“A Serious Man” is not exactly what I expected to be the Cohen brother's next picture. After one of my favorite films, “No Country For Old Men,” and their next hit “Burn After Reading,” I hoped “A Serious Man” to be better, fresher than the last. Watching this movie in the comfort of my home on my big-ass TV, I found myself to be restless and impatient to find answers to the questions posed by the main character, Larry. Larry is physics teacher whose wife is leaving him for a man who has nothing more going for him than Larry (and if its not for money, looks or power, it seems to me a bigger jab than if she'd left him for someone more impressive, am I right)? Anyway, Larry tries to be a good husband, father and teacher, a Balebetishen Yidden (Yiddish for “good Jew”), but cant seem to get a break. He even tries several times to seek help from the elder Rabbi. Unsuccessful, he remains stagnant as the rest of world seems to move past him like a naïve child rolling down a hill on a bike with no breaks. Don't they know they're all wrong? Larry cant seem to be taken seriously by anyone. In the end, his pot-smoking jerk-of-a-son gets to meet with the elder Rabbi, only to send him off into the world with the lyrics to “Somebody to Love” by Jefferson Airplane. And Larry? Well, he doesn't get the answer to his life's questions, and the audience is left feeling basically hopeless.
In the first scene of the film, a tale is told in Yiddish of a couple who let a dybbuk, a ghost, into their home. I was completely frustrated by this tale, as it is never mentioned in the rest of the film and I could find no connection to the story or purpose for its use. Then I found Roger Ebert's review of the film on rogerebert.com (10/7/09), and he writes that Larry may be cursed because his ancestors let the dybbuk in their home. This made a lot of sense to me. Whether or not the Cohen brothers intended for the prologue to have this relevance is unknown to me, but I would like to think it had some meaning.
This film did not leave me feeling any kind of satisfied. It wasn't a bad movie. In fact, it was entrancing, funny, well acted, a little tense, and thought provoking. But if a film doesn't leave me satisfied, I cant recommend it.
