Review of A Serious Man (2009) by Nick O — 04 Sep 2012

"A Serious Man" is many things: a Hasidic fever dream, a modern-day (give or take) Dostoevsky novel; a eulogy, a blessing. Few movies go this deep. But maybe the most impressive thing about "A Serious Man" is how the Coens frame its juicy bleakness -- a middle-aged university professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg, in one of the best roles and delivering one of the greatest performances of the decade) searching for answers in a middle-class life that calls asking why a step over the line. Be a dull boy, Larry. And the genial Coen brothers? Settle for whirling philosophical treatise. Don't bother with explosions of color, cinematography, and tricks of the camera. This shit's dense enough as it is.

Fuck that. Good thing the two were born with crooked grins. Apparently so was their movie, an episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" stretched wide and filled with tricks darker than you could ever imagine. You know that critique, when a movie comes along so special you can't place a finger on quite where it went gloriously weird, bizarrely original, and when you start being unable to place faces to names? That it must be some kind of masterpiece, because what else could it possibly be. It fits, but where, and in what? That drives stuffy pundits up the wall. Well, here's another one to hang from it. "A Serious Man", exhilarating, poignant, and violently funny, comes like a scream of personality, a siren wedged into a slice of life that has the sky falling as the bar's breaking.