The Coen Brothers have been writing and directing films since 1984’s Blood Simple. In 25 years they have collaborated on 14 films. They range from absurdist comedies (The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona) to out and out dramatic thrillers (Miller’s Crossing, No Country For Old Men), and while I’m certain all of their movies contain pieces of themselves, they’ve not made a film that could really be considered personal. Until now.
A Serious Man is the story of Larry Gobnik, a Jewish physics professor whose life slowly begins to unravel around him. Larry is a very Job like figure, which should be no surprise to anyone familiar with the Coens filmography. Religion is always at least a part of any movie they craft, and in the best of them it’s a very present theme. In fact, this is very much an adaptation of the Book of Job just as Oh Brother was their version of Homer’s Odyssey.
There’s a moment in the film where Larry, on the verge of losing his sanity has an argument with a Columbia House Records employee over the phone. It seems Larry owes them money for Santana’s album Abraxus. Larry rejects the claim and says “I haven’t done anything. I didn’t ask for Santana Abraxas. Something is very wrong. I don’t want Santanna Abraxas. I didn’t ask for Santana Abraxis, I didn’t listen to Santana Abraxas. I didn’t do anything.” In the context of the movie it’s a very dark, hysterical kind of moment. We’re in the middle of watching this man’s world fall apart and it seems like the straw that will break his back (or, sanity) is an argument over a record he never ordered. But, Abraxas is a Gnostic term for God, or, a God at least. Specifically the “supreme God.” So this is Larry rejecting God and the unwanted influence he has on his life.
This movie is filled with moments like this, layered with meaning and nuance. Some I picked up on, some, I’m sure, sailed right over my head.
Throughout the film Larry continually insists he “didn’t do anything” and therefore, he doesn’t deserve these horrible things that are happening to him. Undeserved punishment, another element of the story of Job. But, while I’m a bit rusty on Job’s story, I think it’s precisely BECAUSE he hasn’t done anything that all of this is happening to him. Larry has become complacent in his life, he takes his job, his wife and his children for granted; in fact he’s not even that visably upset by the thought of a divorce. He seems far more inconvenienced than distraught, taking in most of it with a heavy sigh.
I hate to keep making references to Job, but a big part of Job’s story are the conversations he has with his friends, and how they are convinced he must have done something to bring God’s wrath down on him. In that same vein, Larry seeks out the advice of his Rabbi on the events that are unfolding in his life. But, he’s thwarted at every turn. At first he’s dumped off on the junior Rabbi, who launches into a speech about how marvelous the parking lot is and how Larry needs to look for Hashem in everything around him. The second Rabbi he gets shuffled to gives him an interesting story about a dentist who finds a Hebrew message engraved in a Goy patient’s teeth and his quest to uncover it’s meaning and how it got there. The rabbi leaves Larry with a very ambiguous ending to the story, and when he asks what the point of the story is the rabbi says “We can’t know everything.” I love Larry’s response: “Why does he make us feel the questions if he’s not going to give us any answers?”
By the time gets to the last Rabbi (THE Rabbi he’s been seeking, sorry, I’m not sure of the proper term here, the main Rabbi?) he’s once again brushed aside. He demands help, demands answers to his questions, but still he cannot get an audience with the Rabbi. In Job, there are four men constantly advicing Job on what he should do, how he should handle the situation that’s befallen him, and after a few viewings I’ve decided that the fourth advisor in this film comes in the form of Larry’s lawyer, played by Adam Arkin. He shows up a few times in the film, and like the Rabbis he isn’t able to offer Larry much in the way of real advice, but for the most part he seems to be the only person on Larry’s side, even if he winds up being almost useless.
There are two more scenes I want to talk about…I guess, spoilers maybe, even though this is not exactly a movie with twists and surprises, at least not obvious ones.
The man Larry’s wife wants to leave him for, Sy Ableman winds up dying in a car accident, and at his funeral (a funeral Larry is forced to at least partly foot the bill for) the Rabbis says about the deceased: “Sy Ableman was a serious man.” This is Larry’s life, and in the movie of his life he is not even the title character. It’s not anything huge I suppose, and it’s incredibly funny (to me at least), but I think it adds to my argument that in a lot of ways he deserves the things that are happening to him. He is not even an active participant, or the star, of his own life.
The second is a scene, one of the few in which we see Larry teaching his students physics. Of course, I don’t understand anythng he’s saying, but yoy find out he’s writing out the Uncertainty Principle, and follows it by saying “It proves we can’t ever really know what’s going on. But even though you can’t figure anything out you will be responsible for it on the midterm.” Not only is this a wonderful statement on the film itself, it’s also a brilliant summation of life (or, at last Larry’s life).
Now, I said that I think this is the Coens’ first personal film, and while all of that might not sound personal, for them I think it was. This film explores what it’s like to live in a Jewish community, the characters are not over-the-top, they don’t come off stereotypical in the least. I can only imagine that this is the world they experienced growing up, these are the people that surrounded them. Larry’s story is the story of a Job-like figure, but the minor side plots involving his son I think probably reflects their childhood. One piece of a review on IMDB.com says “A Serious Man is the story of an ordinary man’s search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV.”
A better example, in a continuing (for the moment) examination of the film, this is what Todd Alcott says about Danny, Larry’s son: “Danny is looking for something, what we don’t really know, and perhaps he doesn’t know either, but it’s something he feels he’s not getting in Hebrew class. The old ways, the ways of his parents, the ways of the people back in the shetl, don’t appeal to Danny, and instead he’s looking through the trash-heap of popular culture for some sort of clue about how to live his life.” That is exactly what I think it was like growing up as a Coen.
Breif thoughts on the film’s ending: The Coens are no strangers to ambiguity, in fact it’s very much in their stable of themes, and it’s employed often within A Serious Man, but nothing is as huge and ambiguous as the very last shot of this film. The ending is a series of moments, actually a series of revelations and decisions to and from Larry Gobnik, some we are a privy to, some we aren’t, but that’s not the point really. Larry makes choices, and these choices may have a karmic effect on thos around him. We’re not really sure if it’s positive or negative, though I think the needle would probably fall to the latter, and it’s a wonderful call back to the mysterious opening of the film. Very much a “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” kind of thing. Or, to quote another movie, “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” Well, at least into the lives of our descendants.
