"When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies..." A SERIOUS MAN REVIEW

A Serious Man-2009-Joel and Ethan Coen

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"But I didn't do anything!" We hear Larry Gopnick scream as mishap after mishap occurs. He is certainly right, he didn't do anything. These words are uttered with perfect comic timing as well as with a tragic overtone. And in this phrase we find the Coen's, at their best, pushing forward the humor and tragedy simultaneously. Something Woody Allen often attempts to do, even explicitly in a film made in 2005 called Melinda and Melinda. Where Allen announces what he is doing in the beginning and allows for two separate stories to unfold, one a comedy, the other a drama. The problem is, because of its structure, the film is disjointed and messy. A Serious Man, and many of the Coen's previous efforts, however, are quite the opposite, because they manage to mix the humor and pain perfectly.

In A Serious Man, Larry Gopnick is a Job character. It has been said in basically everything written about it, and is blatantly obvious. He is a good man. He does everything by the book. But yet he is still punished. And he doesn't understand why his wife is leaving him, the job he wanted he may not get, he may be sick, his kids are morons, etc.

All in all, A Serious Man is a very strong outing showing obvious, existential flare. Is there a God? If so, is He listening? Does he enjoy the pain of his creation like a kid with a magnifying glass burning ants? I think the strength in the Coens and this film in particular is their ability to bring you into this situation, not really offer any solution, but still leave you satisfied by film's end. Not satisfied in the sense that every character got what they wanted, or that there was a happy ending. But to go anywhere else than where A Serious Man leads us in the end, would go against the rest of the movie.


Perhaps there are no answers. Or perhaps, we all make our own. Maybe, in the end, it's best to live our lives, no matter how perplexed we become, ultimately, we will never be satisfied with any answers, because they only ever lead to more questions. But does this mean we shouldn't ask questions? In a circle we go.

At times, the Joel and Ethan seem to get so wrapped up in this characters misery and the needs to have him asking these questions, that as an audience member, it becomes tiresome. There are parallels to Larry and Sy Ableman, his neighbor whom his wife decides to leave him for. There is a running parallel between Larry and his son, Danny. And these things keep the mind running and we get answers and then ten more questions arise. It's frustrating, but in a good way.

In this way, the film is more like Barton Fink than any previous Coen film. In both, the lead character face hell in different ways. It seems Larry's hell is a rural suburb, while Barton's is Hollywood. They both are rather innocent men who are punished for doing "nothing". But drawing the comparison to Barton Fink, brings us to a film Fink takes a lot from and that's David Lynch's Eraserhead. A very polarizing, odd film that does little to answer the questions it raises. The similarities lie in the main characters dilemmas, and how they react to them. All of them quietly accepting their fate while asking questions constantly. If you look at the three leads, they have a similar look, especially in the hair.


Anyway, A Serious Man is a claustrophobic, messy yet to the point existential study of the question; why do we suffer? And while the Coen's do little to offer an answer, I found that, to me, the film's meaning is derived solely in two points. A story told by a rabbi and the ending, where we find out th...............................................

"Report back to me when it makes sense."

The Coen Bro's are known for their quirky characters, off the wall plot twists and over the top style, So that might be the very reason that they seem to be almost phoning it in with their latest effort Burn After Reading. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty to like about this film; mainly some hilarious dialogue and situations these idiotic characters throw themselves into.

Upon seeing the trailer for Burn After Reading, it's easy to think this is going to be a goofy comedy, but what struck me was the way the actors were playing their parts. With the exception of Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand it seems all the actors are playing this thing totally straight. Sure what they say or do might be totally off the wall, but they don't seem to realize it. This to me, is a strength of the film. Too often are we given comedic actors playing for laughs.

Burn After Reading's plot follows Osborne Cox(played with bitterness by John Malkovich) as he is demoted, and subsequently quits his job in the CIA. He begins writing a memoir about his working days, but when his wife, Katie(Tilda Swinton), is looking to file for divorce, she must gather his things and bring them to the divorce attorney to make sure she gets her share. Due to a secretaries mishap the disc with Osbourne's notes for the memoir ends up at Hardbodies Fitness Center, where Linda Litzke and Chad Feldheimer(Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt) work as fitness trainers. They find the CD and decide to bribe Osbourne to get some money so Linda can get some plastic surgery done. Somewhere in there Harry Pfarrer is sleeping with both Kaite and Linda(not at the same time).

The Film Doctor had an interesting theory on The Coen's ideology behind this film, and I think he is very much right. They seem to be satirizing American middle aged folk. They are body obsessed, money obsessed, self obsessed people who are easily amused and boring. Could they be satirizing themselves, their own films? It's hard to say. But just the thought of Linda and Chad taking the disc to the Russians is hilarious. The Coen's are either focusing on the fears of the new Russia and a new cold war, or on the stupidity of the characters to think that Russia is as big of a threat as they used to be.

In turn, Burn After Reading is very off balance. At once a character will be shot and killed, and it'll be cold blooded and messy, and then just minutes later we are expected to be laughing again. This can work, in fact it does in other Coen works like Fargo and No Country For Old Men, but here, where we are being sold a comedy with some drama, it feels they forgot how to mix the two as perfectly as they have in the past. It is a disappointment to say the least, but still a Superior film to a lot of what Hollywood has to offer.