The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, won their Academy Award for the hugely popular "No Country for Old Men," which meant that because they conquered the Hollywood Everest, they could get back to their truly off-beat filmmaking. And they have, with "A Serious Man," a movie that isn't exactly getting a big publicity push.
Interestingly, and coincidentally, one of their best buddies, George Clooney, has a new movie opening soon called "The Men Who Stare at Goats," which sounds like the Coen brothers, but isn't.
"A Serious Man" is clearly a more personal work for the Coens, especially when you consider the content of some of their other features, including "Fargo," "The Big Lebowski" and "Raising Arizona." They made their new film in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., where they grew up in the village of St. Louis Park. Their father, Edward, taught economics at the University of Minnesota, and their mother, Rena, taught art history at St. Cloud State University. They have a sister who's a psychiatrist, which seems only fitting. It's important in the context of the movie to note that the Coens are Jewish. The film takes place in 1967. Joel would have been 13 years old and Ethan 10. If you know your American pop culture history, hippies and happenings and LSD were some of what the country was talking about. Music from the Jefferson Airplane is a key part of the story.
This is a black comedy, as dark as an abyss can be. The humor is cynical and sarcastic, but there's a spiritual overtone to everything. Comparisons to the Book of Job are legitimate, because it's about a man being tested beyond all reason. Larry Gopnik (an excellent Michael Stuhlbarg) is a serious physics professor seeking tenure. He's a practicing Jew. Somebody is jeopardizing his tenure by sending unsigned letters to the university accusing him of all manner of evils. Gopnik's wife is set to leave him for a total jerk. His teenage son, who is about to have his Bar Mitzvah, dwells in a marijuana fog, and his teenage daughter is only interested in plastic surgery.
As if that weren't enough, Larry's unemployed slob of a brother (a terrific Richard Kind) shows up on his doorstep and becomes the kinky man who won't leave. His neighbor hates Larry because of his religion, and there's a woman who sunbathes nude, which stirs something inside him, but he's too conflicted to deal with that on any level. Yes, indeed, life's a mess.
"A Serious Man" follows Gopnik through his bewildering crises. The Coens have created a believable character who has to find strength to cope with everything negative that's happening to him and swirling around him. Because the brothers are as good as they are at what they do, the movie itself never becomes an ordeal. And that includes the arrival of a rabbi and a lawyer.
There's a prologue in Yiddish, set in an very old village in Poland, that entertains the notion that a dybbuk (a demon) may have begun the haunting of the Gopnik family.
Technically, the feature is top notch. The writing is smart and directing is sharp. The Coens are true American masters. There's wonderful cinematography from Roger Deakins that greatly elevates the story, and the sharp editing by the nonexistent Roderick Jaynes, who edits all of the Coen brothers movies, is superb -- as it should be, because he's actually the Coen brothers themselves.
There are very few films being made these days that take you deep into a character's psyche. You laugh, wince and feel Larry's pain. You relish the journey as those incorrigible Coen boys beautifully set up questions of morality and family. How this relates to their childhood is anybody's guess. Why the distributor is not shouting this movie from the rooftops will be obvious once you see it. That they're afraid of it is unfortunate.
"The Damned United" might seem like something utterly alien to American movie audiences, but give it a chance. The "United" of the title is a football team -- British football, or soccer, as it's called here. Its formal name is Association Football, the result of rules established in England in 1863. The world accepted those guidelines, and today we have a sport that not too many people in the United States appreciate, despite all those kids playing soccer in every city, town and hamlet around the country.
Nicely directed and well-paced by Tom Hooper, with a colorful screenplay by Peter Morgan ("Frost/Nixon," "The Queen"), the picture focuses on Brian Clough, the controversial and abrasive football coach who was given the chance, after succeeding in a lesser division, to lead the vaunted, top-ranked Leeds United team into athletic battle in the 1970s. Although the film is based on a novel by David Peace, Clough is a real person.
We discover that in spite of his rough, demanding and uncompromising coaching style, Clough believed in the purity of the sport and abhorred the thuglike mentality of many players. Dirty tricks were not part of his arsenal.
The movie crosscuts between Clough's family life, his coaching, his confrontations with team owners and his devotion to true fans. There's great camaraderie with his assistant Peter Taylor and important decisions have to made when big-name football calls their names. Clough has a love-hate relationship with the legendary football coach Don Revie, the man he replaces at Leeds who has nothing but contempt for Clough's style.
The film stars a scintillating Michael Sheen as Clough. If the name doesn't ring a bell, he plays David Frost in "Frost/Nixon" and Prime Minister Tony Blair in "The Queen." Other, more glamorous, quixotic and buffed British actors might get all the attention, but Sheen is the real deal. Colm Meaney and Timothy Spall are equally good as Revie and Taylor, respectively.
Sports movies succeed when they are about the passion of the people involved. "The Damned United" is very passionate and very good, indeed.
What kind of people -- entertaining singers not as talented as their popular brother -- exploit his memory? I'm not going to pass judgment on the remaining members of the Jackson family or their desire to earn a buck, but there's something absolutely creepy about the new documentary "Michael Jackson's This Is It."
The film takes its title from Jackson's own words, spoken when he announced his final series of concerts, to be held in London. Many people in Europe loved Jackson. Many Americans were tired of him, repelled by him, or worried about him. The movie is compiled from 100 hours of rehearsal footage as he prepared for the big show. It's directed by non-filmmaker Kenny Ortega, who seems to think that just because you have Jackson wall-to-wall, you don't need to have a directing style or a point of view.
"This Is It" will certainly be of special interest to Jackson's devoted followers, but it's not all that memorable. It looks quickly put together -- which, of course it was -- and the footage isn't always that clear or sharp or entertaining. There are patches of comments from musicians and fans intercut throughout, but really, who cares what they have to say? Jackson looks thin and at times exhausted. He's a hard worker, but nothing we see tells us anything about him we don't already know. The movie is a cultural artifact, nothing more.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | November 3 2009 |