There’s a line in Down and Out in Paris and London where Orwell describes a friend of his as “the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike him”. I think the Coen brothers would like that a lot. (Incidentally, there’s an interesting debate out there about whether or not Orwell was an anti-Semite. Consensus seems to be heading towards, yes, probably, a bit.)

Not that A Serious Man is atheistic exactly. You get the impression the Coens are saying yes, there is a God—and he hates you. No really. You. Personally. And one day he’s seriously gonna fuck you up. But there’s nothing you can do about it, so quit your whining.

For two people so apparently determined not to answer questions about their work, the Coen’s certainly pose a lot of them. The ambiguity of their films is so striking you have to wonder if the meaning is so big you can’t see it, or if perhaps there’s nothing there at all. No wonder the Coens are regularly accused of nihilism.

Certainly they seem to revel in their brutal universe. They love putting their characters through the cosmic wringer in an orgy of petty misfortunes and malign coincidences. Nothing is getting any better, and nobody’s coming to fix things for you. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a sense of humour about it.

In A Serious Man, as in all their best work, the humour is pitiless, the aesthetic crisp and the dialogue obscures more than it reveals. Serious Man is stark and unforgiving— it’s meant to be: “Our one direction to Roger Deakins was ‘Make it look bleak.’” As usual, Deakins has delivered. The film is strangely drained of colour and vibrancy, everything is ominous, the spaces unfriendly and inhuman. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t extraordinarily beautiful as well. The Coens know that bleak is not the same as dull, any more than scepticism is the same as nihilism.

In Hollywood, as everywhere else in our pathologically positive society, the greatest crime is to deny that there is a purpose to our lives, and specifically to our trouble, pain and misfortune. Anything is endurable as long as it has Meaning. Just watch Oprah. Positive thinking is the only type of thinking, and it’s barely that. No wonder the Coens love of futility is greeted with horror in many corners.

Pomeranz bemoaned the lack of likeable characters in A Serious Man, a common complaint about the film. Since when is likability the sole requirement of a character? That claim also bespeaks such a narrow definition of ‘likeable’. I found Larry, our beleaguered Job, tested beyond his abilities, terribly likable (also kind of attractive…just me? Ok, fair enough).

His honesty, his weakness, his longing for meaning and understanding—if you don’t relate to that what do you relate to? The insipid sentimentality of a talkshow host? I’m sick of being uplifted by the indefatigable strength of the human spirit. I appreciate a film that says it’s not only OK to be miserable, but that it’s probably the only sensible reaction to the relentlessness of the universe. If you’re happy, you’re not paying enough attention.

A Serious Man is also emphatically a Jewish film, and the Jewish tradition of misery is second only to the tradition of humour. A culture where humour and misery go hand in hand is a culture that’s really been around the block. I’ve read reviews which talk about this film as being for Jews rather than just about them. Pish posh. I enjoyed the Spongebob movie without myself being an anthropomorphic sea-sponge, and I’m not the only one:

These comments smack of a strange kind of anti-Semitism to me. If it were a film about black South Africans would anyone say ‘you won’t get it unless you’re a black South African’? I doubt it. Yet somehow a film set in a Jewish community is impenetrable to goys like me? Weird.

This film seems to be saying that there’s no great reason why your life sucks. It just does. There are no rewards for being good. But nor are there punishments for being bad. This is a cheering thought. No really it is. Because most of us are at least a little bad, at least a little of the time. Petty crimes make us human, and there’s a certain communal joy in that. I like to think that if the Coens have a message (and it’s a big if), it’s that trying to do everything right, like poor old Larry, is a waste of time, energy and pointless worrying. So calm down, they seem to be imploring us, have another drink, and bask in the certain knowledge that terrible, terrible things are about to happen to you. Any minute now.

And if that doesn’t cheer you up, there’s always this:

[Zora Sanders is an Arts student at Melbourne University majoring in Cinema and Creative Writing. She was one of the Editors of Farrago in 2009 and has an occasionally updated blog.]