Newcomer Michael Stuhlbarg confronts his goy of a neighbour in A Serious Man
While its subject matter of Midwest melancholy may seem modest on the surface, the Coen brothers’ latest comedy contains an ocean of depth. Set in the late 1960s and featuring no star actors, the story centres on Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg), a father and physics professor wealthy only in worries. His wife wants to leave him, his son’s smoking pot and his depressed brother Arthur is hogging the family bathroom. On top of all this, Gopnick is wrestling with his Jewish faith, lust, unhelpful rabbis and even more issues at school. Who can he turn to when no one sees him as a serious man?
Piling more and more problems onto their protagonist, the Coens seem to delight (as will viewers) in watching Gopnick react in increasingly unpredictable fashion. Waking suddenly from fevered dreams of his worst fears and weirdest fantasies, erupting into unexpected shouts during casual conversations and eventually breaking down into both tears and manic laughter, Stuhlbarg gives a consistently compelling performance. A spitting image of the Hold Steady’s Craig Finn crossed with Quentin Tarantino, he embodies the uncool professor and distressed dad impeccably, right down to the too-short pants.
Stuhlbarg’s background as a stage actor is also evident in the exaggerated body language and comical facial expressions he uses to illustrate his character’s perpetual befuddlement. The fact that he’ll be unrecognizable to most viewers aids the believability factor even further, as if we’re simply watching a reality show on anonymous suburban struggles. Of course, the dialogue would never be this snappy.
Many of the characters the Coens have created for the film are their typically off-kilter, idiosyncratic caricatures, from a stiff Korean father and son reminiscent of Steve Park’s memorable role in Fargo, to a bullying neighbour parent who pulls his own son out of school to go buck hunting. Only a few faces will be vaguely familiar, such as Richard Kind of Spin City and recently Curb Your Enthusiasm as Uncle Arthur, Woody Allen alum Fred Malamed as the “serious man” Sy Ableman and Adam Arkin (son of Alan) as Gopnick’s stressed-out divorce lawyer.
Highly moving, unusual and morbidly funny, A Serious Man is both a departure and welcome surprise followup to No Country For Old Men and the far wackier, star-studded romp Burn After Reading. With the knowledge that it was based on an amalgamation of events and people from the Coens’ lives (including their parents), it also feels like the most personal work of their career to date, and yet another triumph.
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