Film Review: A Serious Man
The Coen brothers never like to make life easy for their protagonists, and with their latest leading man, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), absolutely no exceptions have been made. Set in 1967 Midwest America, the film follows Larry, a physics professor with an increasingly complicated home and working life. Troubled by the lack of cause for his predicament(s), Larry, a self-confessed serious man, turns to a succession of 
Rabbis to try and understand why he is being tested.
The film begins with an extended Yiddish fable conceived by the Coens. This sets the tone for A Serious Man which seems to be a meditation on being Jewish. Larry’s life begins to fall off kilter when his wife, Judith (Sari Lennick) surprises him with the revelation that she has found a new man, the velvety voiced Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed). This doesn’t seem to faze his teenage children, Danny (Aaron Wolff) who just wants good TV reception and to pay back his pot dealer, and Sarah (Jessica McManus) who is washing her hair for most of the film. Added to Larry’s problems are his socially inept brother Arthur (Richard Kind), his redneck neighbour who is slowly redrawing their houses’ boundary line and a foreign student who is trying to force Larry into changing his failing grade.
This funny and often bemusing black comedy is the Coen brothers’ most personal film, set in a Minnesotan Jewish community, not unlike the one they grew up in. The Coen brothers have created Larry from 
recollections of their academic parents’ friends and colleagues. In recreating the 60s of their childhood, the Coens’ art department had access to photos from the archives of the Jewish Cultural Foundation of the Upper Midwest; this has given the film a very particular look with great attention given to clothes and hairstyles as well as landscape.
More niche than their recent films, A Serious Man is not going to be easy viewing for the uninitiated. There are no free passes in a Coen brothers’ film. Taking inspiration from the Book of Job, Larry embodies the eternal question of why the good suffer. ‘Why me’ rings throughout the film with all the characters seemingly asking this at different times. This film is the ultimate story with no answers. A comedy with sombre undertones, coupled with superb performances especially from Stuhlbarg and Wolff, A Serious Man is both amusing and perplexing viewing.
A Serious Man is released national in Australia on 19th November
Directors: Joel & Ethan Coen
Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, David Kang
