A Serious Man
I love the Coen brothers, I really do. I thought “Fargo” was enjoyable and unpretentiously funny, and “The Big Lebowski” absolutely deserves its cult following. „Burn After Reading“ had a very engaging story as well, but I’m not that much of a huge fan of its message. So how else could I have approached „A Serious Man“ but with high expectations?
Unfortunately, I have to admit that I didn’t like the film as much, and I think it’s mostly because it did not feel like a Coen movie that much. We do have a large cast of characters but are awfully concentrated on this main character, there are a bunch of funny scenes augmented with Jewish humour and finally, I think that the actors are absolutely great. However, I have found myself bored for the first time with a Coen film, amazingly enough.
I’m not sure if it truly was the case, but „A Serious Man“ seemed to be much slower than the other Coen films I have seen. Furthermore, this is a film where you can’t see the end (this is not necessarily bad), but you also can’t see a journey! (This is horrible.) Of course I understand that he will not be finding any answers by going to these rabbi, and quite a lot of scenes in the story did make me laugh in their heartwarming Jewishness, but seriously, what was all that about? Am I missing anything? Is this my next „Requiem for a Dream“ where everyone is going to tell me how great it is except I don’t see it?
By the way, just like the Coen brothers, I love screwball comedies. I just wish this movie would have turned out a little bit more like a screwball comedy. Which means that „A Serious Man“ just lacks Frances McDormand! XD