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I’m not sure what happens in A Serious Man. This is not to say that the film fails as a logical, progressive narrative. After all this is a film by the Coen brothers, who, editing their own films under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes, provide scenes of sharp, crisp clarity, with journalistic precision. Since they also write their scripts and have just about the most creative minds in Los Angeles, every one of their scenes are both fascinatingly unique on their own merit and essential to the larger narrative as a whole. The reason why I’m not sure what happens is because I’m not supposed to.

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Jewish physics professor, awaiting tenure at a Midwestern college in the late nineteen sixties, is having a bit of an existential crisis. His job is threatened and his wife (Sari Lennik) is asking for a divorce to marry their obnoxiously tender friend, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Larry teaches Schrodinger’s paradox of the cat, which must be assumed to be both dead and alive. He teaches with zeal, a feeling unreciprocated by his students. He confesses to a failing South Korean student that he does not understand the paradox, but uses it like a fable to emphasize the concepts and theories. The prologue of the film is a Yiddish fable of a self-proclaimed rational man who invites an old man home for dinner. His skeptical wife claims that the old man is a dybbbuk, the Jewish equivalent of a zombie. Both fables, in science and folklore, allude to the idea of false perception. Larry’s fault is that he has no perception. Behind his thick glasses he can only observe the world in terms of facts like the mathematics he teaches, which attempts to explain the world in a logical manner. He stands on his roof to fix the antennae, and triumphantly surveys his neighborhood. His gaze is equally confused when he sees his redneck neighbors, father and son, playing catch, as when he sees his other neighbor, considerably more attractive, sunbathing nude. Not only are there fables, but dream sequences, and characters under the influence of narcotics. The Coen brothers are playing with the concept of reality to the point that we can hardly distinguish what is real and make believe. This makes the film akin to the bible, which proclaims to be fact, but mixes unfathomable fairy tale elements. The Midwest certainly is not Eden, but its not Sodom either.

 A Serious Man is a comedy of sorts. We laugh if only not to cry. Larry is an innocent man, trapped in a world he doesn’t understand, tormented by forces out of his control. He seeks spiritual advice from three rabbis, one more useless than the last. In fact, the only person who seems reasonable and honest is Larry’s divorce attorney. The score by Carter Burwell is of a deep and melancholic sadness, placing strong emphasis on the hopelessness of human existence. Yes, the film is a comedy, but that’s not a limitation. We never laugh at Larry, but only his surrounding world. When Larry’s brother cries out at night, wondering why God has given him nothing, there is not a hint of irony. When the film ends we leave battered and bruised. The film lingers as a tragedy, not a comedy. We recognize Larry Gopnik as ourselves, a useless, little cog in a world that doesn’t need us or want us. Amen.

-Jason Bardin