It's hard for me to adequately describe the ache in my brain which wells up as I attempt to write this review. The Coen Brothers have always been dear to me, and several films in the kaleidoscopic, challenging and delicious cake that is their body of work are among my favourites.
The Big Lebowski, Fargo, The Hudsucker Proxy; these are all tumbling, layered masterpieces which careen around in your brain for years after the fact. With that lodged firmly in mind, much like a baffled elderly man huddled in a public swimming pool in Wisconsin at dawn, genitals wedged firmly in the filtration pipe, let us begin.
A Serious Man opens with a bizarre prologue set in Eastern Europe, many years ago. A husband and wife bicker over whether the man the husband just met on the road was a wandering geist (a "dybbuk"), or just some amicable old guy out chasing geese. This compressed and black series of events end, and we're spat out into the present. Well, Minnesota in the spring of 1967. The first character we meet is probably my second favorite in
A Serious Man. Which is to say, he's one of three characters I didn't want to stab with a rusty spade by the end of the film. His name is Danny (played by Aaron Wolff), and he's hunkered down in a classroom, surreptitiously piping Jefferson Airplane as far into his cerebellum as he can, partially to drown out the incessant droning of his Hebrew teacher, but mostly because Jefferson Airplane was, and still is, the shit. The narrative then performs a stunning sleight of hand; it flits between Danny and an older Jewish man, visiting a doctor. The man appears harried, but intelligent. It isn't until we see both of these males enter the same house that we realise they're not the same person (the young, free-willed child transformed into the older, more world-beaten man). They're father and son. And their lives suck.
You see, Larry Gopnink (played with brilliant timing and finesse by Michael Stuhlbarg) is a Jewish professor of physics. He's also a father. His son, Danny, spends his days getting astoundingly high and running away from a flabby, cretinous pothead. His daughter Sarah is an atrociously shallow, irrational and vacuous little princess. And his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) is seeking a divorce, which struck me as a godsend for Larry, given that she had all the compassion, grace and wit of a busted gargoyle. The family home, however, does have one more denizen - Larry's tubby, surreal, and quite possibly mentally ill brother Arthur (Richard Kind), who spends his nights shuffling around the house draining a cyst on his neck. Tasty.
It might be difficult for one to imagine thing getting any harder for Larry. But
A Serious Man truly is a series of ball-tearingly awkward mishaps, each unlikely enough to make you smile initially, but eminently believable enough to make you uncomfortable and angry. Larry is beset by a Korean student, Clive, who tries to bribe him repeatedly throughout the film, his wife's infuriatingly mellow douchebag of a suitor Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed) won't stop touching his hands, and soon enough, everyone around him turns out to be a spectacular dick-sneeze. With, I should point out, the possible exception of a certain free-spirited neighbour.
Oh, I'm sorry, did that little hint of hope and redemption raise your spirits for a moment? Well too bad, my friends, because nothing pans out for Larry.
And I do mean nothing.
The Coen Brothers have essentially perfected a genre they've been delving into a great deal lately: Misery Porn. You see, misery porn is cinema which revels in unnecessary cruelty. I seem to recall a novel wherein someone, perhaps the plucky hero, was threatened with torture. Being heroic, however, they scoffed at this. They were then threatened with something worse; a group of medical professionals who would wait until the torture stopped, quickly fix the hapless soul up, lull him into a safe, comfortable headspace, and then wham! Torture again. This is precisely what misery porn does, and why it is so effective in making me want to kick innocent bystanders down flights of stairs out of sheer frustration. It offers brief, tantalizing glimpses of hope for, in this case, Larry Gopnik. Maybe, you think, this is just a farce. Maybe all these tiny windows of opportunity opening up periodically will be ones he can squeeze through. But... wait, no, those aren't windows. They're anuses with flames pouring out. Too bad, Larry.
The Coen Brothers have exhibited these traits before. Films such as
The Big Lebowski, Fargo, Blood Simple; they all seemed to have a thematic undercurrent which implied life was a tad pointless, and that people were doubly so. But there was so much that could be salvaged, they seemed to say. In
Burn After Reading, sure, most of the characters might be hollow, belligerent morons, but that's why the pointlessness of their lives is tolerable to watch. They didn't have far to fall; we were invested enough to be engaged, but not invested enough to really care. Sure, the misery the characters underwent was agonizing to watch, but I don't actually know anyone that flagrantly stupid, so I was allowed the scant luxury of distance. In A Serious Man, however, no such luck. Pointless things happen to a good man, over and over and over. And over.
It might be superbly acted, insightful and well crafted. But if I ever meet the Coen Brothers, I'm going to cock-punch them both into oblivion.
A Serious Man opens in cinemas on Thursday, November 19.
You can view the A Serious Man movie trailer here on TheVine.