My first impression of the new Coen Bros movie, A Serious Man....
The plot is simple. It is the story of a man who finds himself utterly unprepared for his midterm exam. He has studied his teacher's stories, but not the reality behind them: he was unaware that there was going to be math involved, even though the whole point of the stories is to illustrate the math - it's the math that really matters. He was also under the impression that it was going to be open book.
In his desperation, he tries to crib from the exams of his fellow students, only to discover they don't have any of the answers either. Or if they do, their blue book contains nothing but indecipherable gibberish. He's afraid that failing the exam will cause his scholarship to be revoked. Finally, with it all falling apart on him, he turns to brazen cheating, and gets caught. And discovers that, while consequences may not necessarily have actions, actions most definitely have consequences.
Or perhaps not; perhaps that's too easy of a metaphor. What A Serious Man is, besides being one of the handful of best movies of the decade, is an examination of a world where, if God is present, he sure the Hell isn't showing himself to us; he left on sabbatical before the exam and the proctors he left behind can do no more than point to the parking lot.
I seem to have returned to my perhaps inappropriate metaphor. But then, I'm still turning the movie over in my mind. Perhaps it is better just to point out a few of the many, many joys the movie contains: typically sparkling dialog - it is the Coens - tremendous performances, especially by Michael Stuhlbarg, perfectly drawn and cast minor characters, a great shaggy dog (their best since Lebowski which was shaggy dog from first to last) that wanders into the middle of the movie and stays on the edge of the consciousness like it might, finally, actually mean something... maybe. An ending that is perfect for all those people who thought the resolution to No Country for Old Men was too pat, predictable and neatly wrapped up. And, oddly enough, a beginning that is its equal. The movie's plotting is typically ingenious, and provides a hidden circularity to the whole picture - the movie begins with a man who may be a Dybbuk and ends with a man who may be Schroedinger's Cat. It is also uproariously funny, right through to the ending credits.
And perhaps maybe, just maybe, it gives us the answer to the whole damn thing - an answer given to us by, of all people, Mike Yanagita.
The plot is simple. It is the story of a man who finds himself utterly unprepared for his midterm exam. He has studied his teacher's stories, but not the reality behind them: he was unaware that there was going to be math involved, even though the whole point of the stories is to illustrate the math - it's the math that really matters. He was also under the impression that it was going to be open book.
In his desperation, he tries to crib from the exams of his fellow students, only to discover they don't have any of the answers either. Or if they do, their blue book contains nothing but indecipherable gibberish. He's afraid that failing the exam will cause his scholarship to be revoked. Finally, with it all falling apart on him, he turns to brazen cheating, and gets caught. And discovers that, while consequences may not necessarily have actions, actions most definitely have consequences.
Or perhaps not; perhaps that's too easy of a metaphor. What A Serious Man is, besides being one of the handful of best movies of the decade, is an examination of a world where, if God is present, he sure the Hell isn't showing himself to us; he left on sabbatical before the exam and the proctors he left behind can do no more than point to the parking lot.
I seem to have returned to my perhaps inappropriate metaphor. But then, I'm still turning the movie over in my mind. Perhaps it is better just to point out a few of the many, many joys the movie contains: typically sparkling dialog - it is the Coens - tremendous performances, especially by Michael Stuhlbarg, perfectly drawn and cast minor characters, a great shaggy dog (their best since Lebowski which was shaggy dog from first to last) that wanders into the middle of the movie and stays on the edge of the consciousness like it might, finally, actually mean something... maybe. An ending that is perfect for all those people who thought the resolution to No Country for Old Men was too pat, predictable and neatly wrapped up. And, oddly enough, a beginning that is its equal. The movie's plotting is typically ingenious, and provides a hidden circularity to the whole picture - the movie begins with a man who may be a Dybbuk and ends with a man who may be Schroedinger's Cat. It is also uproariously funny, right through to the ending credits.
And perhaps maybe, just maybe, it gives us the answer to the whole damn thing - an answer given to us by, of all people, Mike Yanagita.