I am a serious man

The Coen Brothers are the type of filmmakers I would one day like to be like, there stories develop slow, deliberately, but never boring and always have humor. They understand that you don't need quick cuts or forced jokes, they know that they can let things develop cinematically and they do just that with there newest film A Serious Man. I didn't love this movie as much as I loved the artistry and idea of this film.

A Serious Man is the Coen's take on religion and the keys (or lack of them) to living a happy life. It surrounds Larry Gopnick played perfectly by Michael Stuhlbarg as a man who just tries and live life how he thinks he is suppose too, doing nothing wrong, but nothing extraordinary. Stuhlbarg doesn't play Gopnick as pathetic or a complainer, just a man that doesn't know how to take control of his own destiny and keeps taking one blow after another. I don't care to delve into what exactly the Coen's are saying about the significance or insignificance of religions impact on life (although I don't deny its importance in the film). But the answer to these questions are not as important as the questions themselves and the fact that the Coens set out to make a film that addressed these issues.

There is a lot of small parables to latch onto like the fact that Gopnick is a professor of math and can't find any answers and neither can the film. Life happens, for the good or for the bad and maybe the people who can survive in the world of the Coens are those that don't try and find the answers.

Also to be applauded is how the brothers can get such pitch perfect performances from all there supporting actors. I don't know how they do it, but they get everyone on the same page from the small asian student who tries to bribe Larry to the women who won't allow him to see the Rabbi.

Where this movie falls a bit flat and why it in no way can compare to the great No Country For Old Men is in the lack of story. I kept expecting more to happen, for everything to build to something, but it never came. I think that was the point, but it doesn't make for as good a movie.

I would place A Serious Man in the middle of the Coen Brothers cannon, but it is absolutely worth seeing and as of now would crack my top ten of the year.

*** 1/2