Review of A Serious Man (2009) by Adrianne H — 28 Aug 2011

"Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." The Coen Brothers choose to open this movie, which is downbeat even by their standards, with words written by Elie Wiesel. A friend once suggested that this was the moral thread running through the Coen Brothers' long catalogue of Absurdist fables, and A Serious Man seems as idiomatic of their work as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and No Country for Old Men--even if it isn't a caper.

Another friend suggested that the theme of the movie was contained in the opening scene, which takes on a horror movie-like quality. What I gather from this suggestion is that the Coen Brothers invite the movie to be viewed in either religious terms, as God's way of testing one man's faith, or in atheistic terms, as an Absurdist statement about how dead the World is to our ideals. This tension can only be resolved by the viewer--but the atheistic take on the picture highlights a message that anyone should consider: The only thing Larry Gopnik can truly control--and the only power that is his to relinquish--is that he is an honest man. The only thing we have to surrender is our integrity.

The Coens can deliver that message as many times as they want.