A Serious Man

Hyped up as the best Coen film yet, A Serious Man had a lot to prove.

It sure is strange. Watching it, I could feel the whole way through that it was only going to feel completed in the ending. I mean this in the way all the events leading up to the end are carefully lining themselves up for the punchline.

It is surprisingly heavy in Jewish lingo. Well tricky. Which works well as it highlights the community that exists.

The Coen's seem to have been putting out films super fast recently, with No Country For Old Men, Burn After Reading and now this. They have really found their groove.

There are a few parts threads of narrative that seem to fade out quite appropriately as the main character works his way through all the confusion. Our protagonist is quite the anti-hero. He reaches a point where he seems to break, and begins to make a series of decisions that are potentially quite liberating. However, things change and he happily slips back to something closer to what he had at the start. This kind of lazy, decision-making is a really interesting part of the film, and just as it sets everything back to a kind of normal, fate speaks up.

Quite similar in tone to Burn After Reading, it's confusingly good.

CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?
CIA Officer: I don't know, sir.
CIA Superior: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir.
CIA Superior: I'm fucked if I know what we did.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say
CIA Superior: Jesus Fucking Christ.