DVDs in Review

A Serious Man

Title: A Single Man (2010)

Release date: March 15 2010

Certificate: 15

Format: DVD, Blu-ray

DVD RRP: £15.99

Rating: 4/5

Looking at 'A Serious Man', it's easy to see that the Coen Brothers just scooped a bunch of Oscars. After 'No Country For Old Men', the critical acclaim, box office clout and Academy Awards for Direction, Picture and Screenplay under their belt, they had free reign to make pretty much whatever they wanted.

Then came the silly, but wildly entertaining 'Burn After Reading', which, thanks to it’s A-list cast, resulted in more great box office receipts. Next was 'A Serious Man' - a gamble. Everyone in the cast is relatively unknown - there aren't even the usual guest spots for Coen regulars Steve Buscemi, John Goodman and so on.

It tells the relatively plot-less tale of Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern professor, who is having a terrible week. His wife is leaving him to sleep with a man called Sy Abelman - an intensely calm and collected man. He's the kind of guy who steals your wife and then hugs you to console your pain afterward, without even the least bit of tension on his part. Larry can't understand this, despite being an obvious intellect and master of teaching physics.

Further friction arises because his brother Arthur is staying in the family home, hogging the bathroom. And so Larry and Arthur are kicked out to live in a hotel. Meanwhile, Larry has problems at work with students and a mystery neighbour who sunbathes in the nude is tempting his usual restraint to anything remotely passionate.

To try and find himself, Larry sees three rabbis for advice but they do him little good. It seems Larry's life is spiralling out of control, almost like he's an anomaly of the physics that he's teaching.

These kind of films have been done before - Oliver Stone's 'U-Turn' portrayed Sean Penn's worst, most violent and sex-filled day, while Griffin Dunne played the tormented businessman on the run from crazy women, S&M loving men and Cheech and Chong in the classic Scorsese flick 'After Hours'.

They depend on black comedy, or else they'd just be relentlessly depressing.  The Coens can obviously handle cinema's darkest comedy, but this isn't as inviting or expansive as 'The Big Lebowski'. It's more like the kooky 'Fargo' but it lacks the crime, or 'The Hudsucker Proxy' but without the backstabbing business ploys.

All in all, despite its simmering hilarity and intriguingly kinetic characterisations, 'A Serious Man' lacks drive or a sense of real resolution, which cripples its last act. Or is it just further crippling its lead character?