A Serious Man

Every so often a film comes out that would never have been made were it not for the fact that the director (or directors) was a heavyweight. Liberty Heights, written and directed by Barry Levinson comes to mind as do all of Woody Allen's films. A Serious Man, written, directed, produced and edited by Joel and Ethan Coen fits that bill exquisitely. Just imagine a little known writer giving this pitch; "Um, it's set in the Midwest in 1970 and a nebbishy Jewish college professor experiences a crisis which causes him to look to his religion for answers. Oh yeah, and I don't want any stars. At all. In the entire movie". But Oscar-winning Coen brothers, different story altogether. A Serious Man is a darkly comic look at the life of Professor Larry Gopnik whose wife Judith has fallen in love with another man and wants to divorce him. Larry is also up for tenure and is facing a lawsuit by a student who is blackmailing him for a passing grade. Larry's son Danny is studying for his looming bar mitzvah and likes to smoke the weed out whenever possible, and his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) has been stealing money from his wallet to save up for a much-needed nose-job. To round out the misery, brother Arthur (Richard Kind) has been sleeping on the family's couch as a result of his out-of-control gambling habit. While Larry feebly attempts navigate the series of shit storms coming his way, he turns to his community rabbi's for help. A junior rabbi offers Larry the typically ambiguous platitudes that come so easily to religious leaders, but that really only help the least imaginative of sheep.
Larry's competitor for his wife's emotions is the supercilious Sy Ableman, played brilliantly by Fred Melamed. Sy appears to be everything that Larry is not-confident, smooth, in short, an "Able Man". Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik as one of the worst stereotypes of the Jewish man. He is weak and shaky, unable to handle the most blatant of betrayals by a loved one. Larry cowers under his domineering wife's pronouncements, and he allows the odious Sy to embrace him even as Sy perpetrates the act of stealing Larry's wife. Sy is the other part of the negative Jewish stereotype: the cunning liar who sweetly whispers flattery into your ear while conning you behind your back and balling your lady. All this film needs is a wealthy money-changer and it's a Der Sturmer cartoon. As much as this unappetizing slice of life offends me in the abstract I have to admit that while I was watching it I felt differently. As you may have guessed, I am what Grammy Hall would call a "real Jew", and let me tell you something, we can smell our own. Many times during the viewing of A Serious Man I found myself cackling my high-pitched Jewie laugh, only to look over at my gorgeous goyish guy and see, NOTHING. Stone faced. No laughter. Not even a smirk (although in truth it could have been my cackling). I was a giggly mess because I recognized the Gopniks with sparkling clarity. I didn't want to, but I did. The point is, while I have been waiting all these years for two of my favorite filmmakers to acknowledge their Jewishness, suddenly they do, and I don't like what I see. Apparently, neither did most of America, because the film only did $9,000,000 in domestic box office. But the film is nominated for Best Picture which it does deserve, as the writing is excellent and the plot is authentically original, like all of the Coen brothers' films. But methinks the brothers did themselves a disservice by only casting unknowns, as that clearly hurt the movie's bottom line. My Comment is about our cultural differences and why we love it when we find out someone is the same religion we are. And Jews, don't bullshit me and say you didn't love it when you found out Gwyneth (or Shia or Natalie or Scarlett) was Jewish. I don't know who the Episcopalians get excited about, but you can't have a single conversation with an Irish Catholic without them invoking one Kennedy or another. It makes us feel so good to find someone we perceive as an ally, even if the only similarity they possess is a belief in the same Yahweh. Please don't think that my observation translates into criticism, because I am guiltier than most in this capacity. I usually don't enjoy meeting new people, and I'll grab a hold of anything that might bind me to someone. Ironically, what binds me most to a new person is their hatred of meeting new people, and this outweighs religious proclivities any day of the week. Joel and Ethan Coen have given us the ultimate self-hatred portrayal, with Judaism front and center. I don't really like how my people are being portrayed, but I think the Coens render it beautifully.