The masterful Coen brothers (No Country For Old Men, The Big Lebowski) present a black comedy set in 1967, about Larry Gopnik, a physics professor who watches his life unravel when his wife leaves him.
If that wasn't enough, Larry's inept brother (Spin City's Richard Kind) won't move out of the house, his son has a discipline problem, his daughter's stealing his money for her nose job, somebody is trying to sabotage his university career and his neighbour sunbathes nude. Larry turns to three rabbis for advice...
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89%227 reviews
One doesn't know how (auto)biographical any or all of this is, but there's a tartness to the telling of what amounts to a well-shaped series of anecdotes that bespeaks distant pain or, at least, wincing memory twisted into mordant comedy by time and sensibility.
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A complex, non-commercial Coen film that strips back the stars for an absorbing, affectionate look at the Bros’ youth. It keeps much at arm’s length, but with Stuhlbarg holding the disorder in check, A Serious Man will be a serious contender for Coen fan Top Fives.
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The story is at once hilarious and horrific, its significance both self-evident and opaque. The same could be said of most of the Coen brothers’ movies, in which human existence and the attempt to find meaning in it are equally futile, if also sometimes a lot of fun. (For us, at least.)
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This seriously funny movie, artfully photographed by the great Roger Deakins, is spiritual in nature, barbed in tone, and, oh, yeah, it stings like hell.
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Have I mentioned A Serious Man is so rich and funny? This isn't a laugh-laugh movie, but a wince-wince movie. Those can be funny too.
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But it's finally more grim than funny and leaves us with the same uncomfortable feeling that Burn did: that the boys are more interested in their own amusement than their audience's.
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A seriously funny film about an angst-ridden Jewish professor seeking the answers to life's questions and getting a metaphysical pie in the face.
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A Serious Man is available to stream in New Zealand now on Google Play and Apple TV.
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