The Coen Brothers continued their flirtation with nilihism and existentialist philosophies in 2009s A Serious Man. Larry Gopnik suffers a series of unfortunate personal and professional events which cause him to question his faith - his life leaves him for Sy Ableman, his kids show him no respect, his brother Arthur sleeps on the family couch and spends most of his time draining a cyst on his back, and Larry's aim of getting tenure is being set back by anonymous letters critising him.
It's generally accepted that A Serious Man draws Camus' theory of the absurd - the message is that we shouldn't try to decode or understand life. Events happen, we exist within the confines of these events. Larry's quest for answers, and the inability of him to find these answers, is underscored by the tale of 'The Goy's Teeth', a seemingly allegorical story without an ending, or, as we eventually, realise, any real meaning at all.
To take any Coen Brothers' film at face value though, is missing half the point of the film itself. The key to a great understanding of A Serious Man is the setting: 1967. The late sixties, especially 1968, have become an infamously turbulent time - the Vietnam war escalated far beyond control. American forces peaked in number during the Tet Offensive, and the spread of the conflict into Cambodia was on the horizon. The opposition to the war led to a wave of student unrest, most famously leading to the May 68 protests and riots in Paris, during the which a wildcat general strike was called and the country brought to a standstill. Any optimism gained at the 'end' of the Cold War would surely have been lost by this point.
Culturally, something was changing as well. Mark Harris' Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, a book about the 1967 Oscars, argues that American cinema was changed forever by the new range of films that were chosen in the most desired film award in the world. The Best Picture Catergory that year was contested by Look Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, Doctor Doolittle, Bonnie and Clyde and the eventual winner In The Heat Of The Night. The influence of the French New Wave, and changing attitudes to race, sex and relationships, as well as a huge shift in the traditionally successful Oscar genres are all represented in the shortlist, which covered the '67 and took place in the spring of '68.
This is the volatile setting of A Serious Man, one which the conservative and resigned Larry Gopnik, in his conservative and resigned Wisconsin town, could hear banging at the front door. The transitions which the world is going through are symbolised in two major ways in the film. The first is the bar mitzvah of Larry's son Danny - the Jewish journey from boyhood to manhood, and the younger generation coming of age as they discovered their political might over the next year. Danny is already engaging in acts of rebellion - he spends a great deal of the movie, including his bar mitzvah, stoned.
The final scene of A Serious Man, which a tornado is seen approching the town, is again a huge piece of symbolism - the tearing up of everything that Larry knows.
As mentioned at several points in the film, Danny has signed Larry up to the Columbia Record Club, who begin hassling Larry to buy albums - specifically, either Santana's Abraxas or Creedence Clearwater Revival's Comso's Factory. Given the Coen's constant use of a period setting in their films, and fantastic reconstuction of an American small town in the late sixties seen in A Serious Man, it seems strange that they would include two albums released in 1970. Again, another reference to an emerging counter-culture, something underlined by what might be a genius bit of intertexuality by the Coens. Comso's Factory is the Creedence tape which The Dude has in his stolen car in The Big Lebowski. The Dude is the antithesis of Larry, and symbolic of the counter-culture discussed above (The Dude says in the film he was a member of the Seattle Seven, and is based heavily on real life Seattle Seven member Jeff Dowd).
Overall, I don't think A Serious Man can be considered entirely by either of the two train of thoughts talked about above. It has the mark of the a great film, in that it makes you want to discuss the true meaning of it, teasing out clues, like I have in my analysis above. I don't think that the aburdist nature of it can be denied, but to settle on that being the meaning behind the film is missing out on a whole lot more.
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