“This is not about whoopsie doopsie.” - Judith Gopnik
Professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) teaches physics and is up for tenure. It is 1967 and in a few days his youngest child, his son Danny will be celebrating his Bar Mitzvah.
But before that happens, Larry’s entire world will be shaken up and rearranged by a series of events that will lead him to question his place or purpose in the world, and the value of being a serious man.
It is always hard to review a Coen brother’s film, and A Serious Man is no exception. Images and dialogue, sometimes just moments in length, roll around in your head, and ideas that you didn’t actually have while seeing the movie suddenly occur.
This makes you want to go back and watch it again to verify that was really what you saw or heard, or maybe discover it was something else entirely. With the Coens one never knows, but you can be certain the process will be entertaining.
Set in the Midwest in 1967 in a Jewish community, this film has all the attributes of being a period piece, and then it makes you forget that you are in a specific time. Larry Gopnik is a perfect example of all humankind, going about our business until something happens to jerk us out of the everyday and make us ask the question “what does this mean?”
A lot of bad things happen all at once, Larry’s wife is leaving him for another man, only she wants Larry to move out of his own house and take up residence at the Jolly Roger motel. As if that isn’t hard enough to fathom, the other man is one of Larry’s friends and he is quite a bit older.
Like falling dominoes, everything shifts, Larry’s brother Arthur (Richard Kind) who is brilliant but odd and has been staying at Larry’s house, also moves to the Jolly Roger. More trouble follows and Larry consults with three different rabbis in hopes of finding out what it all means, what he is supposed to do, how he is supposed to carry on.
The first ten minutes of the film are devoted to the dramatization of a Yiddish folk tale which the brothers tell viewers in the featurette “Becoming Serious” has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, and isn’t really a folktale but something they made up.
Given their past record of inventions presented as the truth, I wouldn’t count on this being factual. Maybe the tale is embellished, or changed or maybe truly is “made up” for the film, but I think it serves far stronger purpose than just being a “cartoon” before the feature as it is described.
In the folktale, there is a sense of hopelessness brought about by doing the right, the serious thing that may or may not have long reaching consequences. We tend to feel this way about Larry Gopnik as well, that no matter how serious a man he is, life is there to outwit him, make him its fool.
A Serious Man DVD is presented on single disc in widescreen format with a running time of 1 hour and 46 minutes. There are some wonderful extras that expand the viewer’s knowledge and appreciation of the film. The above mentioned “Becoming Serious” has interviews with the Coen brothers, the cast, and the crew, talking about the characters, the inspiration for the film and the location.
Filmed near where the Coens grew up, one can’t help but feel parts of the movie are autobiographical, even though this is disavowed by the brothers. They do admit to some of the characters being based on people that they have known.
Using location and local people to help create a sense of the Jewish community is a brilliant stroke of filming, as this makes the action very real. The featurette “Creating 1967” explores the amazing and detailed re-creation of the time period in sets, costuming, actions and design.
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