A Serious Man

Tagline: The new film by Joel and Ethan Coen.

So I saw this movie as a part of my dedicated Oscar week in which I viewed all ten movies nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award. I have never heard of this movie and would never had seen it if it hadn’t been nominated. After reading about it and learning it was written and directed by the Coen brothers, I was actually excited to see this movie as they were marketing it as a dark dramedy.







The movie follows Larry Gopnik, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, who is a father of two and a professor at Midwestern Universtiry in 1970. The story follows his life as it unravels when his wife calmly tells him she want a divorce in order to marry Sy Ableman, played by Fred Melamed, who is also his personal family physician. He then moves out of the house with his unemployed brother to live in a seedy motel, the Jolly Roger. He then faces different obstacles; debt collectors, bribes, auto accidents, and deaths among other things.






The plot was horribly boring and plagued with inside Jewish humor I think only was amusing to the Coen brothers themselves. The whole movie felt entirely self indulgent and was full of biblical allusions that made it all that much more confusing. The plot moved along with an awkward pace and was devoid of any real humor or suspense right up to the open ended conclusion. The end of the movie left it up to the viewer to figure it out for themselves. With a movie this slow and uninteresting, I had no desire to sit and ponder about the ending and the message they were trying to get across. The characters were bland and very stereotypical and had no complexity or depth written to them.






Surprisingly so, the movie was shot beautifully. The film was vibrant and colorful and really showed the experience of the art director. The cinematography proved to be the only thing well executed in the movie. The sets were beautiful and the camera angles smooth and unique. If the movie had a different screenplay and director, it might have been a beautiful experience. The soundtrack was also great and featured the Jefferson Airplane song, ‘Somebody to Love’ in several parts.






The performances were on par with a dry TV sitcom. The characters were so stereotypical that it was hard for them to break through and give us a real performance. I don’t think this was a product of bad acting but rather from a bad screenplay and equally bad direction. Michael Stuhlbarg showed real potential and I would like to see him in a better movie because he just wasn’t able to compensated for the terrible direction this time.






I was very disappointed in this movie especially seeing as this is from the same duo that gave us Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and Burn After Reading to mention a few. It really seemed like a self-indulgent project that only the Coen brothers could relate to and find interesting. There was so much Jewish humor and stereotypes thrown in there with the Biblical allusions that it made it too confusing and I don’t think it will transcend culturally. It’s as if there were trying to throw in too many things in there which resulted in this boring and uninteresting movie. I am extremely baffled at how this movie was nominated for best picture?! There weren’t any elements or reasons for this movie to even be close to the same level as the other nominees even. “The uncertainty Principle; It proves we can’t ever really know what’s going on. So it shouldn’t bother you. Not being able to figure anything out. Although, you will be responsible for this on the mid-term”.