Review of A Serious Man (2009) by Al M — 10 Feb 2013

The Coen brothers have always been adept at blending comedy and drama, and A Serious Man is probably the most existential of their comedy films. it is also their most Jewish film, but the philosophical/religious quest of the film's protagonist is one that transcends any one particular faith (or lack thereof).

A Serious Man features the kind of subtle humor that the Coens used to such powerful effect in Fargo--it is a comedy about the tragedies that befall us, and it is a comedy about the peculiar foibles of a particular community of people. While Fargo focused on the unique culture of the northern U.S. states like the Dakotas, A Serious Man revolves around the Jewish community in a small midwestern town.

A physics professor, Larry's lectures lay out the themes of the film: uncertainty and the desire to find order in our seemingly chaotic, meaningless universe. The result of what is probably undiagnosed schizophrenia, his brother Arthur's bizarre, nonsensical book similarly attempts to use Jewish numerology, among other things, to provide a map to the universe. Importantly, the schizophrenic, as Jacques Lacan argues, finds the normal system of signification to be flawed and his must resignify the universe in hermetically sealed fashion. While Arthur can ascribe new, stable meanings to existence, Larry is not so lucky. He is constantly faced with idiotically meaningless yet unsolvable problems: an antenna that will never properly tune in F-Troop for his son, a wife who wants to divorce him for no reasons she can articulate, his wife's lover who is overly friendly and wants to discuss everything with him, a student who failed his examine and attempts to bribe him, a neighbor building over his property line, a Columbia Record Club account that he didn't open, etc.

As he navigates between rabbis and lawyers, Larry attempts to find meaning and purpose but only ends up seeming to reside more and more in the arms of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. He continues to ask questions only to get the most banal of answers. And, ultimately, A Serious Man suggests that perhaps the most profound answer of all may just lie in the lines of a Jefferson Airplane song: "When the truth is found to be lies / And all the joy within you dies / Don't you need somebody to love?".