R-Rated Dark Comedy On Max Gives Master Filmmakers One Of Their Best Dramas

A Serious Man is the story of university physics professor Larry Gopnik Michael Stuhlbarg), a man whose life is threatening to come completely undone by events outside of his control. Larry comes home from work one day and is forced into a conversation about divorce by his wife, Judith (Sari Lennick). She has fallen in love with local widower Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed) and is insistent that the couple obtain a “get,” a ritual divorce outlined in the Torah.

Making life more complicated for Larry in A Serious Man are a disgruntled physics student who is attempting to bribe Larry for a passing grade, a lazy brother who has moved in with Larry and his family, and the increasing hostility emanating from his seemingly anti-sematic next-door neighbor. The divorce only compounds the stress, and Larry begins to question why his God is allowing these things to continue to happen to him.

As A Serious Man continues, Larry begins consulting with various religious leaders from his local synagogue but leaves each meeting more frustrated and even more confused. Judith forces him and his brother Arthur (Richard Kind) out of their home, and the motel charges he’s forced to pay to add to his financial woes. An expensive divorce is thought to be averted when Sy dies in a car accident, but Larry discovers that not only has Judith drained their bank accounts but is now demanding that Larry pay for her late boyfriend’s funeral.

Larry’s tenure at the university is up for a vote, and it’s revealed that someone has been sending anonymous letters to the tenor board in an attempt to keep them from granting him job security. Ready to buckle under financial and emotional pressure, Larry is presented with several temptations that can help to remedy his situation and change the fate of his character arc.

A Serious Man has been regarded as one of the greatest films so far in the 21st century, and for a good cause. Set in the late 1960s, the movie captures the design of the homes, the fashion, the mannerisms, and the music of this era to perfection. The keen attention to detail gives a great sense of realism to a movie set more than 50 years ago in a way that only the Coen brothers could master.

A Serious Man gives audiences some of the Coen brothers most complicated character sketches yet. These are each brought into vivid life by Stuhlbarg, Kind, Lennik, and Melamed, but equal praise should be given to the supporting cast. Aaron Wolf and Jessica McManus, who play Larry’s children Danny and Sarah Gopnik, round out the cast of characters, and Amy Landecker’s role of neighbor Vivienne Samsky balances out the frantic intensity with a character that is as calming as she is sexually alluring.

The film has been subjected to much interpretation since its 2009 release. The prevailing theory has A Serious Man related as a modern interpretation of the story of Job from the Old Testament. However, the film’s opening moments that take place in the 19th century help mold another interpretation.

REVIEW SCORE

The beginning of the film shows a man coming home after claiming to be helped by a neighbor that he has invited over for dinner. The man’s wife reveals that this neighbor is dead and that the man has likely been followed by a dybbuk (a Yiddish shapeshifting demon). When this neighbor arrives, she stabs him in the chest with an icepick and sends him off into the wintery night.

A Serious Man makes no direct mention of these events in the rest of the film, so why include them at all if they carry no weight? This has made some movie fans surmise that Larry’s ancestors unwittingly let a dybbuk loose and that he and his line have been cursed by the demon.

No matter what interpretation you hold, A Serious Man will hold your interest throughout and leave you bewildered at its abrupt ending. It’s a true classic.

You can catch A Serious Man streaming with a subscription to Max.