They also had the two best trailers of that year:
[Trailer voice:] in a world where most movie trailers look and sound the same, these two stand out as unique. Each trailer establishes its film's story and tone without giving too much away. Both are immensely watchable -- I could watch the A Single Man trailer over and over, or play it on a loop in the background at a fancy cocktail party, if I ever decided to throw one. And both utilize music that is actually in the film, which is kind of a rarity.
A Single Man's trailer may have the edge because it so embodies A Single Man and how beautiful it is to look at. If there's such a thing as stylized subtlety, it's exhibited here. However, while the format of the trailer seems unexpected when compared to American movie trailers on the whole (an absence of dialogue is usually an indication that you're being advertised a foreign-language film), when looking at the movie it's selling, it's totally obvious: it's a trailer for a movie directed by a fashion designer. Of course it is.
It should be noted that there's also a "de-gayed" version of the Single theatrical trailer that cuts out some man-on-man long looks as well as the kiss between George (Colin Firth) and Jim (Matthew Goode). It's still a fine trailer, but it just doesn't represent the movie as well as the above version does.
The trailer for A Serious Man perhaps makes the movie look ever so slightly funnier than it is but otherwise captures the spirit brilliantly. The trailer is fun and stressful -- like most Coen brothers movies are. I ended up being less surprised by the movie than I would typically like to be, though, because the trailer had prepared me so well for the film -- I came out of the theater just as depressed/exhilarated as I I expected to be*. The Single trailer, while still wholly representative of its film, left me more surprises than Serious did (for instance, I knew from the trailer that Colin Firth was handsome, but I was surprised in the movie to find he also had a great body).
Despite the surface similarities between the two movies -- they are both about bespectacled college professors in 1960s America, both of whom have become recently and woefully single -- the trailers are completely different. And the movies are completely different.
So let's review.
This trailer is a rollicking good time that thumps in my soul. The movie looks like exactly the kind of sad fun we've come to expect from Joel and Ethan Coen. And there's a rabbi!
A Serious Man movie: ★★★★½ (Four-and-a-half LaStars out of five)
This bleak look at one man's life crumbling before his eyes is utterly satisfying. There's a kind of lovable contemptibility to most of the characters that will make you laugh quietly to yourself (and not out loud). And there's a couple of rabbis!
Oh my God, it's so beautiful I can't look away, but it hurts to look at it. This movie's going to be so beautiful. Oh my God, oh my God.
A Single Man movie: ★★★★½ (Four-and-a-half LaStars out of five)
It really is as beautiful as the trailer would have you believe. It's a heartbreaking story, beautifully and sometimes swishily told, that manages to be almost uplifting.** I watched it, and then I cried for 10 minutes (and loved it).
As truly excellent as these movies are, they couldn't quite compete with their own trailers, two of my favorite movie trailers of all time.
*I had the opposite problem with another Coen brothers film, Burn After Reading. BAR's trailer did not prepare me for how upset I would be by (John Malkovich in) the movie.
**Having caught an NPR story on the movie in which they played an audio clip of the scene where Colin Firth finds out from a disembodied (and uncredited) Jon Hamm that his lover of 16 years has just died in a car accident, I was expecting a super-depress-fest. I was so thrilled to find the movie was so (relatively) hopeful and inspirational, you'd have thought I'd just seen Dolphin Tale.
