Precious is a new-style weepie but one that is much more bracing than depressing
Precious
Theatre
Ian McKellen is captivating throughout. He delights in the play’s gallows humour, yet is also maudlin and poignant
Waiting for Godot
Theatre
Slight quibbles notwithstanding, this will set the West End’s stock riding high
Enron
Utterly, utterly brilliant. You really are in for a treat
Though 'Trilogy' has won rave reviews, I personally found myself exasperated after about an hour
We went on a quiet sunday evening and the food was excellent, but the experience let down by the service and ambiance
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen.
Cast: Richard Kind, Sari Lennick, Fred Melamed, Aaron Wolf, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jessica McManus
Description: Jewish university lecturer Larry Gopnik is knocked for six when wife Judith announces she wants a divorce so she can marry a mutual friend. Adding to poor Larry's woes, an Asian student seems to think he can bride his way to a passing grade. Unable to make contact with the chief rabbi, Larry tries to sort out the myriad problems himself but every good deed leads to more misery.
Country: US. 2009. 105mins
Midlife angst: Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg)
The serious man in question in Joel and Ethan Coen’s bitterly resentful comedy is Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Jewish physics professor at a Midwestern university in the Sixties for whom life becomes intolerable.
He never questions his Jewish faith and continually searches for some kind of clarity in life. But the more he searches, the more puzzling it becomes.
The three rabbis he consults are worse than useless and it seems almost impossible to “receive with simplicity everything which happens to you”.
He is informed by his wife (Sari Lennick) that she is leaving him for a pompous friend (Fred Melamed), though he is relieved to note there has not yet been any “whoopsie-doopsie”.
Meanwhile, his unemployable brother (Richard Kind) is in trouble with the police for gambling, his bar mitzvah-age son (Aaron Wolff) has problems at school and his sulky daughter (Jessica McManus) is filching money from his wallet to procure a nose job.
That isn’t all. At work, he has to deal with an Asian student trying to bribe him for a passing grade, and the boy’s father suing him for defamation if he doesn’t take the bribe and keep quiet.
There is also the little matter of an anonymous letter writer sabotaging his prospects of tenure.
Alan Mandell, Simon Helberg and George Wyner are marvellous as the trio of useless rabbis — as is Alan Arkin as Gopnik’s divorce lawyer, who sends him a large bill for doing nothing.
It is a very funny process, the directorial touches supplemented by acting that mixes parody with realism. (If anybody but Jewish directors made the film, they would be accused of anti-semitism.)
The whole fiasco is set within the kind of society the Coens themselves negotiated when young. At times you wonder how they managed to remain even vaguely sane.
But it isn’t just a comedy — the serious edge of human enquiry is there too. How on earth do we negotiate a path through life’s pitfalls and absurdities?
There’s no real answer given, but then the Coen brothers have never been known as philosophers. They are, however, pretty smart film-makers.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
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