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Film Film: A Serious Man

lostNfound

lostNfound

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Mar 20, 2005
Messages
13,678
Due for release this October


The film is set in St. Louis Park, Minnesota in the year 1967, and is intended in some ways to reflect the childhood of the Coen brothers as they recall it.

The protagonist is Larry Gopnik, a Jewish academic living in a middle-class Jewish neighborhood in a Minneapolis suburb. The story follows Gopnik's spiritual and existential struggle as his wife Judith contemplates leaving him for his colleague Sy Ableman. Adding to his suffering is his ne'er-do-well brother, Arthur, who lacks the resources and the ability to care for himself and consequently lives on Larry's couch. Larry begins to question the value of his life as he deals with these and other trials, including his son, Danny, who steals money from his wallet to buy marijuana; his daughter, Sarah, who steals to finance a planned nose job; a student who alternately attempts to bribe him for a passing grade and threatens to sue him for defamation (made all the worse because Larry is up for tenure); and a female neighbor who distracts him by sunbathing in the nude. Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis in an attempt to solve his problems and to become an austere and devoted man.



Any trailers I've come across don't seem to give much of an impression.
 
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Me, too.

I used to live in St. Louis Park (and my Dad still lives there).

A nice enough place, but not the sort of location you'd expect anything interesting to ever happen, though I did know the Coens (and Al Franken) grew up there.
 
I had low expectations because usually Coen brothers movies take a couple of viewings to grow on me. But this was really good on just a single viewing. The male lead doesn't turn his character into something one-dimensional, though he very well could, since the story centers on a world that is caving in around him. There are some terrific supporting actors as well. I saw this in a packed theater, and I think it helped, especially in recognizing the absurdity in some of the film's laugh out loud moments. Overall, it is definitely more light hearted than No Country. I'm not sure I appreciate or completely understand the gimmick towards the end...but I'll let you judge that for yourselves.

There's a lot of Jewish culture in this movie, but the film is done in such a way that most of the major themes transcend religious or class differences. It definitely feels like the Coens made this autobiographical in many respects. Four stars.

trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FYtprwg1As
 
I found this film to be profoundly moving (while at the same time often hilarious), and probably the Coens' best work. I simply can't get it out of my head the day after seeing it; 'haunting' would be an apt descriptor. Especially that ending. Wow.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it's the best film of the decade.
 
a_serious_man_poster_joel_ethan_coen_michael_stuhlbarg_01.jpg


A Serious Man

I smiled through the majority of this film--at different points for very different reasons--and even winced at the sterile suburban beauty of some of the scenes, but I’m hesitant to recommend it in general. A lot of people in the audience were clearly confused, and at the end one guy yelled out “what does that mean?”

It’s chalk full of Judaism, but all you really need to work from as an outline for the story is a cliff notes version of the Book of Job. You’ll be glad you studied up if you’re not that familiar. There’s a lot of subtly connected fragments in the story, and knowing they fall into some general frame at the start, for me, would have been indispensable. I enjoyed it, but spent more time than I needed to fitting the story together during latter parts of the film. It’s an extremely well-crafted inversion of the Coen’s usual film noir about the terrible things that happen when we lose perspective, are certain we haven’t, and haplessly do nothing at all.

Against the muted tone that preceded it, the final image struck a deeply chilling chord.
 
mindgames12 said:
a couple of viewings??? how much free time do u got??? if a movie requires a couple of viewings, it's a bad movie period! looking at the wall will eventually grow on us too
Click to expand...
Some movies are too dense to fully enjoy in one viewing, why is this so difficult to understand? In fact it's usually the best movies that aren't immediately likable the first time you seem them. It's not always the fault of the film, sometimes it's *gasp* the fault of the viewer for not getting what the film was trying to say.

Don't you ever listen to the same album more than once? Or re-watch an episode of your favorite show?
 
mindgames12 said:
a couple of viewings??? how much free time do u got??? if a movie requires a couple of viewings, it's a bad movie period! looking at the wall will eventually grow on us too
Click to expand...

wow, what the fuck guy?

i have several movies that on first viewing left me with a so so feeling, but on the second viewing the beauty of the film is revealed to me. several coen brothers films hit me like this, some kubrick movies also come to mind.

i really look forward to seeing this movie, the reviews have been very good. i was kinda disapointed in their last pic "Burn After Reading," certainly not one of their classics, though still good. i think my expectations had been too high though after seeing, and loving, No Country.
 
Feels said:
Some movies are too dense to fully enjoy in one viewing, why is this so difficult to understand? In fact it's usually the best movies that aren't immediately likable the first time you seem them. It's not always the fault of the film, sometimes it's *gasp* the fault of the viewer for not getting what the film was trying to say.

Don't you ever listen to the same album more than once? Or re-watch an episode of your favorite show?
Click to expand...

The answer is in what u said. Only when it's good do u watch it again, not if it's bad. When u listen to a song that u love but don't fully understand it, u listen to it again, but u gotta like it in the first place to listen to it again.

U don't hate a song and keep listening to it and wait for it to grow on u, that's just mad. No one normal does that. It's gotta be good in the first place. U don't watch a bad movie over and over again waiting for it to grow on u. Like i said u might as well look at the wall, for it too will eventually grow up on.
 
mindgames12 said:
a couple of viewings??? how much free time do u got??? if a movie requires a couple of viewings, it's a bad movie period! looking at the wall will eventually grow on us too
Click to expand...

What are you doing posting on an internet forum if you don't have time to re-watch a movie?

And what are you doing in the film & television discussion section if you can't fathom the idea of having to re-watch a movie to appreciate it?
 
Saw this just then.

Left me a little bit confused but then it seemed to make sense to me a few minutes later.
 
Rated E said:
What are you doing posting on an internet forum if you don't have time to re-watch a movie?

And what are you doing in the film & television discussion section if you can't fathom the idea of having to re-watch a movie to appreciate it?
Click to expand...

what are u an idiot? i said how can someone view a movie several times when they didn't enjoy the first time.
 
Because just because you don't enjoy it the first time doesn't mean you won't grow to appreciate it the second time, or the third. Countless great movies were trashed by critics upon release only to be re-evaluated and then eventually praised by the very same people who did the trashing.
 
what the fucking fuck :X

this shit is not showing anywhere in sydney city, gotta go to newtown or darlinghurst. fuck that, i'd rather wait for a good quality pirate copy.

fucking asshats :!
 
mindgames12 said:
a couple of viewings??? how much free time do u got??? if a movie requires a couple of viewings, it's a bad movie period! looking at the wall will eventually grow on us too
Click to expand...

There are certain filmmakers who pack so much into their movies that it's sometimes difficult to take it all in through one viewing. I still see something new every time I watch Lawrence of Arabia or Brazil, for example, and I've seen each well over a dozen times. There are even some films (in my experience) that aren't possible to enjoy on a single viewing, despite being excellent films. A Serious Man fits into the first group. That is, I'm sure there are things I will pick out on subsequent viewings, but for right now, the first viewing gave me enough to know that I was watching an incredible piece of cinema.
 
Saw this last night on a head full of mushrooms. Wonderful movie. The best movie the brothers have produced in a long time, perhaps ever. Reminded me of Todd Solondz a little bit.

A brilliant portrait/character study, full of the Coen Brothers usual style and humor.

Highly recommended.

5 stars.
 
I saw this a little while ago, holy shit this is a good movie.


Love the soundtrack too. Surrealistic Pillow is one of the greatest albums of all time, I love when directors know how to properly work good classic rock into a movie.

I also had no idea it was a Coen Brothers flick til the very end. I just picked it out of the TIVO lineup without checking the cast and crew. Everything really clicked as to how good this out of nowhere movie was all of a sudden.
 
more than once i thought, "this is like that story where god takes away everything to test a guy," but i didn't realize how closely it mirrors The Book of Job until reading the wikipedia page.

great movie. pretty sure i got this one all figured out. feels relevant. they all do as of late.
 
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