A Serious Man

The physician smoking in his examining room andoffering a cigarette to a patient is one of those ironic, historical jokesbeloved by the Coen brothers. In their new film, A Serious Man, Ethan and Joel Coen work with more of their favoritemotifs, including a sense that the ’60s were silly and a preoccupation withseemingly random events plus a hapless protagonist beset like a toy boat by aturbulent ocean of circumstance.

The protagonist is Lawrence Gopnik (MichaelStuhlbarg), a mild-mannered physics professor up for tenure and weeks away fromhis son Danny’s bar mitzvah. Suddenly, ill events descend for no apparentreason like the troubles of Job. His wife, Judy (Sari Lennick), announces sheis divorcing him and marrying a rather pompous member of their synagogue, SyAbelman (Fred Melamed). Crazy Uncle Arthur (Richard Kind), an unemployed mathgenius sleeping on the living room sofa, gets in trouble with the law. And aKorean student alternately bribes or threatens Gopnik for a passing grade.

Although it’s neither the funniest nor the mostprovocative of the Coen brothers’ films, ASerious Man gradually gains momentum as a comedy and affords (as with manyof their movies) a broad caricature of a particular place and time. In thiscase, they stayed close to homea suburban Jewish community sometime duringNixon’s first term, surrounded by uncomprehending and potentially hostilegoyim. The ancient and medieval overlay the modern like bas-relief panels oncinder-block walls. Danny struggles to chant a few lines from the Torah for hisupcoming bar mitzvah, and would rather listen to the Jefferson Airplane on histransistor radio. Selfish brat that most kids are, he is more concerned withhis home’s fuzzy TV reception than his parents’ unraveling home life.

Dad goes in search of answers to his unanticipated troubles, hoping inparticular to draw from the well of Jewish tradition, but finds only platitudesand more questions. In A Serious Man,the Coens seem skeptical of any apparent pattern in the cosmos, yet acknowledgethat patterns happen. Perhaps the uncertainty principle, as Gopnik explains itto his bored students, comes closest to the movie’s message: We can’t figure anythingout, but we are responsible for what happens nevertheless. The Coens’ shortYiddish film prefacing A Serious Man,which suggests an Isaac Bashevis Singer story from the old country, casts apall of unease over any effort to decipher the meaning of events.