''A Serious Man'' is a 2009 American
black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ...
comedy-drama film
Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...
written, produced, edited and directed by
Joel and Ethan Coen
Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957),State of Minnesota. ''Minnesota Birth Index, 1935–2002''. Minnesota Department of Health. collectively known as the Coen brothers (), are American film ...
. Set in 1967,
the film stars
Michael Stuhlbarg
Michael Stewart Stuhlbarg ( ; born July 5, 1968) is an American actor. He is known as a character actor having portrayed a variety of roles in film, television and theatre. He has received several awards including two Screen Actors Guild Awards wi ...
as a
Minnesota
Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
man whose life crumbles both professionally and personally, leading him to questions about his faith.
''A Serious Man'' received widespread positive critical response, including a place on both the
American Film Institute's and
National Board of Review of Motion Pictures
The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures is a non-profit organization of New York City area film enthusiasts. Its awards, which are announced in early December, are considered an early harbinger of the film awards season that culminat ...
's Top 10 Film Lists of 2009. It was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Picture, and Stuhlbarg was nominated for a
Golden Globe Award.
Plot
A
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
man in a 19th-century Eastern European
shtetl
A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before ...
tells his wife that he was helped on his way home by Reb Groshkover, whom he has invited in for soup. She says Groshkover is dead and the man he invited must be a
dybbuk
In Jewish mythology, a (; yi, דיבוק, from the Hebrew verb meaning 'adhere' or 'cling') is a malicious possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. It supposedly leaves the host body once it has accomplished ...
. Groshkover arrives and laughs off the accusation, but she plunges an ice pick into his chest. Bleeding, he exits their home into the snowy night.
In 1967, Larry Gopnik is a professor of physics living in
St. Louis Park, Minnesota. His wife, Judith, tells him that she needs a
''get'' so she can marry widower Sy Ableman, with whom she has fallen in love. Meanwhile, their son Danny owes twenty dollars to an intimidating
Hebrew school classmate for marijuana. He has the money, but it is hidden in a transistor radio that was confiscated by his teacher. Their daughter, Sarah, is always washing her hair, going out and avoiding school. Larry's brother, Arthur, is homeless and sleeps on the couch, spending his free time filling a notebook with what he calls a "probability map of the universe" or a "mentaculus".
Clive Park, a South Korean student worried about losing his scholarship, meets with Larry in his office to argue he should not fail the class. After he leaves, Larry finds an envelope stuffed with cash. When Larry attempts to return it, Clive's father threatens to sue Larry either for defamation if Larry accuses Clive of bribery, or for keeping the money if he does not give him a passing grade. Larry faces an impending vote on his application for tenure, and his department head informs him that anonymous letters have urged the committee to deny him.
At the insistence of Judith and Sy, Larry and Arthur move into a nearby motel. Judith empties the couple's bank accounts, leaving Larry penniless, so he enlists the services of a divorce attorney. Larry learns that Arthur faces charges of solicitation and sodomy.
Larry turns to his Jewish faith for consolation. He consults a junior rabbi, who advises Larry to change his "perspective". Larry and Sy are involved in separate, simultaneous car crashes. Larry is unharmed, but Sy dies. Larry consults a second rabbi for solace, who recounts a parable about a dentist who finds Hebrew inscriptions on a patient's teeth. Larry also tries to contact Marshak, the synagogue's senior rabbi, who isn't available. At Judith's insistence, Larry pays for Sy's funeral. At the funeral, Sy is eulogized as "a serious man".
Larry calls on his neighbor, Vivienne Samsky, whom he has seen sunbathing naked. She introduces him to marijuana. He later dreams that he is having sex with her, but this turns into a nightmare.
Arthur is despondent about the charges levied at him, and Larry consoles him. Larry then has another nightmare in which he gives Arthur the money Clive left him and drives him to cross into Canada by boat, whereupon his neighbors shoot Arthur in the neck. Larry is proud and moved by Danny's
Bar Mitzvah, unaware that his son is under the influence of marijuana. During the service, Judith apologizes to Larry for all the recent trouble and informs him that Sy respected him so much that he even wrote letters to the tenure committee. Danny meets with Marshak, a brief encounter in which Marshak only quotes
Jefferson Airplane's "
Somebody to Love", names some members of the band, returns the radio, and tells Danny to "be a good boy".
Larry's department head compliments him on Danny's Bar Mitzvah and hints that he will receive tenure. The mail brings a $3,000 bill from Arthur's lawyer. Larry decides to change Clive's grade from F to C−, whereupon Larry's doctor calls, asking to see him immediately about the results of a chest X-ray. Meanwhile, Danny's teacher struggles to open the emergency shelter as a massive tornado closes in on the school.
Cast
*
Michael Stuhlbarg
Michael Stewart Stuhlbarg ( ; born July 5, 1968) is an American actor. He is known as a character actor having portrayed a variety of roles in film, television and theatre. He has received several awards including two Screen Actors Guild Awards wi ...
as Lawrence "Larry" Gopnik
*
Richard Kind
Richard Bruce Kind (born November 22, 1956) is an American actor and comedian, known for his roles as Dr. Mark Devanow in ''Mad About You'' (1992–1999, 2019), Paul Lassiter in ''Spin City'' (1996–2002), Andy in ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'' (2002 ...
as Arthur Gopnik
*
Fred Melamed
Fred Melamed (born May 13, 1956) is an American actor, comedian, and writer. He is best known for portraying Sy Ableman in the Coen Brothers' ''A Serious Man'' (2009). He is also known for his collaborations with Woody Allen appearing in seven of ...
as Sy Ableman
*
Sari Lennick as Judith Gopnik
* Aaron Wolff as Danny Gopnik
* Jessica McManus as Sarah Gopnik
*
Alan Mandell
Alan Mandell (born Albert Mandell on December 27, 1927) is a Canadian-American actor known for playing Rabbi Marshak in the Coen Brothers' 2009 film ''A Serious Man''. With several decades of experience as a stage actor, he is especially acclaime ...
as Rabbi Marshak
*
Adam Arkin
Adam Arkin (born August 19, 1956) is an American actor and director. He is known for playing the role of Aaron Shutt on ''Chicago Hope''. He has been nominated for numerous awards, including a Tony (Best Actor, 1991, '' I Hate Hamlet'') as well ...
as Don Milgram
*
George Wyner
George Wyner (born October 20, 1945) is an American film and television actor. Wyner graduated from Syracuse University in 1968 as a drama major and was an in-demand character actor by the early 1970s. Wyner has made guest appearances in over 1 ...
as Rabbi Nachtner
*
Amy Landecker as Mrs. Vivienne Samsky
* Peter Breitmayer as Mr. Brandt
* Brent Braunschweig as Mitch Brandt
* Katherine Borowitz as Mimi Nudell
* Allen Lewis Rickman as Velvel
* Yelena Shmulenson as Dora
*
Fyvush Finkel as Traitl Groshkover
*
Simon Helberg
Simon Maxwell Helberg (born December 9, 1980) is an American actor and comedian. He is known for playing Howard Wolowitz in the CBS sitcom ''The Big Bang Theory'' (2007–2019), for which he won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Sup ...
as Rabbi Scott Ginsler
*
Raye Birk
Raye Birk (born May 27, 1943, Flint, Michigan) is an American film and television actor best known for a variety of roles, such as playing the role of Pahpshmir in the first and last of the '' Naked Gun'' movies, and a variety of television appe ...
as Dr. Shapiro
*
Michael Lerner as Solomon Schlutz
* David Kang as Clive
*
Steve Park as Clive's father
*
Ari Hoptman as Arlen Finkle
* Amanda Day as Art Student
* Landyn Banx as Actor
Production
Considerable attention was paid to the setting; it was important to the Coens to find a neighborhood of original-looking suburban
rambler homes as they would have appeared in
St. Louis Park, Minnesota, in the late 1960s. Locations were scouted in nearby
Edina,
Richfield,
Brooklyn Center
Brooklyn Center is a first-ring suburban city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. In 1911, the area became a village formed from parts of Brooklyn Township and Crystal Lake Township. I ...
, and
Hopkins before a suitable location was found in
Bloomington. The film's look is partly based on the
Brad Zellar book ''Suburban World: The Norling Photographs'', a collection of photographs of Bloomington in the 1950s and 60s.
Location filming began on September 8, 2008, in Minnesota. An office scene was shot at
Normandale Community College
Normandale Community College is a public community college in Bloomington, Minnesota. The college serves primarily the communities of the southwestern portion of the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolitan area. Established in 1968 as Normandale St ...
in Bloomington. The film also used a set built in the school's library, as well as small sections of the second floor science building hallway. The synagogue is the
B'nai Emet Synagogue in St. Louis Park. The Coens also shot some scenes in
St. Olaf College's old science building because of its similar period architecture. Scenes were also shot at the Minneapolis legal offices of Meshbesher & Spence, the name of whose founder and president,
Ronald I. Meshbesher, is mentioned as the criminal lawyer recommended to Larry in the film. Filming wrapped on November 6, 2008, after 44 days, ahead of schedule and within budget.
Longtime collaborator
Roger Deakins
Sir Roger Alexander Deakins (born 24 May 1949) is an English cinematographer, best known for his collaborations with directors the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes and Denis Villeneuve. Deakins has been admitted to both the British Society of Cinema ...
rejoined the Coens as
cinematographer, following his absence from ''
Burn After Reading
''Burn After Reading'' is a 2008 black comedy spy film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It follows a recently jobless CIA analyst, Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) whose misplaced memoirs are found by a pair of dimwitte ...
''. This was his tenth film with them.
Costume designer
Mary Zophres returned for her ninth collaboration with the directors.
The Coens themselves stated that the "germ" of the story was a rabbi from their adolescence: a "mysterious figure" who had a private conversation with each student at the conclusion of their religious education. Ethan Coen said that it seemed appropriate to open the film with a
Yiddish folk tale, but as the brothers did not know any suitable ones, they wrote their own.
Open auditions for the roles of Danny and Sarah were held on May 4, 2008, at the Sabes Jewish Community Center in
St. Louis Park, Minnesota, one of the scheduled shooting locations. Open auditions for the role of Sarah were also held in June 2008 in
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
.
Patton Oswalt
Patton Peter Oswalt (born January 27, 1969) is an American stand-up comedian, actor and writer. He is known as Spence Olchin in the sitcom ''The King of Queens'' (1998–2007) and for narrating the sitcom '' The Goldbergs'' (2013–present) as ...
and
Marc Maron
Marcus David Maron (born September 27, 1963) is an American stand-up comedian, podcaster, writer, actor, and musician.
In the 1990s and 2000s, Maron was a frequent guest on the '' Late Show with David Letterman'' and has appeared more than forty ...
auditioned for the roles of Arthur Gopnik and Larry Gopnik.
Music
All of the film's original music is by
Carter Burwell, who also worked on every previous
Coen brothers
Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957),State of Minnesota. ''Minnesota Birth Index, 1935–2002''. Minnesota Department of Health. collectively known as the Coen brothers (), are American film ...
film except ''
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' is a 2000 comedy drama film written, produced, co-edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and ...
'' The film also contains pieces of
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...
music including "Dem Milner's Trern" by
Mark Warshawsky
Mark Markovich Warshawsky (Varshavsky) (russian: Марк Маркович Варшавский, yi, מאַרק וואַרשאַווסקי; 26 November 1848In contrast to more recent scholarship, Noach Prilutski (1882-1941), in an article translat ...
and performed by
Sidor Belarsky, which deals with the abuse and recurring evictions of Jews from
Shtetlekh
A shtetl or shtetel (; yi, שטעטל, translit=shtetl (singular); שטעטלעך, romanized: ''shtetlekh'' (plural)) is a Yiddish term for the small towns with predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish populations which existed in Eastern Europe before ...
.
The soundtrack also includes the following songs by popular 1960s artists:
Release
The film began a
limited release in the United States on October 2, 2009. It premiered at the
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF, often stylized as tiff) is one of the largest publicly attended film festivals in the world, attracting over 480,000 people annually. Since its founding in 1976, TIFF has grown to become a perman ...
on September 12, 2009.
Box office
''A Serious Man'' grossed $9,228,768 domestically, and $22,201,566 internationally, making for a worldwide gross of $31,430,334.
Critical response
''A Serious Man'' received mostly positive reviews from critics, and holds a 89% approval rating on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on 227 reviews, with an average rating of 7.94/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Blending dark humor with profoundly personal themes, the Coen brothers deliver what might be their most mature—if not their best—film to date."
The film also holds a score of 82 out of 100 on
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, based on 38 critics, indicating "Universal acclaim".
Roger Ebert of the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago ...
'' rated the film four out of four stars. His review highlighted the film's Yiddish folktale prologue, suggesting that though the Coens maintain it has no relation to the rest of the film, "maybe because an ancestor invited a
dybbuk
In Jewish mythology, a (; yi, דיבוק, from the Hebrew verb meaning 'adhere' or 'cling') is a malicious possessing spirit believed to be the dislocated soul of a dead person. It supposedly leaves the host body once it has accomplished ...
(wandering soul) to cross his threshold, Larry is cursed." In an essay in ''Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche'', Steve Zemmelman considers that the prologue may link to the
Jefferson Airplane soundtrack motif, reflecting Larry's normal sense of order becoming increasingly disrupted. He writes, "what can happen when 'the wheel falls off the cart', as Velvel says happened to him on the road that night, or 'when the truth is found to be lies', that lyric from 'Somebody to Love' that serves as bookends for this film."
Claudia Puig of ''
USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virgi ...
'' wrote, "''A Serious Man'' is a wonderfully odd, bleakly comic and thoroughly engrossing film. Underlying the grim humor are serious questions about faith, family, mortality and misfortune." ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'' magazine critic
Richard Corliss
Richard Nelson Corliss (March 6, 1944 – April 23, 2015) was an American film critic and magazine editor for ''Time''. He focused on movies, with occasional articles on other subjects.
He was the former editor-in-chief of '' Film Commen ...
called it "disquieting" and "haunting".
Some critics commented on the link between the film and the Biblical
Book of Job. K. L. Evans wrote, "we identify it as a Job story because its central character is tormented by his failure to account for the miseries that befall him". In his essay "Job of Suburbia?", David Tollerton wrote, "the more substantial connection between ''A Serious Man'' and the Book of Job—the connection that reaches deeper—is their similarly absurd presentations of the human struggle with anguish and the divine." ''
Slate'' magazine critic Juliet Lapidos considered that the folktale prologue may be an endorsement of the "gumption" of "taking matters into her own hands".
''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
''
Joe Morgenstern
Joe Morgenstern (born October 3, 1932) is an American writer and retired film critic. He wrote for ''Newsweek'' from 1965 to 1983, and then for ''The Wall Street Journal'' from 1995 to 2022. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2005. Morgen ...
disliked what he saw as the film's
misanthropy
Misanthropy is the general hatred, dislike, distrust or contempt of the human species, human behavior or human nature. A misanthrope or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings. The word's origin is from the Greek words μῖ ...
, saying that "their caricatures range from dislikable through despicable, with not a smidgeon of humanity to redeem them."
David Denby
David Denby (born 1943) is an American journalist. He served as film critic for ''The New Yorker'' until December 2014.
Early life and education
Denby grew up in New York City. He received a B. A. from Columbia University in 1965, and a master' ...
of ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' enjoyed the film's look and feel, but found fault with the script and characterization: "''A Serious Man'', like ''
Burn After Reading
''Burn After Reading'' is a 2008 black comedy spy film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It follows a recently jobless CIA analyst, Osbourne Cox (John Malkovich) whose misplaced memoirs are found by a pair of dimwitte ...
'', is in their bleak, black, belittling mode, and it's hell to sit through ... As a piece of movie-making craft, ''A Serious Man'' is fascinating; in every other way, it's intolerable." Zemmelman wrote that this kind of viewer response results from the film's lack of narrative resolution: "The film is perplexing and the dialogue reminds the viewer repeatedly that we are in an encounter with the ever-conflictual and the infinitely mysterious."
Todd McCarthy
Todd McCarthy (born February 16, 1950) is an American film critic and author. He wrote for '' Variety'' for 31 years as its chief film critic until 2010. In October of that year, he joined ''The Hollywood Reporter'', where he subsequently served ...
said, "''A Serious Man'' is the kind of picture you get to make after you've won an Oscar."
Awarding the film five stars in ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'',
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at ''The Guardian'' since 1999, and is a contributing editor at ''Esquire''.
Early life and education
Bradshaw was educated at Haberdasher ...
said, "this strange and wonderful film is rounded off with a gloriously well-crafted apocalyptic vision and a chilling intimation of divine retribution for earthly wrongdoing. The Coens have finished the noughties as America's preeminent filmmakers".
''A Serious Man'' was later voted the 82nd greatest film since 2000 in a
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
international critics' poll.
''A Serious Man'' received numerous awards and nominations, particularly for its screenplay, acting, and cinematography. Joel and Ethan Coen were awarded Best Original Screenplay at the
. The screenplay was also nominated for
.
called it "one of the less talked about nominees".
. The National Board of Review,
and the Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards all listed the film as one of the ten best of 2009.
Stuhlbarg was awarded the Chaplin Virtuoso Award at the
. Stuhlbarg, Kind, Melamed and Lennick were nominated for a
. At the
, and the film's directors, ensemble cast, and casting directors were awarded with the
at the Satellite Awards.