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Either you love or you hate the Coen Brothers and their dark, moody, wacky and bizarre films. In any case they have been receiving some thrilling recognition for their work and have collaborated with some mighty names of Hollywood’s A-List. Films have included ‘The Big Lebowski’, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’, ‘No Country For Old Men’, and ‘Burn After Reading’.

Although it would be wrong to call the Coen Brothers avant-garde they are certainly artistic and have maintained an unconventional approach to their narrative and thematic. On the whole their films are ambitious, philosophical, funny and curl at the edges. Furthermore, the Coen Brothers are unafraid of tackling taboos and ‘A Serious Man’ is no exception in this.

It is 1967. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a Jewish professor of physics and a family man who goes through domestic trauma. He has the best intentions to do things right and meet his diverse responsibilities while keeping his integrity and living up to his religious demands. His trust in God is being tested and so he decides to consult one rabbi after another in the attempt to make sense of it all. But it seems even the rabbis can only come up with mysterious anecdotes, without offering comforting answers. They tell him how a dentist found one of his patients had the phrase ‘Help me!’ engraved in Hebrew letters on the inside of his mouth. But as the dentist had no idea how to respond to this unusual call, what was he meant to do about it? And so he decided to just forget about it.

Larry’s teenage son Danny (Aaron Wolf) is getting ready for his bar mitzvah, a Jewish rite of passage ceremony. He is however experimenting with marijuana and turns up to the ritual completely stoned and just about manages to get through with it. But Danny’s relatives are no better off in dealing with their responsibilities: his uncle (Richard Kind) is charged with indecent misconduct, his mother (Sari Lennick) wants a divorce, his next door neighbor (Amy Landecker) sunbaths in the nude and his sister (Jessica McManus) mainly washes her hair. Everyone around him is desperate and trying to make sense of things, but even God seems to have decided to doze off.  

The cast consists mainly of Jewish actors who know their craft but have not made it too far along on the red carpet yet. As we know: Politics and Religion, here written in capitals, can get people rather upset. Even though this film has a Woody Allen feel, it might strike a tender cord with some viewers of the Jewish faith. However, on the whole this film does not quite live up to the high standards the Coen Brothers have set for themselves. There are some very funny and poignant scenes but they are not really followed up and so the film is a long string of surreal anecdotal encounters, all brilliant, but without quite hitting home. Very watchable though.  

A Serious Man is still around in various cinemas – but not for much longer.

Valeria Melchioretto