A Seriously CONFUSING Film!

SPOILERS-

My friend Helen and me are avid Coen Bros. fans, and enjoy a movie night every week with a bottle of red. We decided this past Wednesday to watch A Serious Man- not to be confused with A Single Man, which released the same year with Colin Firth.

Unlike that movie, this one is dreadfully confusing- and slow. It begins in ancient times, with a Jewish couple arguing about some man the husband bumped into that is apparently dead. When he knocks on the door and shows up alive, the wife seems suspicious and kills him. Then it flash forwards to the 1950s- with a kid in school looking bored, and then a middle aged man getting tested for cancer. This is Larry, a very mean and stuffy professor of mathematics and physics who is not kind to his students (flunking an Asian and not offering any remorse) and who lives a dreary routine. He comes home to a wife who tells him she wants a divorce. She is seeing his best friend. The wife is a very unlikable character too- and the actress playing her hams it up so much she's not very convincing.

Then there's a scene where Larry climbs up on his roof and looks around the neighborhood. I guess this is supposed to be his "discovery" that the world is a bore, and that nothing is worth much salt anymore.

By this time, Helen and me grew restless and began sewing inbetween conversation and a glance up at the television here and there. But the message is foggy- are the Coens trying to be like Sam Mendes and do an American Beauty (1999) ten years later? What's with the annoying Jewish theme? We're not Jewish, so we found ourselves struggling to understand the foreign languages flying off the screen. And where was the comedy? The only interesting character was Larry's young daughter. A fine actress. Other then that A Serious Man did not deserve a Best Picture nomination, and seems to be flung out of space.