"A Serious Man" (2009)

Open-endedness of general plot and minute particulars. The Coens are supposed to be personal here, and they are; but no sign of the internal remorse or fondness which may have afflicted, or obsessed, either of them. Perhaps since they work as brothers, their dispersive focus prisms out the overtly sentimental (for the Coens are zealously unsentimental), or the obviously mechanical; and they are able to craft narratives of terrifically -- sometimes outright cruelly -- impersonal tonalities, which are appropriately satires. They are masters of satire, and can't seem to get enough of it, even when they turn 'serious'. That this film is about "a serious man" is satire enough; that the film relaxes and makes its allusions and points of anguish through a bemused mockery of an ancient culture (turned trivial in the face of modern-life absurdities) is the essential point of the film's winding structure and mixture of awkward generalities.

The film begins with a reenactment of a proverb, assumingly one of the old tales that modern day jews recount and fall back on when they are lacking insight or guidance. A rabbinic tale, which like the one that the rabbi tells the lead character in the middle of the film (about the goy's teeth, set to Hendrix's "Machine Gun"), essentially says nothing conclusive except that mysteries occur which defy all human comprehension -- this is why they are mysterious. One must either accept the truth at face value (the truth in this case nothing more than a spectacle arousing the multiple figures of human perception) or inquire into it, at one's peril, or worse, disillusionment. The math professor does not accept that a story can have no meaning; the rabbi's wisdom is that he does (because meaning is verily an affair that doesn't invite our authorship, only our participation).

*(On that note, I, as a spectator, had no hand in the making of "A Serious Man" -- it is a Coen Bros. film, a work put together by the Coens -- yet one must counter that probably even the Coens have no idea, no intention, of what the film is supposed to mean, other than it tells a story, which may be true, may be false, but nonetheless happens. The movie can be watched, but it cannot, even by the men who bring it to form, be authored in certain cases as this.)

No famed actors here, because the Coens wished for less noise in the production, less hubbub because they required more focus, less pleading on the part of big-name actors for "meaning" and "interpretation" during the shoot. The Coens worked with jewish actors, of course, to authenticate the jewishness of the proceedings; and a sense of normativity was allowed so as to baffle the audience and let it ponder the mysteriousness at hand. I do not think it hyperbole to declare that the film is 'kafkaesque' (an irritating and abused term); "A Serious Man" is wholeheartedly concerned with the meaning of meaninglessness -- such a concept does indeed have meaning -- and the narrative plays at strands so as to make the audience think, and grasp at small fixtures and furniture that would otherwise be neglected in films anxious to communicate larger scales.