Two Serious Men

In the same way that a new word or concept, previously unheard-of, can come into your life many times over the course of a week, the confluences in the seemingly random assortment of films I watch can sometimes pile up. I went to see "Greenberg" in the theater; then I watched the Coen Brothers' "A Serious Man." (Which, by the way, was robbed of a Best Picture win. At least it got a nomination.)

Everything I'd read about "Greenberg" suggested that the protagonist was crusty and hard to like. Maybe it says something about me that I related to him all too much. Just like one of Robert Mitchum or Humphrey Bogart's noir antiheroes*, he has a core of sentimentality that he carries around with him. It's this, not his black outlook, that separates him from those around him. His former bandmates have never forgiven him for the youthful idealism that kept him from capitulating to a record deal with a major label. One of them, played by Rhys Ifans, spiraled into drinking and drugs as a result and is now in recovery. Greenberg's bon mots ("Life is wasted on people," was one of my favorites) are lost on his bland, gentle friends. Everyone tells him to relax, to stop worrying, but what exactly he's worrying about is unclear. He appears to be working out some spiritual confusion, though his religious beliefs are never made explicit; he tells one old friend that he's not really Jewish, since his mother was Protestant.

Less critically reviled but equally isolated and confused is Larry Gopnik, the titular man of "A Serious Man." After a few destabilizing coincidences in succession (his wife announces she's leaving him for their neighbor; a student awkwardly attempts to bribe him, and his misfit brother has some run-ins with the law) he finds himself searching for explanations. The only common factor in these happenings seems to be that they seem normal to everyone around him -- the bizarreness is acknowledged by no one by Larry himself. His son and daughter are more concerned with, respectively, listening to the radio and washing her hair than with the breakup of their parents' marriage. His wife and her new boyfriend even treat him somewhat like a child, lecturing him about what a relationship is. Gopnik, who is from a devout Jewish background, consults several rabbis for advice, to no avail. Just when he starts to see a pattern in things and develop a unified theory of his existence, the world becomes disjointed again. His brother, played by Richard Kind**, appears to be grappling with the same questions, albeit in a less mentally healthy fashion, by filling a notebook with strange numerical codes, a kind of Key to All Mythologies.

The fact that I saw these two films in sequence is hilarious to me, as they might as well be part of a syllabus on cinematic portrayals of alienation. In both cases, the characters are uncomfortable with the trajectory of those around them (marriage, kids, house) and are searching for something different. I haven't completely settled my thoughts, but needless to say if you haven't seen them, the movies would make a great double feature!


*By the way, when are we going to see a movie with a female antiheroine like this?

**I used to live in the same neighborhood as Richard Kind and would see him all the time. Once my friend and I saw him on the subway -- it was midday on a weekday, and we were pretty much the only people in the car, and he was reading a script. My friend excitedly squealed "It's RICHARD KIND!" and I think he was pretty taken aback since he is not exactly a household name. Anyway, he rules.