imageThe Coen brothers never like to make life easy for their protagonists, and with their latest leading man, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), absolutely no exceptions have been made. Set in 1967 Midwest America, the film follows Larry, a physics professor with an increasingly complicated home and working life. Troubled by the lack of cause for his predicament(s), Larry, a self-confessed serious man, turns to a succession of Rabbis to try and understand why he is being tested.
The film begins with an extended Yiddish fable conceived by the Coens. This sets the tone for A Serious Man which seems to be a meditation on being Jewish. Larry’s life begins to fall off kilter when his wife, Judith (Sari Lennick) surprises him with the revelation that she has found a new man, the velvety voiced Sy Abelman (Fred Melamed). This doesn’t seem to faze his teenage children, Danny (Aaron Wolff) who just wants good TV reception and to pay back his pot dealer, and Sarah (Jessica McManus) who is washing her hair for most of the film. Added to Larry’s problems are his socially inept brother Arthur (Richard Kind), his redneck neighbour who is slowly redrawing their houses’ boundary line and a foreign student who is trying to force Larry into changing his failing grade.
click here to read my full review at Trespass
