Back in the old days the Coen brothers would sadistically fiddle with their flawed characters…hapless or misguided fellows who struggle against a world that is often indifferent or actively hostile to their aspirations and plans. But the Coens didn’t just make things tough for these characters — they would stick little needles into them.
In a certain light A Serious Man is almost a kind of companion piece to Todd Browning‘s Freaks, except that Browning’s film is compassionate and caring while A Serious Man is anything but.
You know what A Serious Man is deep down? In a philosophical nutshell, I mean? That old joke about two anthropologists captured by cannibals in New Guinea. Chief to anthropologist #1: “You have two choices — death or kiki.” Anthropologist #1 chooses kiki and is promptly beaten, stabbed, tortured, whipped, flayed and finally thrown off a cliff and eaten by crocodiles. The chief offers Anthropologist #2 the same choice, and the guy replies, “Good God…well, I’m not a brave man so I’ll choose death.” And the chief goes, “Very well, death…but first, kiki!”
fferent or actively hostile to their aspirations and plans.