The brothers Cohen is a bit of an anomaly in cinema. First of all, director "couples" are not that common, and certainly not for as long as these guys have been going. Secondly their particular style feels neither american or european. It is quite unique.
They use a good deal of metaphorical tricks and to some extend caricature the person gallery so you do not necessarily understand them straight up but need to see them as pointers to a certain personality rather than individuals. I find this to clearly being the case here at least.
This one is a good representation of how a typical Cohen movie unfolds. Stylistically they seem to be in complete control and they are able to get the best out of mostly any actor they work with. But they also have a ever present emotional distance to the viewer as everything seems to be covered by a veil of uncertainty. This is my personally critical aspect of their work. It is at times tough to figure out what the story really is about, as everything has this "cartoonish" form. I like a challenge for sure, but it can be a bit too much of a good thing.
This is sort of a late sixties version of "falling down". But first off, in a prologue sequence, which I still struggle to fit into the plot, shows a european jewish couple some 200 years ago ending up killing a rabbi, which the man thought was a real person while the wife kills him with an ice pick assuming he is a ghost of some kind. The rabbi stumbles out in the snow bleeding from the wound.
A jewish family man, played by Michael Stuhlberg, starts out at the doctor´s, getting an xray. From here on everything he touches seems to turn to shit. Except for a divorce hanging over his head it is not exactly life threatening situations he is in, at first at least, but just the sheer amount of minor things that constantly goes wrong or puts him in dilemmas where he is sitting on a balance of either or.
This is specifically thematized by reference to Schrödinger´s cat thought experiment, which he himself do not understand despite "proving" it mathematically. The thought experiment goes something like "If you expose a cat in a box to radiation and it has a 50/50 chance of dying, will it be dead, alive or something in between at that exact moment when it goes from alive to dead". Further more this opens up a classical quantum physics problem of being able to be two places at the same time or being things at the same place.
This is a very intricate theme to actually visualize, but what they do is letting someone, the nuclear family father´s life, which is probably not well lived, decompose so that he either have to be living two different lives at the same time or live one life in two different places. I will let you judge whether ort not my analysis is correct, but it seems he gets these problems because he just follows the culture and obeys, which is insufficient for taking control of your life when that exact thing starts to crumble.
I think it is centrally a critique of just following the flow and let other people who at the core don´t care for you, have control over your life. The film was created during the blast of the housing bubble ten years ago and probably spurred some uneasyness around what exactly those in power are doing to the economy, spending taxpayer dollars to "save it". it is out of control of the average man, but those who claim to help you, use you for their own ends.
I had a clear sense while watching it, that their could potentially be lots of hints and metaphors hidden in situations and events, but I am not sure what they may be. But at least in the end, when a tornado arrives and the american flag seems dangerously close to be ripped off the flagpole, it seems to me that there is a deeper meaning to it all than the obvious plot.
I probably need to watch this again to get the full meaning of it and maybe I will get the final a-ha experience. Until then I will settle this as a recommended watch. The Cohen brothers have a unique style and some of the scenes are hilarious and fun. Check out his nightmares at one point. If you are a Cohen fan already I would say it is a must watch, if not I think you could live without it.
7/10
