A Serious Man: Masterful ode to meaninglessness

The Coen brothers have reached a surprising level of clarity in a film that is as subjective, and in many ways, even as incomprehensible, as you can get.

When the truth is found to be lies, and all the hope within you dies... then what?

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A Serious Man tells the story of man in search of answers to all of his misfortune, while it highlights the fruitlessness of the quest for a philosophical answer to... well, anything. It actually challenges the meaning of meaning itself. [...]

When faced with many problems in his life, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), as a Jewish man, turns to his rabbi for answers. But after a few rabbis contribute to guide him, the film concludes that the hyperbolic parables of religion, fail to provide practical resources for one to base their life understanding and decisions on.

While the first two less experienced rabbis that Larry goes to, are still trying to give some advice in the form of riddled, incomprehensible metaphors, the elder rabbi, Marshak, does not even allow his entrance into the deep and distant retire that is his room, because as is later revealed, he has realized from his experience, how utterly meaningless it is to try to make sense of life, at all, and thus seems to remain there merely as a symbolic figure, while no one around realizes that he has actually, in all likelihood, given up on the practice of religion.

The film shows that religion has lost much of its relevance in current times, as it has become a succession of rituals an routines that most don't even try to understand, and exist merely for the sake of tradition, as is displayed when Danny is studying for his Bar Mitzvah, and has no knowledge of what he is to say, beyond the rough sound of the Hebrew language. As is sure to have happened with his father as well, thus it is more of an obligation than actual belief.

In the end, after changing the grade of his Korean student, thus once again not making a real decision, but instead doing what others expect of him (He didn't have to change the student's grade, as the threat he was under, was completely unfounded, just as he didn't have to move out of his own house, etc.), Larry gets a phone call from his doctor, who seems to have some bad news. That is to show, that his life will go on unchanged, and just as badly as before, until he stops "not doing anything", and also perhaps takes life more lightly and not as such a "serious man".

Also, as Danny is outside, listening to Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love (a pivotal song to the film), while a tornado rages in the distance, it confirms how he has already realized (at some point before the film's start) the unimportance of things, as he doesn't care for the tornado at all. He does however notice Fagle, the guy he owes for some weed, and even under the current circumstances finds it a sensible moment to clear his debt, until he sees Fagle's face, and further realizes it really doesn't matter at all.

But in the end, A Serious Man, is a highly subjective movie, and its interpretation, highly personal. It is a movie that has to be felt, more than thought.

One thing that is certain, however, is the perfection of the casting. Stuhlbarg has great control over his character's troubled dissatisfaction, Aaron Wolff as Danny, doesn't really care about anything, but without being the cliché "bored teenager", Fred Melamed is splendid as the absolutely annoying "antagonist", and the three rabbis, Alan Mandell, George Wyner and Simon Helberg, are absolutely perfect in their representation of how one evolves philosophically during a lifetime.

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