Some people have labelled the Coen Brothers new film their 'masterpiece', but most audiences are likely to find it a 'minipiece'. It's a slice of middle-aged-angst film, supposedly their 'most personal film yet', and bears close resemblance to many works by Woody Allen.
Breaking from their recent tradition, the filmmakers have chosen a cast of non-stars, who all successfully inhabit the weirdly wacky world that the script demands. The serious man of the title is Larry Gupnik (Michael Stuhlbarg, a well-respected stage actor in his biggest film role to date), a 40-something science professor in mid-60s Minnesota who finds as few answers to the big question in his personal life as he does in his professional life. Larry calls to mind similar Coen creations such as William H Macy's desperate Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo and Billy Bob Thornton's existential Ed Crane in The Man Who Wasn't There.
Larry's deteriorating world provides some early laughs: his wife wants to divorce him, his kid is a pothead, his brother is a hypochondriac conspiracist and he is being inexpertly bribed by one of his Korean students. With such 'serious' issues hanging over him, Larry decides to see if his faith can offer any help.
This is where it really helps if the audience is intimately familiar with the intricacies of Judaism. The Coens have probably made a very funny and ironic film about being Jewish, but you actually have to be Jewish to understand it all. It's full of life's big questions which, to be fair, cross religious boundaries, but it seems to imply that Judaism is only able to offer answers that are at best fudged and at worst cryptic.
Despite the abrupt change in tone that happens about halfway through, it is an entirely watchable film, but one whose impact will probably remain as obscure as the message it is trying to convey.
Paul Hurley
