A Serious Man English Movie
Rated: R
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:Oct 2, 2009 Limited
Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed, Richard Kind, Aaron Wolf, Sari Wagner, Jessica McManus
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenwriter: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Producer: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Composer: Carter Burwell
Studio: Focus Features
Reviews
The Coen Brothers (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN) get back to their Minnesota roots with this film that blithely walks the line between comedy and drama. Set in 1967, A SERIOUS MAN centers on Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a university professor whose life is falling apart around him.
The story of an ordinary man's search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances, Sy Ableman, who seems to her a more substantial person than the feckless Larry. Larry's unemployable brother Arthur is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah is filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job. While his wife and Sy Ableman blithely make new domestic arrangements, and his brother becomes more and more of a burden, an anonymous hostile letter-writer is trying to sabotage Larry's chances for tenure at the university. Also, a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation. Plus, the beautiful woman next door torments him by sunbathing nude. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. Can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person - a mensch - a serious man?
Can the Coen Brothers ever do wrong? Okay, they can, but this really isn't one of those times. A Serious Man is a seriously great film, with some brilliantly dark humor and a simple story that turns out to mean quite a bit by the end. It's probably the most Jewish comedy you'll see all year, about a Jewish family in a small Jewish town. The performances are all great and everything about it is pretty much spot on, but at this point I don't think anyone expects any less from the Coens. And in terms of their comedy, I laughed more during this than I did during Burn After Reading, and I even really enjoyed that film (at Toronto last year).
A Serious Man actually has a surprisingly different story than you might be expecting, especially if you've seen the trailer. Everything starts to spin out of control in the life of Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a mathematics professor and father of a Jewish family, when his wife decides to leave him for another man, his crazy brother (Richard Kind) won't move out of the house, and he starts to run out of money. Three of the local Rabbis he visits for advice don't really tell him anything of value and he's just about to lose it when his pot-smoking son finally has his Bar Mitzvah. It's simple, but well-written, as usual from the Coens.
It's not that I wasn't expecting to laugh in a dark comedy from the Big Lebowski masterminds, I just didn't think I would be able to get into a Jewish comedy as much as I would a spy thriller like Burn After Reading. However, as I already mentioned, I found myself laughing out loud more in this than in Burn After Reading. The comedy is dry, often times quite dark, and sometimes even unintentional, but it was perfectly conceived. There's a great message in it that admittedly took me a while to gully figure out, but the film kept Peter from SlashFilm and I talking long afterward, which is a sign of great success, or at least spectacular filmmaking.
In short, I really enjoyed this film a lot, which wasn't too big of a surprise for me. In the first few minutes I was already thinking to myself, "God damn, the Coens are brilliant." They continue to create one great film after another and A Serious Man is just the latest fantastic feature from these two Minnesotan filmmakers.
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