March 19: A Serious Man (2009)

Published on March 12, 2010 by Alissa Wilkinson

A Serious Man (2009)

Friday, March 19th - 7:00pm

Trailer

Rotten Tomatoes: 87%

Metacritic: 79

"Rich and funny" - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"The Coens have made their most personal, most intensely Jewish film, a pitch-perfect comedy of despair that, against some odds, turns out to be one of their most universal as well." - Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times

"A wonderfully odd, bleakly comic and thoroughly engrossing film." - Claudia Puig, USA Today

"Earnestly engaged in the question of what constitutes a life well lived." - J.R. Jones, Chicago Reader

"It's about God, man's place in the world and the meaning of life, so naturally it's one of [the Coens] funnier movies…a metaphysical pie in the face." - Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter

"See this film immediately." - Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York

In celebration of and disagreement with the Oscars last weekend, the IAM Screening Series staff would like to present their winner for Best Picture of 2009, Academy Award-winning writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen's black comedy, "A Serious Man."

It is 1970, and Larry Gopnik (Tony Award nominee Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), who seems to her a more substantial person than the feckless Larry. An anonymous hostile letter-writer is trying to sabotage Larry's chances for tenure at the university, while a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation. On top of all this, the beautiful woman next door torments him by sunbathing nude. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. Can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person -- a mensch -- a serious man?

Nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards as well as Best Actor for Michael Stuhlbarg at the Golden Globes, and winner of Best Cinematography for Roger Deakins at the Independent Spirit Awards, A Serious Man is darkly funny and filled with thought provoking questions about faith, familial responsibility, delinquent behavior, dental phenomena, academia, mortality, and Judaism.  Few films are so deadly serious and yet so funny at the same time; this sustained tone is pitch-perfect and makes A Serious Man required viewing.

Runtime: 106 minutes