A SERIOUS MAN ☆☆☆ 1/2

The Coens have a way with subtle comedy, and by also having it be darkly humorous. Here they take us to a 1960's suburban jewish community, if that isn't a very whimsical setting, and give us mild-mannered dork Larry Gopnick, a well-to-do math professor who is getting his life beaten by lots of lowlife cretins. This includes his mean, adulterous wife and her too close for comfort life-giving boyfriend, community-man Sy Ableman; his pot-smoking son and bratty daughter, and Arthur, his harmless but incapable brother who lives with him. There is also a korean student of Larry's who tries to bribe him for a passing grade, but turns around and has his dad sue for not taking it.

This is what film historians call "dark comedy," but the story the Coens set for you, you would wonder how they pulled it off, and how they did it so masterfully.

The way these filmmakers capture and represent this is what is so unique to their style. The almost deadpanned way characters go about quietly ruining Larry's life in awful indifference as he seems to be the only sane one out of all of them, and having him go to his religion for guidance, from one clueless Rabbi after another, and even Larry's divorce lawyer, but never getting any closer to understanding his suffering. This itself is hard to laugh at, but you do, because there is an art to how Joel and Ethan Coen seep out the humor in all this madness, and by mixing it with melancholy and philosophy you get their own batch of a normal life in quiet, but utter chaos. If I could just describe what watching a Coen Brother's movie is like, but I don't think I could, and I wouldn't be doing it justice if I tried. All I can say is in the simple, quiet way they and the actors play the story it all just comes out beautifully. Almost like how Clint Eastwood effortlessly does drama, I can't describe how he does it either.

However, some things you can say about the Coens is sometimes you don't understand completely everything they do. For one, the prologue. Not that it was a bad scene opener (it was actually very well done), but that had as far as I was able to understand nothing to do with the plot. So if anybody could figure that out and tell me, that would be great. Also, I didn't like the ending. Oh, boy. Another abrupt Coen Bros. ending. Now, even though the ending is very open-ended, you can still figure out what happens, it's not that hard, I just didn't personally like it because, if I can agree with a lot of people, the ending was really just too abrupt. But, it still makes sense anyway (better than the beginning). But hey, based on the art the rest of the movie gives you, there is a chance we're all missing something here...Or maybe after "No Country for Old Men" the Coens just wanted to piss us off.

Go out and see this movie for a full experience if my writing won't help, but if I can say anything it's that "A Serious Man" is one of the better films to come out this year. So go see it, even if it does have a wacky ending.

Great cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed and Sari Lennick, and, as always, great photography by Rogar Deakins, I can't imagine the Coen style without him.