With the Coens, you either get gold or you get a horse apple. Let's just say, there's no gold is these parts.
This was nominated for Best Picture in what was the first year of the Academy nominating 10 films for that prize.
Mind you, this was a few years after another Coen film actually WON Best Picture. There was no gold there either. In fact, the horses apparently invited about 100 of their horsey friends to the field on that day.
"A Serious Man". I'm retitling this film, "Seriously?!" The Coens give us such classics as "Fargo" and their most recent "True Grit", and they hit solid home runs. The problem with these Coen boys is, most of their films have grounded out in my opinion, and this one is no exception. They have stated repeatedly they make films they want to see. Well, they can keep this one.
My biggest pet peeve in movies is when a film has a beginning and a middle and an ending, without actually GIVING us an ending. It's as if they just ran out of film and/or budget and said, "Check the gate! Print! Wrap party in one hour!" It drives me FREAKING CRAZY. So yeah, I just watched this film and my p.-and-vinegar is firing off nice and fresh.
What was the point of this film? To see this guy's life unravel, a few sorta-good things happen along the way, blah blah blah, for almost two hours. Then, with absolutely NO loose ends, or tight ends, or ANY ends tied up...roll credits. Tornado? Meh, who cares. X-ray results? Bah, he's a quack. Columbia Record Club? Pfft, I'm sure they'll just write it off. Arthur's arrest for solicitation and sodomy, not to mention all this mathematical jazz we hear about time and time again? BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Joke's on you, viewer! YOU GET NO ANSWERS! IT DOESN'T MATTER! THANKX FOR YOUR TWO HOURS! A complete, dreadful, wasteful, pathetic film that made me angry, and not the good kind of angry like after watching "Inside Job". I mean the WTF kind of anger in knowing you just wasted two hours of your life investing your time and effort into a film that delivered nothing. No answers, no denouement, no sense.
Oh, I almost forgot! The first 7-8 minutes of the film before the opening credits roll? It's something, perhaps set in Poland, that means ultimately...you guessed it...NOTHING! It has NOTHING to do with the rest of the film. It makes NO sense in and of itself. The IMDb trivia section for this film actually makes mention about that opening segment: "The Coen Brothers stated that the opening scene was nothing more than a little short that they made up to get the audience in the proper mood, and that there is no meaning behind it." I couldn't have said it better myself. The opening scene had no purpose, point, sense, belonging or reason. It was perfect, because it completely foreshadowed and defined the next 100 minutes.
The film gets a "2" for the ONE funny scene that made me laugh, but it's so late in the film that I don't even want to subject you to sitting through the first hour-plus to get to it.
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