Mysterious ways

A Serious Man
15, Nationwide

As Larry is stripped of everything, in a Job-like way, he starts seeking answers. Unlike Job, he doesn’t assume he has sinned and deserves punishment. He has, as he says, ‘always tried to do right’ and is mystified. He is upright, blameless, decent, and now look what’s happened: he’s trapped in A Downward Trajectory Movie. He consults three rabbis, all of whom are no help whatsoever; all of whom say nothing that isn’t empty or platitudinous. Is this the point of the film? Is it intended to be as empty and platitudinous as life itself? Is it saying there are no significant illuminations? And that, in a world where anything can happen, physics and fables have to be equally true (or untrue)?

If so, it is saying no more than that God works in mysterious ways, which is fair enough, but we can only care about a random and unjust world if we care about the people in it, and I don’t think we do. They are all highly mocked caricatures, pretty much, and fat ladies are paraded just for a laugh. Even Larry is more annoying than sympathetic because he is so bizarrely passive. Rail, Larry, rail! Fight back! And while you are about it, punch that Sy in the face! But he won’t even sleep with the highly available sexpot next door. In fact, the most he ever does is have nightmares of the kind that result in him sitting bolt upright in bed, panting and sweating, as only happens in films and never in real life, except for maybe in the suburbs, where any cliché can happen.

This film does have its delicious moments — Sy offering Larry sanctimonious caresses and ‘understanding’; Danny stoned at his own Bar Mitzvah; Danny bored to death in Hebrew classes — and Michael Stuhlbarg does give an excellent, exasperated, frazzled lead performance, even if the character is such a dead loss. But without any warmth or expansiveness it all seems too cruelly easy and shrivelling somehow. ‘If God makes us feel the questions, why doesn’t he give us the answers?’ Larry wails at one point. I have no idea, but think an equally good thing to ask might be: ‘If the Coens want us to engage, why don’t they give us people to engage with?’ And if that isn’t Proust-ian, I’d like to know what is.