Nicholas Thurkettle

A Serious Man
Directors: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Writers: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Producers: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Stars: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolf, Jessica McManus, Peter Breitmayer, Fyvush Finkel

I use it often, but no movie in my memory is more appropriately described by Mel Brooks’ timeless saying “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” Comedy is about suffering; then there is Jewish comedy, that shared invitation to find the ironies and chuckles hidden in horrible misfortune, from a culture that knows a few things about that. The defining joke of A Serious Man, the latest work from Joel & Ethan Coen, is that you can never tell a Jewish person things couldn’t possibly be worse.

A movie is rarely created which is such a perfect expression of its own idea. In their 2007 Academy Award-winner No Country For Old Men, the prodigious brothers achieved a purity of cinematic technique that seemed almost miraculous. A Serious Man, one of the best films of 2009, is produced at the same astounding pinnacle, and in its rueful way it is even less hopeful, but far more rib-splitting.

It is not about its incidents but its attitude, which is mean at a level people earn philosophy degrees to study. The universe it depicts is a disturbing one, since it will not just obstruct your ambitions but spite your whole existence. You might not want to see a movie that so masterfully suggests you live in a place like this. And yet, if you have ever felt your sanity and dignity unreasonably abused by fate, this will feel so familiar; maybe even morbidly comforting. Your community is who you suffer with – and if you’re in a community, at least you’re not alone.
(continue reading…)