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MovieMail's Review
Milo Wakelin finds razor sharp comic timing in this black comedy from the Coen Brothers, set among the well-tended lawns of 1960s middle-class Jewish suburbia.
Another cerebral shaggy dog story from Joel and Ethan Coen, A Serious Man may be set amidst the well-tended lawns of late 1960s middle-class Jewish suburbia, but the dilemmas of this Oscar-nominated black comedy stretch back to the Book of Job.
Larry Gopknik, a college physics professor, is a righteous man, but, like Job, this doesn’t help him in the slightest. His wife Judith is having an affair with his good friend Sy Ableman, his son has been buying pot from the school bully, his daughter is stealing money for a nose-job, and his out-of-work brother Arthur has been sleeping on the couch for months.
When one of Gopknik’s students slips him money to raise his grade, the boy’s father accuses him alternatively of defamation, and then, when he finally acquiesces, of accepting the bribe. ‘Either he left the money or he didn’t!’ Gopknik protests. ‘Please. Accept the mystery,’ the father responds. It’s advice that is echoed by the series of rabbis the increasingly desperate Gopknik turns to for help.
Fans of the Coen brothers may know exactly how Gopknik feels; their best films have always intrigued and provoked with narrative dead-ends, non sequiturs, open endings and blatant misdirection (including the fantastic Fargo, which opened with the barefaced lie, ‘This is a true story.’)
The Coens open their story with a darkly hilarious prologue in a turn-of-the-century shtetl, before moving on to a meticulous, semi-autobiographical recreation of late 1960s Minnesotan suburbia. Newcomer Michael Stuhlbarg is fantastic as the mildmannered everyman, Sara Lennick is formidable as his wife, and Fred Melamed steals every scene as Gopknik’s impossibly compassionate cuckolder. The comic timing, as ever with the Coens, is razor sharp.
Already nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay in the 2010 Oscars, A Serious Man takes the uncertainties and iniquities of life as its central theme, and rather than curse the Coen brothers, the audience – like Job – will be rewarded for their faith.
Black comedy from the Coen brothers, set in the American mid-west in 1967, that is bleak and hilarious by turns. Michael Stuhlbarg stars as Larry Gopnik, a physics professor whose settled and secure life begins to spiral after his wife Judith reveals she is leaving him for his arrogant associate Sy Ableman. Larry struggles to cope with the failure of his marriage and the unlikelihood of his unemployed brother Arthur getting a job and moving out of his house. At the same time, his son Danny is in trouble at school while his daughter Sarah is stealing money from his wallet. As Judith and Sy begin to set up home together, poor Larry begins to receive anonymous letters from someone looking to ruin his chances of tenure at the university, while a failing student is trying to both bribe Larry and sue him for slander. In need of help, Larry seeks out the advice of three rabbis...
