MOVIE · 2009

A Serious Man

ComedyDrama106 min

In 1967 Minnesota, physics professor Larry Gopnik watches his orderly life come apart after his wife tells him she’s leaving him for the self-satisfied Sy Ableman. Michael Stuhlbarg is Larry, a Jewish academic whose home, career, and sense of certainty are all suddenly under pressure, while Fred Melamed’s Sy keeps turning up as the polished rival Larry can’t avoid. As bills, threats, family problems, and small humiliations pile up, Larry looks to a succession of rabbis for answers. Joel and Ethan Coen frame his unraveling with suburban detail, deadpan humor, and a growing sense that nothing in Larry’s world is behaving by the usual rules.