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A Serious Man is also a serious bore
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A stoic and thoughtful pose, just one of many; Working Title
David Denby in The New Yorker said of the great cinematographer Roger Deakin’s work in A Serious Man ‘[it’s shot with] super-hard focus and solid colors; instead of paintings meant to look like photographs, the Coens give us photographs that look like paintings.’ Now that may or may not be true. The print used at the E Street Theatre Tuesday night looked as though Wolverine had taken his bladed talons to it. No wonder they say digital projection is the future.
But I’m by no means blaming the print or the projection for what ended up being an interminable drudge through one man’s trials and tribulations as he strived, in vain, to be the titular ‘serious man’. Looking to draw parallels with the protagonist as Job and any other number of religious parables is for naught when the end result is something that comes desperately close to dirge. The non-stop assailment of unwelcoming, unflinching, unfeeling characters makes 110 minutes feel like an age and dampens what little wry comedy there is to that of a damp squib.
A Serious Man is not a serious examination of Jewish life in the ‘60s, and it is also not a funny one, or a welcome one. The Coens seem to be stuck in angry mode, and this portrayal of their childhood world gives no insight into why.
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