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A Serious Man

A Serious Man is an amazing movie. It’s not necessarily a fun movie, it’s not an action movie, it doesn’t even have any particular plot, in the Hollywood understanding of that word. It is simply an amazing movie. Its symmetry is breathtaking. Its degree of subtly and polish places it in at least the top three of the Cohen brothers’ repertoire.

Basically, in the very best sense of the word, it is literature.

This is a relief. I worried for a bit that the Cohen brothers had lost their magic. The best part of Burn After Reading was the trailer. The Ladykillers starred Tom Hanks. Intolerable Cruelty… well, I don’t remember  anything about Intolerable Cruelty. No Country For Old Men was great, but it was written by Cormac McCarthy, so of course it was great.

A Serious Man, however, is the kind of movie that makes you sit back and say, “I could never, ever do that.” In fact, I’m still not entirely sure what it is they did. Superficially, the story echoes a classic from the English 101 Western Literature canon. In that respect, it is reminiscent of The Man Who Wasn’t There and O Brother, Where Art Thou?.

But as in The Big Lebowski, there is such a richness of imagery, characters, language, and dark humor that I could never say with confidence what A Serious Man is about. Suffice it to say that if a movie is good, I find myself thinking about it hours, days, even weeks after seeing it.

By this measure, A Serious Man is very, very good.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 17th, 2010 at 18:29 and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

5 Responses to “A Serious Man”

  1. Omar Uddin Says:
    January 17th, 2010 at 18:45

    I am thrilled you enjoyed it. It was a great movie, and I thought Michael Stuhlbarg’s performance was fantastic. I am hopeful that the Academy will recognize it, especially since they expanded the Best Picture field to ten.
    Like you, I cannot succinctly articulate what the movie is *about*, but as time has gone on, I find I am less and less bothered by it. Its funny that terms like “visionary,” and “genius,” are thrown around when discussing something like “Avatar,” whereas this film by comparison sort of flies under the radar all fall.

  2. daniel silliman Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 00:40

    Does it resemble some particular 101 classic or just “a” classic?

    Thanks for the review, and glad to see your back.

  3. daniel silliman Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 00:40

    *you’re*

  4. pjk Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 06:26

    Thanks Dan… it resembles one in particular, though I wouldn’t want to say which one as it might give you the wrong idea about what’s going to happen. Like the other movies, it’s a pretty loose interpretation.

  5. pjk Says:
    January 18th, 2010 at 07:08

    Omar, I assume that today, “visionary” and “genius” are basically marketing terms. Can’t think of any other reason to apply them to Avatar, The Most Derivative Movie Of Our Time.