Brilliantly Jewish

A Serious Man, a morality play from the Coen brothers, may be their best film yet

HEBRAIC HILARITY: Michael Stuhlbarg

It might not be an exaggeration to say that A Serious Man is the most Jewish movie I’ve ever seen—and I’ve watched my share of Israeli films and Holocaust documentaries. But, to clarify, the new film from Joel and Ethan Coen is intensely, brilliantly Jewish in a way that I specifically know it. It’s more accurate to say it’s the most North American middle-class Jewish movie I’ve ever seen, and it speaks to my upbringing in a particularly strong way.

The Coens announce the film’s ethnic identity (and a rough outline of its themes) in the first scene, a shtetl-set parable of a man who unwittingly brings a dybbuk (or malignant spirit) home to his wife. Then, from that image of pre-modern Jewishness, the movie leaps ahead to Minnesota, in the late 1960s—the era and location of the Coens’ own adolescence. (With filmmakers usually so resolutely not autobiographical or “personal” in the typical sense, it’s hard to ignore the setting of this one.)

Though they could probably get any actor in Hollywood they want, A Serious Man is populated almost entirely by unknowns (literally the biggest name on the marquee here is Richard Kind of Mad About You). Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a math professor whose life is starting to unravel for reasons that bewilder him, just as the counterculture of the time has slowly begun to seep into the hermetic, very Jewish enclave he lives in (“Do you take advantage of the new freedoms?” asks a pot-smoking neighbour?). His wife (Sari Lennick) is leaving him; he’s being blackmailed by a student; his son has stolen his credit card number to order Santana records. Seeking advice, he ventures to the community’s rabbis, who are either simple-minded or as distant as God.

With scenes that involve getting high in synagogue and getting yelled at in Hebrew school, A Serious Man spoke to me in a serious way. But I don’t think this film only concerns itself with Judaism—far from it. It’s a parable, really, a morality play about man’s place in a universe where God is far removed. It’s hilarious, but it’s not a typical Coen comedy. It may in fact be their best film.

A SERIOUS MAN OPENS
THIS FRIDAY, OCT. 16