It’s hard to believe that a movie developed by the minds of Joel and Ethan Coen can be overlooked as their projects have received such critical acclaim, but the 2009 film a serious man is one of their most underrated projects. Very loosely inspired by the book of Job in Hebrew scriptures, a serious man follows a Jewish midwestern physics teacher named Larry Gopnik, whose life quickly falls apart when his wife decides to leave him for another man, his children skip school and drug dealers owe money, and his brother becomes homeless and a permanent couch potato. surfer. In light of this crisis, Larry rethinks his Jewish faith and talks with several rabbis to understand recent events. Like most of the Coen brothers’ films, viewers are pushed into deeper meanings.
Although we would all like Joel and Ethan to explain a serious man, as with most of their projects, their explanations are scarce. Joel tells Cinema mix that the idea came from a rabbi they knew as children “who met the bar mitzvah kids in town, and he was a sphinx-like, Wizard of Oz kind of character.” In addition, as children they were inspired by their Jewish community and neighbourhood, but also by the music of that time and of course the long-suffering Job. But that doesn’t tell us why complicated events quickly unfold in Larry Gopnik’s life, the film’s mysterious ending, or Job’s bigger question in general: Why do bad things happen to good people? Here is the most underrated Coen Brothers movie, a serious manexplained.
A serious man examines the conflict between faith and logic
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That’s right, the Coen brothers are not presenting a puzzle here. Actually, a serious man is primarily an examination of Joel and Ethan’s Jewish heritage and how it conflicted with their lives in America. To illustrate this clash, these two filmmakers use some of the film’s paradoxes to communicate what it means to be Jewish. Matt Goldberg from Collider explains that “being Jewish is itself a paradox – an outsider who always lives among other communities and waits for their inevitable next exodus, an exodus that is also key to their identity.” While there are no secrets here, this film is heavily steeped in meaning. At the opening of the film we are presented with a quote from the French rabbi Rashi who basically advises to receive life events with ‘simplicity’. But that’s the opposite of what Larry Gopnik is doing here.
In the opening scene, a kind of parable, we are told how life events challenge faith. A man, Velvel, and his wife, Dora, are a Jewish couple living in a shtetl, a small community with a large Jewish population before the Holocaust. Velvel comes home and tells Dora that a man, Traitle Goshkover, helped him fix his broken cart on his way home and that he invited Goshkover to dinner to thank him. Dora believes that Goshkover died years ago and that her husband had encountered an evil spirit called a dybbuk. When Goshkover arrives, she stabs him and he flees into the night.
We have to wonder if Goshkover was actually an evil spirit and although Velvel is doubtful and guilty, his wife has the suspicion that she fought an evil spirit. This scene ties into Larry Gopnik’s own faith, because while he turns to faith when his life falls apart, he’s more concerned with how things turn up. As a physics teacher, he wants a mathematical explanation for the chaos.
Larry Gopnik as a serious man
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The film seems to define a “serious man” as a person who has complete faith, which Larry is not. Like Matt Goldberg from Collider reports that Larry wants to “prove uncertainty with mathematical certainty.” To understand the chaotic events of his life, he consults three rabbis for some explanation, but comes across a common theory of meeting God in a parking lot and a story about a Jewish dentist who uses the words “help me, save me.” in the mouth of a non-Jewish person. So, like the original quote from the film, Larry should “receive life events with simplicity.”
However, Larry’s family’s ties to Jewish life and religious themes are often interrupted by their immersion in American life and uncertainty. Both Larry’s children are more concerned with their social lives and American interests, his ex-wife only wants a Jewish divorce because she has fallen in love with another Jewish man, and Larry’s brother is fixated on gambling. The Gopniks are caught between two conflicting cultures that coexist, they are paradoxes in themselves.
By the end of the film, Larry is able to accept the contradictions and uncertainty. He recognizes that God does not reward people for being good and passive, but that people are simply supposed to be good and expect nothing. Though Larry understands this, he sins and accepts bribes from a student’s parent. Accepting the bribes illustrates that Larry accepts the chaos, but also that there will be consequences, as the film ends with images of an approaching storm. The film represents Joel and Ethan Coen’s experience growing up Jewish in America and the struggle between their faith and American interests. a serious man is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.