A Serious Man (2009)

Dir: The Coen Brothers
Universal DVD

Once upon a time, the Coen Brothers seemed like a mischievous secret to me. They made the kind of films that grandparents couldn't understand and geeks could quote til you wanted to vomit. With A Serious Man, I felt like I was watching a movie by guys that got old and lost their sense of absurdity that made them so unique. Gone were jokes about video artists and in their place were jokes about draining a sist or getting high at a Bat Mitzvah, yawn. The movie concerns itself with the destruction and re-construction of a Jewish family in the late sixties. The characters are all pitiful, pathetic, and selfish. It has been said that the film is semi-autobiographical. If that's true, this may be one of the most depressing films of all time and truly an exercise in cynicism. All this sounds like I really hated the movie, but mostly I was just disappointed in how uninvolved I was at every moment. It was like breathing or drinking water, totally forgettable.

4/10