Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A Serious Man

Those Coen brothers are at it again.  This time, they've created a modern Job story, with Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) as a beleaguered 1967 physics professor, who does all the right things.  And yet, his wife plans to leave him, his kids keep ragging him about their tv antenna, his unpleasant drippy brother continues to camp in his guest room, and he has a particularly insistent student who demands a grade change.
Larry seeks help from three of his temple's rabbis.  One, and then the second, and finally the third: zip.  In spite of/because of his travails, you're laughing, probably because he just keeps wondering why, and really can't/doesn't take any real action to correct any of these awful messes that keep happening to him.
It's not exactly a downer of a movie; but it does defy most attempts at a full understanding.  Maybe the title is ironic: maybe Larry is just way too serious, and he'd be better off chucking everything that surrounds him and spending the afternoon watching Laurel and Hardy wrestling that piano.  Or maybe a Coen brothers movie.

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