A Serious Man

Saw A Serious Man. It was a troubling Coen brothers film. It ties together questions of morality and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It surrounds a man who seems blessed. All ills which should befall him seem to land elsewhere, usually to his advantage. Instead of becoming happy-go-lucky, he becomes a Dostoyevskian mental-case. He worries that he doesn't deserve this bounty and seeks answers to how to deal with the crushing problem of having no problems. The rabbis from which he seeks answers are in turn absurd, willfully abstruse, and impossibly inaccessible. Meanwhile, through all of this, he is faced with a moral dilemma in the form of a bribe given by a student. The stunning ending seems to answer the riddle of why he is so blessed, but a short shot of this image ambiguously colors the given answer.

The Coens' genius for capturing attention where attention doesn't even seem warranted is on full display. I don't know if it's framing, plotting, scripting ("moral turpitude" what an awesome phrase!) or what it is, but it's great. Little clever nothings of scenes, like when the protagonist climbs onto his roof, there's a shot of blue sky, a ladder rises and falls, then he's on the roof.

Trying to analyze this film is very annoying because a philosophy of apathetic ambiguity is given thematic prominence throughout. Many times our hero is told that it is impossible to fathom the mind of god and to stop worrying and relax. It's tempting to dismiss the entire film in this way: If it's being willfully absurd, why bother? It's so overstuffed with little ideas and themes though, I feel it can't be that simple and disappointing. On the other hand, it's easy to latch too firmly onto one aspect of the film (as I perhaps have at the end of the first paragraph) and miss the forest. There is much machinery to dismantle, and a lot of it seems to be working at cross purposes.

Another cute thing to notice: just before disaster befalls another person, that person starts becoming like the main character in some way: The lover is waiting in the car (setting up this pattern,) his brother keeps shouting "I didn't do anything!" and lastly, his son passes a major milestone in his life.

Alright, off to read some real critics and feel stupid once again!