ViewGuide

Created Oct 25, 2009 01:28PM PST • Edited Oct 24, 2017 12:39AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   Dyspeptic and deeply sacrilegious, the Coen Brothers’ latest is also reliably funny and brilliantly surreal. A ludicrous fable of Biblical proportions, the movie nonetheless oozes verisimilitude, a credit to the manifold talents of the auteur brothers behind it and their virtual Yiddish theater of a cast.

   A Serious Man mines misfortune for humor, like a modern Book of Job played for black comedy. Here the schlimazel of a hero finds himself surrounded by schlemiels¹, schnorrers, schmucks and shmendriks, amongst them his wife, children, brother, Rabbis, colleagues and students. If that sounds more painful than entertaining, stay away. OTOH, see the movie if you have a highly developed sense of ironic detachment. For better or worse, I’m in the latter cohort.
   -———————-

   ¹ The difference between a schlemiel and a schlimazel is best explained via aphorism: “The schlemiel spills his soup on the schlimazel.” quoth Wikipedia

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Michael Stuhlbarg’s mensch in the middle anchors the movie. Playing a serious man isn’t a stretch for this serious stage actor – he played Hamlet opposite Sam Waterston’s Polonius in New York’s Shakespeare in the Park series, to cite just one credit. His screen career has mostly involved guest spots on TV dramas. One suspects that’s about to change.

   The casting serves as a Full Employment Act for Jewish character actors.

   • Richard Kind’s schnorrer of a brother – brilliant and pathetic.
   • Fred Melamed’s unctuous Other Man.
   • Sari Lennick’s harpy wife.
   • Aaron Wolff’s stoner Bar Mitzvah boy.
   • Jessica McManus’s petulant daughter. (Notwithstanding her Irish surname, she could easily be typecast as the stereotypical Jewish girl.)
   • Simon Helberg’s obtuse Boy Rabbi.
   • George Wyner’s obtuse Sr. Rabbi.
   • Katherine Borowitz’s caring friend.
   • Adam Arkin’s slick divorce lawyer.
   • Fyvush Finkel’s visiting dybbuk (i.e., troublesome ghost).

   A few Goyim are thrown in for good measure.

   • Amy Landecker as the free spirited hottie neighbor. Why doesn’t this sultry actress work more?
   • Peter Breitmayer as the angry white guy/Goy neighbor who looks like a live action Hank Hill.
   • David Kang and Steve Park as the desperate Korean physics student and his conniving father.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    The Coen Brothers were Bar Mitzvah age in the era their film depicts, thus explaining its adolescently autobiographical feel. Given their familiarity with the terrain and their manifold gifts as filmmakers, they amply succeed in nailing more than a few Jewish traits – first-rate minds, family centeredness, ritual – albeit presenting them in a harsh, unflattering light. Of course, their depictions of Koreans and Goyim are hardly more flattering, a fact that will no doubt be lost on those who see this film as Jewish self-hatred elevated to art. In fact, it is misanthropy elevated to art.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Very Good 3.5

13. Music Great 4.0

    Jefferson Airplane’s Somebody to Love plays a fun recurring bit in the film.

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0

    Brilliantly visual, the film nails the look and feel of early Seventies cookie-cutter subdivisions and Jewish ritual life. The heavenly ascent to the rooftop of the hero’s tract house depicted on the poster is a standout.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.3

    Absurdity abounds, much of it profane in word and deed. Beyond this mostly harmless wackiness, one dream sequence includes a shockingly brutal bit that crosses the line into pornographic violence.

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Fierce 2.5

19. Rudeness Profane 2.6

21. Reality

    Surreal 2.1

    Superficially Jewish, the movie violates several tenets of Jewish values and ethics. Deeds of lovingkindness? Healing the world? Avoiding pettiness? Missing. Ignored. Flouted.

    The Brothers Coen instead revel in an earthy and superstitious shtetl Judaism, complete with predatory ghosts that walk amongst us. One of the great things about Judaism is its deep abundance of ideas, interpretations and idiosyncrasies. These guys swim in the fetid end of that pool.

    As a practical matter at least a couple of bits were patently absurd.

    • It’s hard to believe a Bar Mitzvah boy could get cherry-eye baked in the Shul bathroom, leave the roaches on the floor, and then perform his Bar Mitzvah duties without anyone noticing – even in the Sixties.
    • The 20’ high blackboard chockablock with physics notations at the end of a lecture was impossibly out of reach for any mere mortal.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.1

23. Biological Supernatural 3.1

24. Physical Natural 1.0