MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

A Serious Man Rated R

Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen.  Starring Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind

Photo © Focus Features
Movie Review by Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader
DVD Review

A Serious Man is a contender for the Best Picture Academy Award and yet only played one theater in all of northern Ohio for its entire theatrical run, so a belated DVD review is in order. 

Some of the reasons, I think, that distributors were skittish about showing this film include its distinctively Jewish worldview (specifically 1967 Minnesotan Jews), its cast of relative unknowns, and its overt religious tone. 

But, even more so, A Serious Man is a movie that offers a theology of despair in which God is talked about, feared, and noticeably absent.  It’s the Book of Job, in convenient everyday form. 

Larry Gopnik (Stuhlbarg) is a physics professor with the knowledge of all kinds of arcane formulas and principles that are still unable to explain why bad things are happening to him. 

Whether it’s caring for an eccentric live-in brother, dealing with troublesome students, trying to figure out his bigoted next door neighbor, or watching his marriage spiral out of control, Larry has questions to ask of God (known as “Hashem” – the name). 

In place of Job’s friends, Larry visits three different rabbis who offer little hope. 

Larry’s son is having troubles of his own, dealing with a class bully and preparing for his bar mitzvah. 

A Serious Man is a dark comedy of observation and not for all tastes, but I found its dry wit quite entertaining.  It is also Joel and Ethan Coen’s personal remembrance of growing up as teenagers in the sixties, including such things as transistor radios, rooftop antennas, and the Columbia Record Club. 

A Serious Man is also blessed with a peculiar prelude and a surprising and abrupt ending.  Like a good short story, this film will be discussed and debated for years to come. 

My faith in God is not the same as Larry Gopnik’s, but many of my deepest questions are the same.  This is a film worth renting and pondering.

Pitchfork Rating: Two halos.. (A deadpan black comedy of despair that is also surprisingly nostalgic.)

Three picthforks. (Pervasive swearing, marijuana use, brief nudity, and “the repeated violation of Commandments 3, 5, and 7-10.”

(Thanks to A.O. Scott of The New York Times for the last pitchfork ruling.)

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