The Coen Brothers’ newest film opens with a grotesque scene of a 19th century Yiddish couple at their home in an Eastern European Shtetl. Cold, but joyful, the bearded husband has recently returned from a broken wagon debacle bearing news of an approaching dinner guest. His wife meets this news with a stern face and crossed arms declaring the guest a three-year-dead spirit – a dybbuk. A knock is heard, and the couple looks at each other, followed by the now apprehensive husband letting the guest in. An argument unfolds between the wife and the supposed spirit leading to the wife stabbing the spirit, and the old man respectfully standing up and leaving the house to re-enter the snowy winter night.

Seemingly unrelated, the movie cuts to 1960s Minnesota to follow the life of a man and his situation. This confusing transition is the starting point for a movie filled with confusing situations, all of which are perfectly detailed with the appropriate angst, frustration, or sadness to fit the main character’s ailing mental stability.
Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Jewish physics professor at a local university, enters the frame – a partially naïve pushover who’s endlessly vexed by his deteriorating family situation. His wife (Sari Lennick) is leaving him for a gentle but condescending acquaintance, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), because of his thorn-in-the-side, deadbeat brother Arthur (Richard Kind), all to the utter apathy of his two teenagers, Danny and Sarah (Aaron Wolff and Jessica McManus, respectively).
“A Serious Man” follows Larry as he deals with endless irritations – a car crash, spiteful letters attacking his attempt at gaining tenure, and a Korean student bereft of common bribing protocol – beyond, it seems, what any average man must ever endure.
His troubles go unbalanced by the pleasures of life save for a pot-smoking lady neighbor who flirts with Larry through ice tea and naked sun bathing. As Larry battles the struggles of his depreciating family situation, he looks for equilibrium in the turnstile that is his life. When consulting a triptych of inattentive rabbis turns out no results, Larry understands a new existential goal: to become a mensch – a “serious man.”
Semi-autobiographical of the Coen Brothers’ own upbringing, “A Serious Man” highlights the misfortune and resulting angst of the modern Jewish man. Poignantly funny, you will find yourself laughing and wincing simultaneously to the cacophony of Larry Gopnik’s life. Not exactly in the comedic luminosity of “The Big Lebowski,” “Fargo,” or “Raising Arizona,” this movie digs deeper into the psyche of the Coen Brothers themselves for once, rather than other assorted quirky characters.
A regular blockbuster viewer might find this film less accessible because of its discreet jokes of Jewish tradition and anxiety, but comedy aside, the Coen Brothers’ return from hiatus with true film brilliance. “A Serious Man” follows the biblical story of Job (only with more Yiddish). Literary allusions abound in the Coen Brothers’ works. “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” is a loose translation of Homer’s The Odyssey.

As the director duo becomes more sophisticated with time, it is clear that literary allusions and intellectual quality have gradually nudged their way into the plot line. “A Serious Man” brings the Coen Brothers’ brilliance full circle.
With more specificity than ever before, the Coen Brothers focus their broad sights with “A Serious Man” and dissect their upbringing, while fleshing out the funny and painful story of what happens when everything seems to fall apart, even when it wasn’t great before. You might squirm with awkwardness in your seat while Jefferson Airplane plays over Danny’s headphones, Sarah and Arthur fight for bathroom time, and all life goes to shambles, but try to keep in mind; it is a comedy. 