Review of A Serious Man (2009) by Plain C — 18 Jan 2016

The Coen Brothers' Jewish dramedy is far from being their most accessible effort. In fact, "A Serious Man" somewhat hearkens back to their film-making beginnings, in terms of its tone and the existential predicament the lead character is mulling.

The opening sequence informs viewers that this is not going to be a movie that provides obvious answers for the situations we are to visit. I have always admired that about the Brothers' as film-makers, that they can deliver a straight-forward comedy or mystery/drama, then follow that up with a more abstract effort that considers darker, more ponderous themes.

The Coens have made crowd-pleasers with wide appeal, but their attentions eventually seem to return to this type of film. Either you will enjoy watching a movie such as "A Serious Man" and then trying to connect the myriad dots the Coens scatter about, or you will find it an excruciatingly drawn bit of tedium.

I liken it to the scene where Larry is shown before a massive blackboard working toward the solution to a complex physics problem, only to arrive at the solution and proclaim to his students, "So, as you can see.

.. we can never be certain about anything." That pretty well encapsulates the dueling reactions I anticipate among the film's audience. Personally, I enjoyed the film enough to spend some time afterward trying to piece together the possibilities of that most untidy finale.

Yet, I must deduct a star from my overall score because I found it more difficult to relate to the characters, and the dead-pan humor was not as consistently prevalent as I have come to expect in a Coen Bros.

production.