There is a moment early on in A Serious Man when the Coen brothers appear on the verge of a career revelation. The Man Behind The Desk is generally well-integrated enough into their works that his omnipresence is never as distracting or arbitrary as, say, Hitchcock's cameos, yet in the 25 years they've been putting him to use they have barely even attempted to comment on his existence. His status as a buffoonish stand-in for all the things in the world that might be stopping them, you, everyone, from achieving greatness is declared and then left to sit, as if the acknowledgement alone is enough. But, for a brief whisper of a second, A Serious Man seems ready to give us the punchline to a joke that's been a quarter of a century in the making.
The film is already a culmination of his place within their work, finally stretching him to his grotesque, logical conclusion by making the entire movie be about men sitting behind desks. Without counting, I would guess that something close to 75% of the scenes in the film involve someone sitting behind something that either is a desk or resembles one, from the opening scene of protagonist Larry Gopnick's son, Danny, listening to Jefferson Airplane during Hebrew class, to the second-to-last scene, with Larry himself behind a desk receiving still more bad news. And it's this aspect that is, for the Coens, a first. Never before (at least, to my recollection) has the main character of one of their movies sat behind the desk.
The first time we see Larry behind his desk is the very moment I alluded to. A foreign-exchange student from Korea has come to dispute his failing grade in Gopnick's physics class. In a film situated in the very specific world of Minnesotan Jewish suburbanites, this part offers an opportunity to counter-point the tense, suspicious relationship Larry has with his "goy" neighbor, and expose Larry's aloofness as its own form of American xenophobia. In this way, it could acknowledge the Coens' own position as Men Behind The Desk, and then evaluate our own complicity in laughing at (almost never with) the fuzzy, unreal archetypes the Coens place in front of us. But the movie never goes there. Quickly regaining the usual Coen detachment, the scene ends with an envelope of money on Gopnick's desk that will, eventually, have a 99% chance of being an attempted bribe (it's never explicitly stated, but no other explanation for the money's existence is ever introduced). And, in the meantime, we'll be asked to laugh at him and his occasionally difficult to decipher accent.
From here on out the movie loses ground rather quickly, introducing more of the caricatures who speak in typical, carefully observed Coen speech patterns, yet never say anything believably human. They exist only as narcissistic impediments to Gopnick's desire for a simple, uncomplicated life. Before I get too far along with this, I should add that I don't necessarily have anything against the idea of outlandishly cartoon characters for the purposes of satire. What I object to is such a selective use of caricature. Gopnick and, at least within his social circle, his son, Danny, are mostly free of judgement by the filmmakers. The lone exception comes late in the film, when Richard Kind, as Larry's brother Arthur, is finally granted a scene of humanity. It's an unexpected scene, as Kind sobs and spits and wonders at his place in the world and, for once, the Coens roll with this emotional moment. Too little in the context of the whole, of course, but taken on its own this scene is a mini-revelation of pathos sans irony for the emotionally discomfited brothers Coen. But after it's over it only highlights the fact that Arthur, not Larry, should be the main character of the film.
I am being particularly hard on this movie -- a movie I do not even actively dislike (there are a few moments of interest, mostly dealing with faith and tradition and the confusion that comes with ritualism that has lost its connection to meaning) -- but in a way the watching of this was like a ritual slaughter of nearly the last remaining sacred cows of my infant cinephilia. Fargo was one of my favorite movies as soon as I watched it. The Big Lebowski I have seen probably a dozen times (though none of them lately). Miller's Crossing was, at one point, the movie I loved so much I even made my grandparents watch it. A time ago Kubrick appealed greatly to my adolescent misanthropy, but by my mid-twenties his frigidity and hatred tarnished my appreciation. Now I suspect that his more playful Minnesota children will follow the same fate. True Grit, despite its problems, shows promise. Here's hoping they can tie that movie's empathy to something a little less fleeting.
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