Comments (0)Joel and Ethan Coen
Serious’ Fun
September 21, 2009
Joel and Ethan Coen’s newest flick, “A Serious Man,” which premiered recently at the Toronto Film Festival and will be released in theaters next Friday, has a decidedly Jewish flavor. Especially when it comes to all that existential angst and tumult.
Shortly before his son’s bar mitzvah in 1967, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Midwestern Jew, learns that his wife, Judy (Sari Wagner Lennick) is leaving him for their family friend, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Oy.
Meanwhile, Larry’s son, Danny (Aaron Wolff), is driving him meshugah with his “F Troop” obsession, and his daughter, Sarah (Jessica McManus), is consumed with getting a nose job and washing her hair. And then there’s Larry’s no-good, loafer brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), who lives with the fam and tends to monopolizes the bathroom.
Oh, and Larry, a university professor, has fallen for a nubile, academically-challenged Korean grad student who’s trying to bribe him for good grades. And then there’s that awfully distracting next-door neighbor, Mrs. Samsky (Amy Landecker), a smokin’ hot, pot-smoking nude sun-worshiper.
Trying to make sense of it all, Larry looks for spiritual guidance from three different rabbis. What’s a mentsch to do in a complicated, modern world?
The black comedy also stars the inimitable Fyvush Finkel and Adam Arkin.