This past weekend the Modern in Fort Worth played host to modern cinema with a festival of eight films. I missed the Precious buzz (an early packed house) but I got A Serious Man with An Education.
There are many similarities between these two films. Both are set in the 1960s, A Serious Man in 1967 and An Education in 1962; both have Jewish men as the lead character; and both are set in academia. But that is not where the similarities ends — the screenplay for An Education was adapted from Lynn Barber's memoir and A Serious Man is considered to be based on Joel and Ethan Coen's early years.
A Serious Man, written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, screened on Saturday, October 3. The film's strong message is don't blame God if your life isn't good — and then it puts God in the stalker's seat! This is the source of the film's dark comedy. While one doesn't have to be religious, Jewish, or into physics to love this movie, the calculus of Jewish culture creates a steep learning curve for the uninitiated. The audience was filled with many members of a local synagogue. I predict that this film will among the critics' choices for 2009 for its daring dialogue and cryptic ending.
The film begins and ends with the mysterious Rabbi Marshak. The hero is physics professor Larry Gopnik, played impeccably by Michael Stuhlburg who does not crack a smile throughout. The film draws the audience into a seeker role along with Prof. Gopnik. Gopnik goes kicking and screaming into solving the spiritual equation observant Jews around him set to zero, but for him it feels like infinity, since he cannot escape the daily karma that has his name on it. He fights with himself, with observant Jews, with his Jewish relatives, and even with one strange Korean grad student.
A Serious Man booms and blooms with shifting scenes between authentic Jewishness and the world of the "goys." The Coen brothers even take jabs at Jewish stereotypes with close-ups on close-set eyes and resonate with the theme that Jews only hired other Jews for legal or medical reasons.
Larry's neighbors on either side of his home in the suburbs embody American apple pie and pot. And with them the Coen brothers' film continues to wax dark. They are the subject of Larry's nightmares. When he awakes the nightmares haunt his day. He is the serious man alright, yet rarely ponders that his presence may be the problem.
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