A Serious Man Reviews

One of the best Coen's movies. As usual, they joke about everything, they are serious about everything. They let suspence grow bigger and bigger... and then? It seems they're right there, in front of you, answering "what did you expect from us?" A silent strong powerful sarcasm as in Raising Arizona. All the actors at their best. Simon Helberg cameo (Howard Wolowitz in TBBT).

Multiplexes tend to get swamped with overly conventional movies almost all the time. Finding something edgy, different and intelligent in cinema isn't an easy task. Then again, recently I've started to feel like it's better that way. It makes the experience of encountering a gem like A SERIOUS MAN that much more delightful. However, it's not like this film's delicious unconventionality is a completely random surprise: it was directed by the master duo of brothers Ethan and Joel Coen. A SERIOUS MAN is an incredibly profound and observant motion picture, and at the same time, it has a dark humor that is nothing short of constantly uproarious. If some people thought that NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN was weird and had an unorthodox ending that turned them off, their best bet is to stay away from A SERIOUS MAN. In fact, it's very likely that this time the Coens won't enjoy the Oscar glory that they did with NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, given the fact that A SERIOUS MAN is even more "inaccessible" to mainstream moviegoers. But that doesn't mean I can't relish the sheer brilliance of their latest cinematic offering, and if it were up to me, several Oscar nominations would go its way.

Larry (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a college physics professor who seems like a nice enough guy who enjoys his work and cares about his family. Suddenly, though, he starts having unnaturally bad luck. One of his students got an F on his midterm and leaves an envelope with money on Larry's desk. The money is meant as a bribe to get Larry to give him a passing grade. The scene in which the student speaks to Larry about the envelope is perfectly staged and hilarious ("hush hush exam"), and things get even better (and funnier) when the student's father goes to visit Larry at his own house (I nearly fell of my chair after "accept mystery"). But that's not even the worst of it. Larry's wife Judith (Sari Lennick) nonchalantly tells him that she wants a divorce, and as it turns out, she wants to leave Larry so that she can marry one of Larry's friends, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). The situation becomes even more hysterically pathetic when Sy speaks to Larry in a consoling way, as if he were a friend who is there for him in this tragic situation, rather than the weasel who's stolen his wife. To make matters even more dire for Larry, he discovers that someone is sending letters to the university telling the administration that Larry's a terrible person who should not be able to get tenure.

A similar stroke of bad luck afflicts Larry's son, Danny (Aaron Wolff). Danny smokes pot, which he obtains from this big kid at school, Fagle (John Kaminski). One day, Danny has the money ready to pay Fagle, and he puts the money in his radio, but the radio gets confiscated in a classroom. Therefore, he no longer has the money to pay Fagle, and the worst part is that, every day when Danny is coming home from school, Fagle chases after him, so Danny has to run quickly to his house. In addition, Danny's got the pressure of having to prepare for his bar mitzvah, which is coming up in a few weeks. One of the biggest sources of hilarity to be found in the film comes from Danny's pot-smoking buddy (Benjy Portnoe) whose repetition of the word "fucker" and its variations is a total hoot, and the scene on the bus in which the phrase "way up his asshole" is reiterated deserves to be seen more than once for repeat laughs.

What the Coen brothers give us here is a brilliant interpretation of The Book of Job. We get to witness what two characters who appear to be pretty harmless people do facing extremely stressful situations in which so many things are out of their control. There's a constant feeling that Larry doesn't deserve all the things that are happening to him, yet guilty as one may feel about it, it's impossible not to laugh constantly, because the Coens have infused their script with brilliant dark comedy, and often with hilarious plays on words (note what they do with the sentence "Mere surmise, sir," and the perfect timing of the confusion that ensues). Those of us who are hardcore fans of their work will recognize small details such as the mention of a law firm named Tuchman Marsh, which is the same law firm that was the subject a very funny exchange of dialogue in last year's wonderful BURN AFTER READING.

Is there a point to all of it? Of course there is. Some won't get it, some won't care, and some will both understand and love it. Those who thought that the magnificent and perfect ending of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN was weird and disconcerting will be even more perplexed by how this film ends. *SPOILER WARNING* Larry and Danny each take what you'd call an evil or immoral path, and as soon as they do, a clearly random event that seems to put each of their lives in danger is ABOUT to take place... and then... end credits. *END SPOILERS* It's the sort of "frustrating" ending that pisses audience members off... but as Sy Ableman would say, it makes eminent sense! The Coens aren't going to make it that easy for us and give us a straight answer. Do Larry and Danny deserve to suffer a tragic fate because of the decisions they make at the end? Are their wayward actions more easily justifiable because of the bad luck they had been experiencing? There's a scene earlier in the movie that perfectly exemplifies this approach of presenting a parable of sorts without giving a straight answer: Larry goes to a rabbi for help with his troubles, and the rabbi tells him a very interesting story about a discovery made by a dentist (and I won't say anything about the story here, because it's a sequence that truly deserves to be seen unpoiled), but the rabbi stops narrating right when he seems to be about to give Larry the resolution, and when an impatient Larry asks for it, the rabbi asks: "Is it relevant?" It's a very good question to ask yourself when pondering the denouement of A SERIOUS MAN. Is it really that important to get the answer? Usually, I feel that movies are about the journey, and not so much about where they lead, unless the ending totally sticks out as being a bad one. And it's a lot more fun to have your own interpretation of what happened afterwards, rather than being told by the film.

The performances in A SERIOUS MAN are terrific. The Coens don't have their cast go quite as over-the-top as they did in BURN AFTER READING, but there's a hint of over-the-top, which is perfectly appropriate in this case. What astounds me is how well the entire cast, even the most seemingly unimportant supporting players, fare at balancing that hint of over-the-top with effective emotional performances and with humorous line deliveries. However, there are two people in particular who need to be mentioned for their bravura work. The first one is Michael Stuhlbarg. I would cheer in delight if his name is called on Oscar morning in the Best Actor category. His status as relatively unknown and the fact that this film won't appeal to everyone makes it unlikely, but I'd love to see it happen. Stuhlbarg conveys happiness, frustration, desperation, confusion at all the right times, and never misses a beat. Larry may be one of the toughest performances that any actor has had to deal with this year, and Stuhlbarg is perfect. The other person who has to be mentioned (and who is even less likely to be recognized by the Academy) is Aaron Wolff. This is an incredible performance, especially for a child actor. There's not a moment in which Danny's reactions are anything short of thoroughly authentic and even his voice inflections at particular points in the film are spot-on. His performance while he's high on pot during a religious service is astounding: one doesn't know whether to laugh or cringe at the situation, but it doesn't make his work any less excellent. These are two of the year's best performances.

In making what many have called their "most personal" film to date, the Coens have given us a film with a few elements, events and words that may be more easily understood by the Jewish community than by us gentiles. However, it doesn't go quite as far as making it inaccessible to those of us who know nothing of Judaism. To be honest, as I already mentioned, the movie is already inaccessible (because of its subject matter and unorthodox sense of humor) to the mainstream audience that prefers toilet humor and romcom cliches, but those who want something that's both delightful and thought-provoking will love A SERIOUS MAN (even if the script contains a bunch of Hebrew words that they don't understand). This film may not reach the level of perfection accomplished by NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, let alone the masterpiece status of FARGO (which is still the Coens' best film), but it's yet further evidence of their amazing craft as both directors and screenwriters.

I had very high expectations for the next Coen Brothers film after their great success with No Country For Old Men and then another great follow-up Burn After Reading but when I watched A Serious Man, I found it to be one of the most disappointing films that I have watched in a while. To be honest, I don't fully know how to explain what my overall thoughts were of the film but the best thing I can say is that the plot became a confusing and chaotic mess and didn't really make any sense as the story carried on and because of this, the plot went flat and when it suddenly ended, I was like "Right… what the f***?" To be honest, I think the only thing that was good in this film was the script from the Coen's and the great performance from Michael Stuhlbarg.


A Serious Man is set in 1967 and tells the story of a Jewish college physics professor called Larry Gopnik (Stuhlbarg) who lives with his family in suburbs of Minneapolis, Minesota. His life is a nightmare during the film as his son Danny secretly smokes marijuana, his daughter Sarah is stealing money from him to get a nose job, his brother Arthur (Kind) has been staying on their couch for months and his wife wants a divorce and a gett so she can be with family friend and widower Sy Ableman. Michael Stuhlbarg's performance as Larry Gopnik was really good! When hard events occur in Larry's life, there are some moments where people would laugh but the film would darkly show its comedy in this sense but I thought there was nothing funny about it but at the same time, I thought there was nothing emotional about it either. I mean, I did like the character to start off with but unfortunately the film was too flat for me to like the character even more as it went on. Richard Kind's performance as Arthur Gopnik was even better than Michael Stuhlbarg's was. Kind was barely in any scenes at the beginning but midway through the film until the end, he was a powerful and effective character who became more important in the film than Larry did.


Like every single film the Coen's have done, they are just totally random with random stories, characters but very similar writing styles except one or two they have done before (No Country For Old Men, for example). The Coen's failed to make this one exciting like they did with their previous two films and I began to feel less and less bothered about what was going to happen. Seeing as the film is a black comedy and I realize that it isn't always a laugh-out-loud comedy with simple humor but I was open minded when watching this film and there was not one moment where I'd chuckle. There wasn't even anything humorous in the story, characters or anything! On the bright side of things, there's no doubt that the Coen's are some of the best script writers of our time in this generation. I would say their writing style is like Quentin Tarantino but unfortunately directing A Serious Man was a mistake.


Overall, A Serious Man is a film that I wouldn't call a bad film but wouldn't call a good film either so it is just an average film. Both Invictus and Nine should have been nominated Best Picture instead of A Serious Man and The Blind Side. Unfortunately, it is the worst film so far from the Coen's and one of the most disappointing films I've seen. Their next film better bring them back on track!

Larry Gopnik is professor and his life is about fall part because his wife is planning on leaving him. Larry tries to figure out where his life is heading, as he tries to manage his career his brother and being a father all at the same time.

I liked the realistic 70's feel to the film and some of the music that was played over a few scenes, but that is where my liking for this film basically stops. This film was one of those films that left you saying "Did that actually end?" There were so many questions throughout the film, so many odd bits introduced and so what do the Coen brothers decide to do? End the film during the best scene in the film. The Coens had the fans hooked with the feel, but after that they brought a weak cast of characters, ones that they failed to really add substance too. I thought the characterization of Gopnik was repetitive and he kept going through the same old routine as the film progresses.

This film lacked in so many ways. The Coen’s delivered their flattest film since No Country For Old Men, a film I also could not buy into. The Coen’s seem to have a knack for getting mediocre pictures recognized by the academy. I simply just don’t get what these guys are all about. I mean No Country for Old Men was a decent flick but nowhere near Academy Award winning material, and I have to say the same for this flick. All though it is pretty clear this picture is not going to win come Oscar Sunday.

As much as I did not like the film, I really wanted too, and there will little elements that I could relate to. For example the brother sister relationship seemed real enough, and I did like the tie in with the Jewish faith.

I just think this film comes down to its main Character Larry Gopnik having no real development or any stand out character trait we can really relate to as an audience. I feel the Coens put too much effort into the world he lived in and the situations he was a part of instead of really giving us a character we felt compassion for.

In the end this is simply my take on this film, and this film has been getting rave reviews and many people liked it, and I can honestly see why. It is a faith we often do not see a lot of on the big screen, and the Coen brothers really tried for offbeat comedy but they failed miserably at establishing the off beat humour in which they were looking to present.

This film had no clear cut ending, and I think that was a mistake, the ending scene was too dramatic and too good to just leave it open. I didn’t buy into this film until the final scene and then just like the rest of the film they found some way of throwing the little bit of greatness they had away. I really wanted more out of the Coen brothers. I was hoping to be amazed at what I saw because usually I really connect with these types of films. Yet I still hope that the next Coen brother’s project is good and I will continue to watch their films because they have the potential as I saw with “Burn after Reading”

A Serious Man (2009) é um filme fascinante, o melhor entre os indicados ao Oscar, o que o torna infelizmente por demais subestimado enquanto seus ordinários e previsíveis concorrentes são exaltados. Não é um longa apelativo, nem de identificação imediata com o protagonista Larry Gopnik, um professor de física judeu, nem por isso menos, ou melhor, exatamente por isso é soberbo.

O breve entusiasmo de Larry acontece quando ensina o paradoxo de Schrodinger para uma platéia nada recíproca, e essa falta de conexão parece invadir sua vida. Sua mulher o aborda numa inesperada conversa onde num único parágrafo é capaz de pedir o divórcio, exigir uma cerimônia religiosa para tal, nomear seu atual amante e o expulsar para um quarto de motel. Seus filhos também tem vida própria ainda que não respeitem, ou comovam-se, em nenhum momento com a dele.

A “perspectiva” é evocada não só quanto ao fato do gato de Schrodinger estar vivo ou morto, mas igualmente no folclore iídiche apresentado na forma de prólogo, um homem auto-proclamado racional recebe outro para jantar enquanto sua mulher acusa o convidado de dybbuk, um morto-vivo. Assim como das fábulas bíblicas, Larry quer extrair um significado das coisas que acontecem, das decisões que parecem estar sendo tomadas por terceiros, seja na sua profissão ou família, e procura sua resposta na sabedoria de três rabinos, enquanto tenta se manter correto: um homem sério.

A narrativa é precisa e ainda assim, como o protagonista, não temos idéia alguma do que está por vir, acompanhamos o desenrolar da mesma forma que Larry, tentando compreender uma razão maior, duvidosos do acaso ou completa falta de sorte. Essa soberba sincronia, numa exímia edição, executadas pelos próprios irmãos Cohen sob o pseudônimo de Roderick Jaynes, transbordam a genialidade na forma mais autoral e madura dos cineastas.