A Serious Man (2009)

Released November 19, 2009

The Coen Brothers' most recent opus is decidedly odd. It opens with a non-letterboxed prologue reciting a myth from Jewish folklore about a rabbi who may, or may not, be a malicious spirit - a "dybbuk". Shifting to late 1960s Minnesota suburbia, we find Physics teacher Larry Gopnik lecturing a class about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and whether Schrodinger's cat is, or is not, dead. As an audience member watching A Serious Man, you may well ask yourself whether you are meant to laugh, or whether you are meant to cry. Perhaps it is both simultaneously.

Relative unknown Michael Stuhlbarg, in a perfectly pitched performance, plays Larry, the most ineffectual protagonist in recent memory. When he discovers his wife is sleeping with another man, instead of confronting her or taking matters into his own hands, he merely shrugs in perplexed wonder. God's plan, if there is one, seems to involve Larry subsequently sleeping at the local motel, the "Jolly Roger", and accepting awkward embraces from his conceited competition, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed).

These are not Larry's only problems. A Korean student at the school is attempting to bribe him for better grades, his son is more interested in F-Troop and smoking pot than his studies. and his even more hopeless brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), is sleeping on the couch. The sum of knowledge he is able to extract from visits to three rabbis, in a desperate search for answers, is to "accept the mystery". Helpful, indeed.

Who and what is doing the tormenting, and whether or not anyone has the power to do anything about it, is the focus of the Coen Brothers' enquiry in a film which is as funny as Burn After Reading but bleaker than No Country For Old Men. Drawing upon their own childhood, this awkward and hilarious satire of jewishness, faith, family and life is so grim it may alienate some. By the time the credits roll around you, like Larry, are no closer to finding "Hashem", "God" or "Truth".

Perhaps, the Coen's suggest, we're not meant to.