Movie review: 'Serious Man' slapstick hilarity
Man plans, God laughs, and so do the Coen brothers. Their latest, "A Serious Man," is a slapstick meditation on divine intent, human yearning and the consolation of faith in an unfair universe. The central character is a suburban Job asking the ultimate question, "Why me?" The Coens record his woes with sublime assurance, guerrilla wit and a lot of Yiddish.
The film is set in a heavily Jewish suburb of Minneapolis circa 1967. Larry Gopnik (deliciously underplayed by Michael Stuhlbarg) is a schlumpy junior physics professor. When we meet him he's trying to explain a profound paradox of quantum mechanics, Schrödinger's Cat, a hypothesis that requires a kitty to be both dead and alive at the same time. It's the basis of the uncertainty principle, that some things in the cosmos you can't know.
Larry's life is chaos theory incarnate, however. His strident wife is openly dating sanctimonious creep Sy Ableman, who wraps him in faux-compassionate embraces. His unemployed brother has taken up permanent residence on their couch. Larry's distressed that a student is bribing him for a passing grade, that his beautiful neighbor sunbathes nude, and that he has to climb up on the roof to see her.
Larry's innocent refrain is "I haven't done anything," which may be his problem. He's buffeted by fate at every turn, kvetching instead of standing up for himself. Then again, what difference would it make? On a few occasions when Larry yields to anger, lust and greed, consequences that look like God's retribution swiftly follow. But he takes his lumps when he's virtuous, too. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
"A Serious Man" is a brilliant balance of presentation and substance. It is technically flawless, from its precisely calibrated sound effects to editing that cuts each scene like a samurai sword. Stuhlbarg is an uptight delight, Sari Lennick is a fearsome shrew as his wife, and Aaron Wolff is deliriously funny as their son, stoned to the gills at his bar mitzvah.
The beauty of the film is how many interpretive debates it will launch. Larry climbs atop his house to fiddle with the balky TV antenna: Is this a "Fiddler on the Roof" reference? Are the Eastern European couple in the "once upon a time" prologue figures in an allegorical folk tale or Gopnik ancestors who brought a curse on their clan for generations?
Maybe it's best not to overthink it. A motto from the 11th-century rabbi Rashi opens the film: "Receive with simplicity everything that happens with you." The film ends with a severe weather situation that recalls the words of another Jewish sage: "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind."
