A Serious Man

Colleen's Thoughts:
I was looking very forward to A Serious Man, the latest from the Coen's. Despite not being a huge fan of Burn After Reading I thought since this one has been called autobiographical it might be interesting. Also, many Coen brother movies, have a charm about them that is difficult to describe (Raising Arizona and The Big Lewboski are the ones that come to mind). I crave this charm and despite recent disappoints I go in expecting it.
I have to say I was fairly disappointed. The more I think about it the more I think the film has some redeemable qualities but all and all I just wasn't impressed. It didn't seem like they had much of a story to tell and if you don't have a story why tell it? I think the film failed mainly in the area of entertainment. A good movie should entertain and I was pretty bored halfway through the film. The movie had a very cynical and apathetic tone which isn't always bad but in this movie was quite lame. After an odd and, I must admit, intriguing intro you are introduced to Larry Gopnick. Larry is having what seems like no end to life problems. He is a good guy and tries to do good so you want better things for him. His, kids his wife, his brother, his work all bring different mundane challenges for him. This is about the extent of the film.
Deakins did a fine job with the cinematog. I thought the lead actor Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnick did a good job with the role and you truly did think he was a good guy even though he was a total putz and somewhat of a wuss.
All and all the film was ok. If you don't know much about Jewish culture you may learn something but that is about the extent of it.

Drew's Thoughts:
The Coen brothers' latest is a tale concocted straight out the Book of Job. The film centers on Larry Gopnik, who "tries to always do right", as his life begins to crumble around him in strange and often hilarious ways. Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry and his performance is central to what makes the film work. Stuhlbarg finds the right balance between eccentricity and playing the "straight man." Gopnik's essentially a sweet guy, hard working, moral, always taking on the burden of others (to the point of nearly being a complete wuss) and with each new obstacle he becomes increasingly panicked, wondering why this is happening to him but trying to still deal with it in an upright manner. He looks for answers anywhere and everywhere, visiting three Rabbis in the process, and never receives a satisfactory answer. Or any real answer really.
Though Colleen found the film to be boring, I was quite entertained. A lot of the fun comes from the push/pull between the comic and the dark, tragic elements (take Carter Burwell's creeping, minor-key score, for instance). Seeing Larry get increasingly over his head, scrambling to make sense of it all, was fun and reminded me a bit of the Dude's misadventures, though where the Dude got an ultimately zen-like movie consistent with his demeanor, Larry gets a frantic, less benign film.
This is also one of the weirder Coen brothers' movies. It's not as upfront about the weirdness as, say, Barton Fink but there's the ambiguous opening scene, set in a past century, and strange existential happenings, both central and peripheral to the film, that you might expect to be in a Charlie Kaufman screenplay.
The Coens in their later years have found more and more humor in fatalism, futility and misanthropy and A Serious Man fits right in there. Though the audience is taking pleasure in Larry's disorientation, the Coens disorient the audience (probably taking pleasure in it) by telling their comedy like a mystery--where the audience scrambles to put the pieces together just like Larry. Though I'm not sure if it's one of the best films of the year, it is good. And I'd like to see it again soon, not necessarily to relive favorite moments as is usual with the Coens' work, but just to try to figure the film out a little bit more.
Even if some of the PFA members don't end up being big fans of the film I hope they'll remember, come Dolphin-time, Jess Gonchor's detailed, pitch-perfect circa-1967 Art Direction work and also some of Roderick Jaynes's best editing yet. The film is edited quite tensely for a comedy and there are a number of sequences where the Coens... I mean Jaynes devises some inventive editing.