A Serious Man

A Serious Man is a 2009 black comedy-drama film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. The film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as a Minnesota Jewish man whose life crumbles both professionally and personally, leading him to questions about his faith.

The film attracted a positive critical response, including a Golden Globe nomination for Stuhlbarg, a place on both the American Film Institute's and National Board of Review's Top 10 Film Lists of 2009, and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Plot

In a prologue, a Jewish man in an unnamed 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 must be a dybbuk. Groshkover (Fyvush Finkel) arrives and laughs off the accusation, but she plunges an icepick into his chest. Bleeding, he exits into the snowy night.

In Minnesota in the late 1960s, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a professor of physics. His wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), tells him that she needs a get (a Jewish divorce document) so she can marry widower Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Their son Danny (Aaron Wolff) owes twenty dollars for marijuana to an intimidating Hebrew school classmate. He has the money, but it is hidden in a transistor radio that was confiscated by his teacher. Daughter Sarah is always washing her hair and going out. Larry's brother, Arthur (Richard Kind), sleeps on the couch and spends his free time filling a notebook with what he calls a "probability map of the universe".