HOLLYWOOD POV: "A Serious Man"

A period 1967 dramedy that makes little sense from beginning to end due to what can only be explained by a complete lack of interest by the duo of directing Coen brothers A SERIOUS MAN had potential. But perhaps having two directors helm one feature film, and not having a research department doing fact checking, caused great harm to what might have otherwise might have had the potential to be a smart film.

In A SERIOUS MAN an old AM/FM transistor radio plays a pivotal part in the plot. The story is set in motion by this radio and the denouement is bookended by the same radio. If the Coen brothers really cared about their work they might have spent just a few pennies on researching transistor radios in the late 1960's. But, they clearly didn't care very much, and that lack of concern effects the direction of this smarmy mess of a film that I really wanted to like, but found impossible to.

When I was a kid I had a transistor radio and I listened to it all the time, especially late at night after I was supposed to be sleeping. The transistor radio I listened to was just like all the other transistor radios at the time. It had one little ear bud for only one ear (no stereo on a transistor radio), and it tuned in on AM and FM programming. AM was easy to tune into, but FM was more problematic. You needed to be in the right place or you'd get terrible static or be forced to only listen to AM radio.  AM radio had a few talk stations and lots of what were called then 'Top Forty" stations, radio stations that only played the top forty selling singles. And I can

assure you that the Jefferson Airplane never had a top forty song. Never. The Jefferson Airplane were never played on top forty radio, and only very rarely on FM.  At that time the Airplane were considered to be "alternative" and the only way to hear them was on a vinyl recording. Very occasionally, perhaps on a station like WBAI's midnight to 4am broadcast you might hear one of their songs. Maybe. Only very occasionally. But the Coen brothers are obviously so clueless about transistor radios that their entire plot for A SERIOUS MAN turns on the fact that at just about any time of day the Jefferson Airplane could be heard on the radio. The poor Coen brothers treat the transistor radio used in A SERIOUS MAN like it was an iPod. DUH.

A SERIOUS MAN opens with a huge giant non-sequitor of a weird period Yiddish prologue of a man coming home to his wife in Poland telling her of some fortuitous happening on the road his wife thinks involved a dybuk. What this had to do with the rest of this film only the Coen Brothers can say… but they never bothered to tell their audience.

A SERIOUS MAN then opens in 1967 with a young boy listening to his transistor radio in school during his Hebrew school class preparing him for his Bar Mitzvah. That means the class took place around 3-4pm, a time when the Airplane would never be played on the AM radio...and you couldn't even pick up an FM signal while inside a big brick school at the time. The teacher notices and takes away the radio.

A SERIOUS MAN ends with an old rabbi picking up the same transistor radio, he turns it on and it is playing the same exact Jefferson Airplane song we heard at the beginning of the film, again, a complete impossibility. Bells of implausible pain rang in my head. If you can't believe the basic premise a film uses to set its place in time and space, then you can't buy anything coming from the film. Anyone with a brain or a memory will immediately be distracted by trying to figure out how anyone could have heard the Jefferson Airplane on AM radio at any time.

If a director cares so little about setting their film in any kind of reality that an audience can relate to, then the audience will care even less. When I first heard the Airplane on the radio I leaned over to my friend and said "What universe is this set in? No one ever played the Jefferson Airplane on the radio in 1967." It was a stupid error, one of many the Coen brothers keep on making.

Why does it take 2 Coen Brothers to make 1 film? Maybe because they both care about their work so little that they need 2 people to stand in where only 1 person is really needed for the job. And even then they give us these glaring errors. Some people might call their work existential, but I call it simply lacking.

At the center of this self-hating Jewish mess if a film is Larry Gopnick (an excellent and befuddled Michael Stuhlbarg) who is a failure of a physics professor at a community college in Minnesota. Larry is the Serious Man of the title and he tries his best to live an orderly and moral life, finding solitary solace in his complicated mathematical proofs that no one in his class understands or cares about. But it’s the 60’s and the world is changing… and so must Larry.

Larry’s wife wants a divorce so she can be with a family friend and the most annoying man on the planet; Larry’s son (the aforementioned Jefferson Airplane-lover) just wants to listen to his radio and runs from his pot-dealing classmate; Larry’s daughter steals money from her parent's wallets to save for a nose job; a foreign grad student refuses to accept his failing grade and tries to bribe Larry for a passing grade; and someone is writing anonymous libelous letters about Larry to the tenure committee at his school. Larry’s next door neighbor soaks up the sun in the nude and Larry can’t keep from watching; and Larry’s failure of a brotherArthur (Richard Kind) is sleeping on his couch… until, that is, Larry’s wife kicks him out to The local Jolly Roger motel and the brother comes along.

Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. Can anyone of them help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person - a mensch - a serious man? The answer is a clear NO. No one can help Larry because no one cares enough to help him. Everyone's wrapped up in their own  little worlds.

If you want to see more dead animals, more annoying characters who do things only the brain-damaged might do, if you enjoy seeing lead characters you can’t identify with act like complete schlemiels running around with their heads cut off... then you just might enjoy this film. But you also might hear the two Coen boys laughing at you behind your back if you enjoy this piece of self-hating-Jew-anti-semitism.

Excellent music choices are a wonderful exception of this annoying film. Like all of the Coen Brothers films this one too ends abruptly without coming to closure on any of the characters’ stories. Perhaps the brothers should consider allowing someone else to write and edit their films so they can spend more time focusing on actually directing them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ © 2009 by Digital Dogs~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Digital Dogs rating: B-

MPAA rating: R for language, drug use, some sexuality/nudity and brief violence.

Running Times:  105 Minutes

Producers Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Robert Graf (II), Directors Joel & Ethan Coen, Screenplay Joel & Ethan Coen, DP Roger Deakins, Editor Joel & Ethan Coen, Music Carter Burwell, Actors Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Peter Breitmayer

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		Digital Dogs, Gather Movies Correspondent - Los Angeles
	Digital Dogs' column, HOLLYWOOD POV, published every Thursday to Gather Essentials: Movies is an insider's look at the art, people, and product of Hollywood. Digital Dogs is an opinionated writer, editor, and digital designer who lives and works in the Entertainment Capital of the world. DigiDogs' unique reviews are usually written well before a film's release date, and definitely worth the advance look at the films that influence the world. Keep up with Digital Dogs' movie review series by joining her network, or subscribing to her content.