#1
Posted: 10/25/09 at 4:25am
Yes.
Ever.
The Coens have often been accused of acting like the God from the Book of Job in the thorough torturing their give their characters. In A SERIOUS MAN that becomes literal and the result is their angriest, most powerful, funniest, and most disturbing film yet.
It's a surrealist dark comedy with a strongly Jewish point of view. As Judaism is a religion that denies the Messiah, it can be a relatively downbeat and pessimistic religion, breeding more neuroses-per-square-inch in its Chosen People than any other culture in humankind. Or perhaps that is what the movies have us believe. But what the Coens have done here is to pinpoint exactly what the Jewish American Complex is. The film is set in the late '60s, with Israel barely into its twenties, and the aftershocks of the Holocaust still lingering. Perhaps the tragedies that befall our hero and the other Jewish characters could be read as the byproducts of a simmering anger as the culture tries to recoup itself after the Shoah and create a good life for themselves.
Or maybe not. This is the Coens' most abstract film since Barton Fink, giving us subtle snapshots into the life of a '60s-era Job. His life is a despairing comedic abyss of pain and hurt leaving him utterly trapped by the emptiness of his faith and the incompetence of his government. But, because this is the Coens, nothing is taken that seriously at all which, in a way, makes it all the more tragic and sad. It is a haunting comic vision of a world of bleak nothingness, and one that I won't soon forget.
Ever.
The Coens have often been accused of acting like the God from the Book of Job in the thorough torturing their give their characters. In A SERIOUS MAN that becomes literal and the result is their angriest, most powerful, funniest, and most disturbing film yet.
It's a surrealist dark comedy with a strongly Jewish point of view. As Judaism is a religion that denies the Messiah, it can be a relatively downbeat and pessimistic religion, breeding more neuroses-per-square-inch in its Chosen People than any other culture in humankind. Or perhaps that is what the movies have us believe. But what the Coens have done here is to pinpoint exactly what the Jewish American Complex is. The film is set in the late '60s, with Israel barely into its twenties, and the aftershocks of the Holocaust still lingering. Perhaps the tragedies that befall our hero and the other Jewish characters could be read as the byproducts of a simmering anger as the culture tries to recoup itself after the Shoah and create a good life for themselves.
Or maybe not. This is the Coens' most abstract film since Barton Fink, giving us subtle snapshots into the life of a '60s-era Job. His life is a despairing comedic abyss of pain and hurt leaving him utterly trapped by the emptiness of his faith and the incompetence of his government. But, because this is the Coens, nothing is taken that seriously at all which, in a way, makes it all the more tragic and sad. It is a haunting comic vision of a world of bleak nothingness, and one that I won't soon forget.
