We're Gonna Be Fine

A Serious Man - (2009) Directed by the Coens Brothers

Starring Michael Stuhbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed

Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff

Here is the IMDb plot summary for A Serious Man:

"A black comedy set in 1967 and centered on Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern professor who watches his life unravel when his wife prepares to leave him because his inept brother won't move out of the house."

I find it very strange to read the plot description to any Coen Brothers film. At the same time that they are correct and further, an accurate and fair factual summary of the plot, these details also make you aware how special the film actually was. What I mean is, by reminding you of the bare facts, you realize in tenfold how much more was provided for you in a film whose plot is accurately described as much less.

Here is the IMDb plot for No Country for Old Men:

"Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon some dead bodies, a stash of heroin and more than $2 million in cash near the Rio Grande."

Again, this is so on the money! That is exactly what happens in the film but at the same time, to see it written or hear it said makes you notice that that same plot could easily have been executed differently, thus killing the reasons why that film is so good.

A Serious Man did splendors for my inner Riddler, constantly obsessed with analysis and megamorphing mysteries from just about any source, particularly unfortunate events. Larry Gopnik, played by Michael Stuhberg, is a man who is faced with a marathon of stressful incidents, he is a mathematical man; reason must skeleton every action and event. His world soon becomes a Schrodinger's Cat that is both dead and alive and moreover, he isn't allowed to peek inside the box to set his uncertainty to rest.

The film presents me with a story that is tightly wound and yet loosened, the more weight I give the plot the more it pulls me down. However, its all a matter of perspective, (hahaha) its a parking lot! A foreign parking lot that looks overwhelming at first but then becomes as simple as the locals perceive it to be, as it becomes part of your daily life.

Larry Gopnik's counterpart in the film his in fact, his teenage son, Danny. The pot smoking, Jefferson Airplane-head who is approaching his Bar Mitzvah, who owes twenty dollars to school tough, Mike Fagle, and who has parents that may be divorcing. Danny is far more easy going than his dad. His teenage reactions to Crisis are marked by tactics that include outrunning Fagle after every school day to avoid an ass beating, getting stoned right before his Bar Mitzvah to cool his nerves; overall, its a response to Crisis rather than an analysis of, the latter seeming to be Danny's father's forte.

I feel this was the Coens flexing their writing muscle, the film was visually good but it was all about the idea of the film, the questions and the answers that never came.