Reviews
"Filmed in the flat, half-toned hues that dominated
the time period, with unadorned staging, 'A Serious Man' finds
its propulsion in longtime Coen composer Carter Burwell's delicately
layered score, which infuses the enterprise with the taut somberness
of a thriller." - Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, October 9, 2009.
"The philosophical conundrums in 'A Serious
Man' can be posed only in jest — or, at least, in the cultural
tradition of Ashkenazic Judaism that stretches from the shtetls
of Poland to the comedy clubs of the Catskills, that is how they
tend to be posed. But a deep anxiety lurks beneath the jokes, and
though 'A Serious Man' is written and structured like a farce,
it is shot (by Roger Deakins), scored (by Carter Burwell) and edited
(by the Coens’ pseudonymous golem Roderick Jaynes) like a horror
movie." - A. O. Scott, New York Times, October 2, 2009.
"The always surprising Coen brothers have finally
made a very serious movie with 'A Serious Man.' It's about God,
man's place in the world and the meaning of life, so naturally
it's one of their funnier movies. And because the year in question
is 1967, the oracle of human wisdom and experience can be found
in the lyrics of the immortal rock band Jefferson Airplane." -
Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter, September 11, 2009.
"The story takes unexpected twists and is exquisitely mounted, with an evocative score by longtime Coen collaborator Carter Burwell." - Claudia Puig, USA Today, October 2, 2009.
"Is it a serious disquisition on Judaism? Well,
'serious' is
a tricky word. Is it a seriously canny remembrance of what it was
like to grow up in a largely Jewish suburb, surrounded by uncomprehending
gentiles (or hostile ones, in the case of Larry's neighbor, the
one who shoots Jews in cold blood in Larry's dreams)? Yes, it is.
Working with their usual ace cinematographer, Roger Deakins, and
their usual ace composer, Carter Burwell, the Coens remember these
newly planted suburban streets, which we see at one point from
the point of view of Larry, fixing the TV aerial, as a boundless
source of anxiety." - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune, October
9, 2009.
"The magnificent, haunting score by Coen regular
Carter Burwell sets a foreboding tone which hovers like a stormy
cloud over the whole movie. It’s more than just a comedy, and the
added dramatic dimension enhances the overall experience... 'A
Serious Man' belongs in its own genre category – a uniquely Jewish
film noir." - Abe Fried-Tanzer, Heeb Magazine, October 3, 2009.
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Carter's Notes
The milieu of this film is a Jewish community in
the Midwestern United States in the 1960s. Every attempt to incorporate
these elements (Judaism, the Midwest, the 60s) into the score was unsuccessful. I ended up using
a polyrhythmic harp phrase repeating endlessly against various
harmonic variations, but could only throw up my hands when I played it for Joel and Ethan - I liked it but I couldn't say why.
Something about the relentlessness of this
theme seemed right for the helplessness of Larry Gopnik against
the unwinding of his life. And when music pointedly ignores the
apparent proceedings of a film it implies that there's something
else going on. Something that may be more important than what you
see.
The first piece of music written for the film was
actually the piece that bridges the the black space between the
opening story of the Dybuk and the 1960s Hebrew school of Gopnik's
son. The Coens needed some music against which to edit this transition,
which begins in the Old World of the shtetl and travels through
an undefined darkness to end in a boy's ear canal, into which is
placed a portable radio earpiece playing Jefferson Airplane's
"Somebody to Love."
In this space I placed wind, cowbells, drums, and
then electric guitar and bass. When recording this piece, we used
the same models of bass and guitar that the Airplace had used.
Still, to be honest, it was difficult to reduce our overall sound
quality to that of the original recording. We did our best.
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