A Serious Film

I love break.  Finally, I can sit and watch film at my leisure.  No plans.  No obligations.  Here I am.  With a recent acquisition of a Netflix account, the first film I chose was A Serious Man.

A Serious Man

The Coen Brothers have been a major influence on me in all aspects of film.  The way they tell a story and depict it visually has an incredibly unique tone to it.  They have in all sense of the theory solidified themselves an auteurs.  Brown-nosing aside, we must actually examine this story of A Serious Man.

I really have to praise the Coens for the work over their career.  If anything, their latest venture simply adds another credit to the books.  Thanks to my class on film aesthetics, the second time through I was able to notice much more than I had originally seen.  Aesthetically, the Coens are handful to analyze.  Their cinematography is so sound and really completes a whole other language of the film itself.  None of this would be possible were it not for the work of Roger Deakins who has worked on every Coen Brothers film since Barton Fink (the only exceptions are Blood Simple, Crimewave, Raising Arizona and Miller’s Crossing and Burn After Reading).  Maybe not as illustrious as I originally touted, but still very impressive and a true style that implicit on every film.

In a recent conversation I had with Billy Malloy, I attributed the Coens to being masters of the “Ne0-Noir”.    Obviously, my term is a continuation of the already well known narrative structure of Film Noir.

We once again have an everyday man, Larry Gopnik, who is thrust into this reality of a very complex situation involving his wife, brother and children.  Everything from the archetypal characters that the Coens have built in their films (the most infamous of them all being The Dude).  Most noticeably in A Serious Man is the use of the canted angles in the scenes during ceremonies in the synagogue.

As usual, you cannot miss a beat.  Concentration is impeccable.  The slight nuances that make up the character development and connection we make to them creates this world that is not only believable but just perfect – in the sense of the film.  Within this mystery that Larry Gopnik and the Coens take us through we become wrapped up in a world that is deteriorating in front of us.  That of Larry himself.  Ever so slightly, Larry’s world is crumbling.  And part of what the Coens do best is relate that role to ourselves.  Although we may not be Larry Gopnik, we see a sliver of him in each of us.  The agony and loss is something we can equate to.  He is A Serious Man.

Whoa…

Ryan Gosling in Half Nelson

I first saw Half Nelson not long after its release to DVD in the summer of 2007.  At the time, I knew very little about a lot of the film.  Habitual and problematic drug use still boggles my mind.  Teaching, I’d like to think I can do it, but Teach For America already said no.  Sorry.  Soundtracks.  I generally enjoy them thoroughly.  In fact, one of the most integral parts to a film because of how much it adds to the emotional connection we have with the characters on screen.  For some reason, upon my initial viewing of the film, this one appeared to have slipped through the cracks.  Either that, or I just did not act on it because the soundtrack is amazing.

For the past three years, the film has been been otherwise left dormant on the back burner along with all the other films that are not in my immediate attention span.  Of course, we would make passing reference to the film as  the bio-pic for my friend Billy Malloy’s brother-in-law Pat Kennelly.  Personally I think that Ryan Gosling did a hell of a job reprising the roll of Pat Kennelly.

Then it happened.  I was minding my business at MUTVlistening to the likes of Broken Social Scene when our ADPR director came in and asked if I had ever seen the film Half Nelson. “Why yes,” I emphatically replied.  As if I were trying to prove myself in the world of indie music and Sundance Film Selections.  To which he seamlessly replied “you know they do like the entire soundtrack for that movie right?”  Shit.  It was then that I realized it had totally slipped by me some three odd years ago when I was just introduced to the likes of  Broken Social Scene .

With this faux-pas behind me, I knew that I was time to re-visit the film.  My repsonse.

Whoa…

It was as if the filmmaker Ryan Fleck intended for the soundtrack to act as the internal dialogue for Ryan Gosling’s character.  Success.  With every deterioration, I found myself falling with Gosling’s character Dan Dunne.  Kudos to Fleck and to Broken Social Scene’s first three albums from which the soundtrack draws its inspiration – You Forgot It In People, Feel Good Lost and Bee Hives.

On a completely unrelated note.  I was on Twitter yesterday and @SaraMeaney of Comet Branding had posted this about writing for the web and other blog tips.  The basic idea, write as if nobody is reading your stuff.  After looking at the list, I could just as easily identify with the average online content reader.

I put myself in your shoes.  Maybe the average daily readers of my blog would extend beyond the teens – these numbers have the profound ability to make you really self-conscious about your writing –  if I followed these basic 10 steps.

Once again, Billy Malloy enters my blogosphere.  In a passing conversation about our friend’s blog, he made some comment about reading and keeping up with mine.  (Thanks for reading Bill).  “Pretentious language.”  Probably a fair assessment.  I apologize for that.  I will try to make blog more interesting fun for all.  Please.  Join me in quests internets to make readers grow big and fat and happy.

Enjoy.

And seriously, thanks for reading.