I think my biggest gripe with movies by Joel and Ethan Coen is that they frequently trade style for substance. They love little genre pieces and quirky comedies with big stars as well as bigger dramas that generally look amazing. Roger Deakins is the director of photography on most of those great looking movies (Barton Fink, Fargo, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country for Old Men). Sometimes it is hard to say whether his amazing photography lifts Coen brothers movies above flaws in their scripts and bad choices in their direction. As with man of these other 'serious' movies by the duo, I think A Serious Man is so beautiful to watch that you almost lose track of the fact that it doesn't totally come together story-wise.
In the movie, Larry Gopnick is a middle-class physics professor at a college outside of Minneapolis. He and his wife are active members of their synagogue and greater Jewish community in Bloomington, MN in 1967. As the movie beings, Larry's life starts to fall apart. His wife tells him she wants a divorce as she is having an affair with an older friend of the family. Larry's live-in brother has health and gambling problems and is getting in trouble with the police for sexual acts. His kids hate him (as any teenagers would hate their parents) and he is facing an ethical dilemma at work regarding a bribe from a student. Realizing he is being tested by God, Larry seeks help from doctors and rabbis, but never seems to get satisfactory answers.
Clearly the story alludes to the Talmudic trails of Job. Larry is a pious and prosperous man who is being tested for reasons he doesn't understand. He never curses God - in fact his faith is the rock he leans on. But there are also allusions to Abraham and Isaac, Susanna and the Elders, Sodom and Gamorrah and any number of Old Testament weather disasters to name a few.
The problem is that there are so many mixed tales here that you lose track of which story is being explored at what time. It's a bit of a biblical 'throwing of pasta against a wall'. It's messy and at the end you just have to see what sticks. The film lacks focus. The individual scenes and sequences are lovely and work well in and of themselves, but moving from one allegory to another is difficult and gets messy.
The movie is very serious and straightforward, but it is also very funny. As Larry gets more and more divergent and bizarre advice, and slips further and further into worry and pain, the movie gets funnier and funnier. At a certain point we are laughing at Larry's misfortune thinking it is amazing that his situation keeps getting worse and worse. From the twerpy junior rabbi (played hilariously by Simon Helberg from CBS's The Big Bang Theory) who clearly is green and preoccupied with the parking lot out his office window, to the foxy neighbor who smokes pot with Larry, to Larry's brother (played by Richard Kind) who is constantly in the bathroom draining a cyst, Larry can seem to find no normal people to talk to.
Michael Stuhlbarg, as Larry, does a really great job of falling deeper and deeper into self-despair while maintaining a stiff upper lip and not trying to complain. At moments he is explosive when he feels he has the slightest leg up on someone. His face shows how he feels the weight of the world on his shoulders - but he can quickly turn that to a smile when his dean comes in to talk about him getting tenure.
The look of the film is perfect. Each shot is meticulously designed and is bright and crisp with perfectly time-appropriate accessories and furnishings. There is not a single spot of dirt or dust in any of the shots. All of the exteriors are clean and full of light. The interiors are expertly vacuumed and not a single coaster is out of place. All of this underlines the Biblical themes of the film - as if the tales that are in the Torah are brought out in their divine magnificence from God's mouth. The perfection we see on screen couldn't be possible in reality - making the Book of Larry it's own new Biblical story.
Overall, this is an interesting movie with sumptuous photography. The tale of Larry being tested by God for unknown reasons in fascinating and compelling. I feel, though, that the Coens opened so many metaphysical doors that, in the end, several are left unattended and ignored, so to speak. It's problems are in the script to be sure and it is not as neat and tidy as I would have liked it - but it is definitely thought provoking and entertaining.
Stars: 3 of 4
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment