Playlist: A Serious Man

Watching this I thought it played as a less flamboyant, more grounded American Beauty. Does that make it better or worse? What do I look like, an Internet movie blogger? What it did mean, of course, is that one cleaned up in far more Oscar pools. I'm not sure A Serious Man would have even been nominated if there were only the 5 traditional Best Film slots this past year and that would have been a shame.

Look no further than the films's respective leads for a microcosmic contrast in tone. In Sam Mendes's 1999 Beauty, Kevin Spacey manically elevates his middle-aged suburban breakdown to an almost heroic stature. It's the idealized carpe diem of the universally repressed. By contrast, the Coen Brothers give Michael Stuhlbarg even more burdens to bear--health, wife, kids, neighbors, job, relatives, legal, and even meteorological. And he takes it. And keeps going back for more. Like most of us probably would. Like most of us have. It's sad and it's believable, or rather, because it's believable.

Don't worry about not recognizing Stuhlbarg's name. He's a theater veteran who will hopefully get more film roles from this. But the Coens always cast well.

Quickly: it was funny seeing terrific character actor Adam Arkin in a light, comical role after growing to loathe him during his recent run as a white supremacist on FX's Sons of Anarchy, which if you haven't seen, you should before Season 3 this fall.