A Serious Man (Joel Coen/Ethan Coen, 2009, UK/France/USA)

Made after the immense critical and commercial success of No Country for Old Men (2008), 2009’s A Serious Man saw the Coen Bros. operating on a smaller and more personal scale. Their most autobiographical film, Man centers on a Minnesotan Jewish man named Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) in 1967, whose life seems to be crumbling around him. His wife is leaving him and is having him pay for the divorce. His kids are disrespectful and being corrupted by the outer culture. One of his students is blackmailing him for a better grade. And this is just the start.

While A Serious Man remains relatively underseen compared to other more famous Coen Bros. films, it is among their best films. With characteristic dark humor, the film seeks to examine the human condition in a modern parable of Job. Yet the film equally serves as an exploration of anxieties around Jewish identity, and perhaps more broadly American identity. While obviously manifested in the film’s apocalyptic finale, there is a common motif throughout the film of trying to see and interpret signals. Whether it is the television signal that keeps going out, or Gopnik’s constant refrain of “What’s going on?”, the film is concerned with our ability to interpret the events going on around us.

The cast is phenomenal, with standouts including Fred Melamed as Sy Ableman, the lover of Larry’s wife, as well as Richard Kind as Arthur Gopnik, Larry’s savant brother. Certain sequences, such as the story of the “goy’s teeth,” are among the best the Coens have ever put to film. A Serious Man leaves a lot to ponder and provides no easy answers, particularly given that the film has a number of esoteric levels of meaning that are hard to decipher. Nevertheless, the film’s finale is a striking one and guaranteed to leave many interpretations.

9/10