A Serious Man
Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Sure to befuddle casual Coen Brothers fans even as it delights the faithful, A Serious Man is a wicked turn into existential absurdity after the straight screwball antics of Burn After Reading.
Set in a 1967 of banal bungalows and sublimated desires, it’s suburban Midwestern hell as viewed through the travails of physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), whose life is vexed by an estranged spouse, snotty kids and a conniving student.
Resolutely paced, impeccably staged and lensed, it’s comedy for people who can laugh at poetic car wrecks, obtuse rabbis, mysterious dental messages and an endlessly drained cyst.
Such people would be Coen fans. But even they might pain their puzzlers over the mystical and violent prologue, set in olden days and introduced with a proverb about accepting fate, which has nothing to do with Gopnik’s bummer Summer of Love. Or does it? One thing is entirely clear.
A Serious Man is primo Coens, but it’s also something of a private club. If you don’t already get these guys, the doors of enlightenment aren’t going to suddenly swing open for you now. It may not add up, but it’s a living.
Extras include three featurettes: Becoming Serious. Creating 1967 and Hebrew and Yiddish for Goys.
