Rewatching
A Serious Man last night two things struck me:
1- A Serious Man is a serious allegory with the underlying meaning being that...nothing has meaning.
The films opens with a reenactment of a Yiddish fable, in which a married couple is confronted with a dybbuk, a spirit of a local villager. The rational husband refuses to believe that the old man standing before him is a spirit, while the seriously superstitious wife stabs the old man with an ice pick to prove to her husband that he's a ghost. The old man laughs, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he has an icepick in his chest, but the mood changes as blood appears on the old man's clothing. The old man stumbles back out into the cold snowy landscape, and disappears, leaving the audience feeling uneasy and confused. Was he alive or was he a dybbuk? Like most things Jewish, the end is inconclusive: a perfect introduction for the parable that follows. Similar to Goldilocks in the children's fairy tale, the film's protagonist Larry Gopnik visits three different rabbis looking for answers. But unlike in the Goldilocks story, the rabbis all fail to answer his questions. As unfortunate events pile up Larry's quest for meaning grows increasingly frantic. By the end, some of the events have reached conclusions, while others remain ambiguous. In the final scene, a hurricane sweeps into town, but the screen cuts to black before the results are known. So what's the moral of this story? Like the story of the dybbuk, it's indeterminate. Larry's struggle is representative of man's general struggle against the chaotic forces of the universe and the hapless search--through religion, science, mysticism, what have you---for meaning in the chaos.
2-A Serious Man is a comedy dressed as a horror movie.
Coen humor always centers around the quotidian lives of its grotesque characters. In
A Serious Man, this comedy becomes a serious, anxiety-ridden affair. The Coen Bros imbue the gestures of each character with enormous portent, from the son's fingers drumming as he listens to music to Larry's hands fiddling with the antenna on his roof. Every movement seems so deliberate and well thought out, increasing the tension with the skill and grace of a well-timed anxiety attack and leaving the audience on the edge of its seat, hands to chest in suspense. But every time, this pent-up anxiety is for naught. Just like Larry, the audience is fooled into thinking that the film's style will lead to substance--an attack, a surprise. But these ultra-controlled movements, accentuated by the film's eerie and mysterious 4-note theme only lead to a big question mark. And the audience, who have been waiting for answers to their anxiety and fear-laden questions--
Will the son’s Walkman be discovered? What will the Larry's ear-test results be? Who was trying to sabotage his tenure hearings? Will his brother get caught?--are left in the dark. The mysteries of the universe are unknowable and uncontrollable, and the unfortunate series of events that causes Larry to try to uncover them is quintessential Coen humor.
What do you think? Do you agree that the film is this cynical? I'd be interested to hear how people felt that religion and general jewishness was portrayed--endearingly, knowingly, derisively, etc. Comments, critiques welcome!
Labels: A Serious Man, Cohen Brothers, comedy, film, Focus Features, Horror
