A Serious Man

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"Serious Man" redirects here. For the Slightly Stoopid song, see Top of the World (Slightly Stoopid album).
A Serious Man
A man standing on the roof of a house, looking off to his left. His hands are on his hips. Behind him is a TV aerial.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJoel Coen
Ethan Coen
Written by
  • Joel Coen
  • Ethan Coen
Produced by
  • Joel Coen
  • Ethan Coen
Starring
CinematographyRoger Deakins
Edited byRoderick Jaynes[a]
Music byCarter Burwell
Production
companies
Distributed byFocus Features (United States)
Universal Pictures (United Kingdom)[1]
StudioCanal (France)[1]
Release date
  • October 2, 2009
Running time
106 minutes
Countries
  • United States
  • United Kingdom
  • France
LanguagesEnglish
Yiddish
Budget$7 million[2]
Box office$31.4 million[1]

A Serious Man is a 2009 American black comedy-drama film[3] written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in 1967,[4] the film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as a Minnesotan Jewish 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'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. Since its release, it has been widely considered one of the Coen brothers' best films and one of the greatest films of the 21st century.[5][6][7][8]

Plot[edit]

A Jewish man in a 19th-century Eastern European shtetl 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. 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 the "Mentaculus", a "probability map of the universe".

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 Cāˆ’, 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[edit]

Production[edit]

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, and Hopkins[9] before a suitable location was found in Bloomington.[10] 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.[11]

Location filming began on September 8, 2008, in Minnesota. An office scene was shot at Normandale Community College 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.[12][13] A classroom scene was shot at the then-closed Shingle Creek Elementary School in north Minneapolis, due to its 1960's-era design.[14] 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.[15] Filming wrapped on November 6, 2008, after 44 days, ahead of schedule and within budget.[16]

Longtime collaborator Roger Deakins rejoined the Coens as cinematographer, following his absence from Burn After Reading. This was his tenth film with them.[17] Costume designer Mary Zophres returned for her ninth collaboration with the directors.[17]

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.[18] 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.[19]

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.[4][20]

Patton Oswalt and Marc Maron auditioned for the roles of Arthur Gopnik and Larry Gopnik.[21][22]