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05 out of 182 people found the following review useful:
Blacker than black, 14 September 2009
Author: (hcfnotlcd)
I saw this movie at TIFF on Saturday. The Coens quietly (and I mean quietly - no-one could hear even their amplified voices) introduced the movie with reference to the actors present but not the movie, letting it speak for itself. And it did. In its own way. It is an off-beat (what else?) and serious work that radiates bleak despair while searching for a funny bone. In the process, the movie makes other black comedies look positively light and airy. The movie evokes laughs from a different place than most – from a profound discomfort watching people twist themselves this way and that to fit in and be regarded seriously, whether situationally, socially or religiously. A great piece of work that will have you thinking long afterwards, especially considering the odd and difficult-to-contextualize prologue and, um different, ending which bookend a remarkable work.
- ROLLING STONES magazine
Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg
Directed by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
2009 Focus Features Comedy
The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, are getting personal. They shot their new film in suburban Minnesota, where they grew up as sons of Jewish academics. But if you're expecting something warm and fuzzy, circa 1967, you don't know the Coens, and A Serious Man is no country for you. This seriously funny movie, artfully photographed by the great Roger Deakins, is spiritual in nature, barbed in tone, and, oh, yeah, it stings like hell.
Watch Peter Travers' video review of A Serious Man
Front and center is Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor who's getting shit from every side. Unsigned letters to the dean question his ethics and threaten his tenure. His son, Danny (the excellent Aaron Wolff), days away from his bar mitzvah, is lost in a pot daze. His daughter, Sarah (Jessica McManus), is obsessed with getting a nose job. His unemployed brother, Arthur (a wonderfully kinky Richard Kind), is crashing on his couch. And his wife, Judith (a pitch-perfect Sari Lennick), is leaving him for slimy, silver-tongued Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), a serious man.
Get more news and reviews from Peter Travers on the Travers Take
Larry is being tested like Job, with the Coens playing God and lobbing bolts at him, including a Jew-hating neighbor and a nude lady sunbather who stirs his libido. Larry's divorce lawyer (a deadpan Adam Arkin) warns him to expect the worst. So Larry seeks counsel and comfort from multiple rabbis, who deliver silence or cryptic bromides. Grace Slick, on the radio, gets closer to the point, singing, "When the truth is found to be lies/And all the joy within you dies/Don't you want somebody to love."
Indeed. No doubt the Coens will grin at accusations of stereotyping, self-loathing and box-office suicide. They march to their own mischievous drummer. Larry keeps asking, "Why me?" and stage actor Stuhlbarg, Tony-nominated for The Pillowman, is outstanding at showing the humanity that keeps the question urgent. Larry gets the worst of both worlds, sacred and secular. The film starts with a Yiddish-language prologue, set a century ago in Poland, in which a couple open their door to find a needy neighbor who may be a dybbuk (demon) in disguise. Larry is similarly bedeviled. But that sound you hear in this profane spellbinder is the Coens — chuckling in the dark.
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