seen all their movies, but I have, I believe, now seen all I am going to see.
A Serious Man
09
Oct