The brothers’ art took a quantum leap with “No Country,’’ in which they brilliantly mimicked another man’s nihilism, that of author Cormac McCarthy. With this film they bring it all back home. “A Serious Man’’ is, above all, a memory play, and the closest we may ever get to a personal memo from the Coens. They grew up in the Minneapolis suburbs and have acknowledged that Larry is in character and spirit close to their father, which of course makes 13-year-old Danny Gopnik their own stand-in.
A Serious Man
Something about Larry: In the painfully funny ‘Serious Man,’ the Coens throw the book at a suburban dad
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In many ways, the Coens are still Dannys, still maladjusted ranch-house brats laughing at the normals and showing up to the bar mitzvah stoned. Yet they’re old enough to see the cataclysm coming and old enough to understand it will spare no one. The final moments of “A Serious Man’’ are pitiless and breathtaking, and they offer no comfort at all. In a culture addicted to giving us the good news, such profound comic bleakness feels cleansing and true. Today the Coens become a man.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movienation.
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