Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Simon Helberg, Adam Arkin
Larry Gopnik (another inspired character name from the men that brought you Dude Lebowski and Barton Fink) might be the least fortunate man ever to walk God’s earth. He is a quiet professor at an unassuming Midwestern university, and he lives an uneventful and abstinent life with his seemingly happy family. Things begin to unravel after a misunderstanding with a curt and menacing Korean exchange student leads to Larry accidentally accepting a bribe. Shortly after, Larry’s rotund and explosive wife reveals that she is leave him, although she can’t explain why. The quietly spoken Larry is easily muscled out of his own home by her over-bearing and infuriatingly calm new lover; and he is forced to move into a crumbling motel with his parasitic brother.
His children seem completely apathetic to his removal from the family home, and to make matters worse, somebody is sending anonymous letters to the university accusing Larry of moral turpitude. Larry faces all of these catastrophic events with an appalled expression and a stuttering whine. He is a wonderfully pathetic character, and watching him desperately cling on to the fragments of his life is like watching Woody Allen trying to hold on to Annie Hall. He reluctantly agrees to visit a series of Rabbis, all of whom are completely incapable of helping Larry with these bizarre 21st century problems.
After an astounding, critically acclaimed literary adaptation, and a raucous screwball comedy, the Coen brother’s have returned to a more familiar location (middle America) and a more personal protagonist (a brow-beaten middle-aged man with terrible luck). But this is by no means a regression on their part; it is simply a more personal and easy-going film than their previous few outings. The Coens have a knack for creating faultlessly manicured structures; even in a film as seemingly lackadaisical and character driven as this, there is still a series of set-ups and pay-offs that harks back the Lebowksi years. Their sense of timing, and their self-deprecating humour, also comes to the fore in this film.
Michael Stuhlbarg is superb as Larry. While the Coen brothers can always be relied upon to create great characters and stories, it is still down to the individual actor to deliver these slightly manic and confused creations into the real world; and Stuhlbarg is faultless in this regard. Larry is just as rounded a character as Jerome Lundegaard Jeffrey Lebowski; he is a simple man, and a serious one, who can’t laugh at himself or view his life from a different perspective. He is trapped in his tiny world, where everything has been decimated, and even when he is forced out of his home, he only manages to go down the road to a local motel. He is bumbling fool, and he speaks to the bumbling fool in all of us.
Larry Gopnik (another inspired character name from the men that brought you Dude Lebowski and Barton Fink) might be the least fortunate man ever to walk God’s earth. He is a quiet professor at an unassuming Midwestern university, and he lives an uneventful and abstinent life with his seemingly happy family. Things begin to unravel after a misunderstanding with a curt and menacing Korean exchange student leads to Larry accidentally accepting a bribe. Shortly after, Larry’s rotund and explosive wife reveals that she is leave him, although she can’t explain why. The quietly spoken Larry is easily muscled out of his own home by her over-bearing and infuriatingly calm new lover; and he is forced to move into a crumbling motel with his parasitic brother.
His children seem completely apathetic to his removal from the family home, and to make matters worse, somebody is sending anonymous letters to the university accusing Larry of moral turpitude. Larry faces all of these catastrophic events with an appalled expression and a stuttering whine. He is a wonderfully pathetic character, and watching him desperately cling on to the fragments of his life is like watching Woody Allen trying to hold on to Annie Hall. He reluctantly agrees to visit a series of Rabbis, all of whom are completely incapable of helping Larry with these bizarre 21st century problems.
After an astounding, critically acclaimed literary adaptation, and a raucous screwball comedy, the Coen brother’s have returned to a more familiar location (middle America) and a more personal protagonist (a brow-beaten middle-aged man with terrible luck). But this is by no means a regression on their part; it is simply a more personal and easy-going film than their previous few outings. The Coens have a knack for creating faultlessly manicured structures; even in a film as seemingly lackadaisical and character driven as this, there is still a series of set-ups and pay-offs that harks back the Lebowksi years. Their sense of timing, and their self-deprecating humour, also comes to the fore in this film.
Michael Stuhlbarg is superb as Larry. While the Coen brothers can always be relied upon to create great characters and stories, it is still down to the individual actor to deliver these slightly manic and confused creations into the real world; and Stuhlbarg is faultless in this regard. Larry is just as rounded a character as Jerome Lundegaard Jeffrey Lebowski; he is a simple man, and a serious one, who can’t laugh at himself or view his life from a different perspective. He is trapped in his tiny world, where everything has been decimated, and even when he is forced out of his home, he only manages to go down the road to a local motel. He is bumbling fool, and he speaks to the bumbling fool in all of us.
Posts
No comments :
Post a Comment