A Serious Man is a 2009 dark comedy written, produced, 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 tells a story about an ordinary man who searches for clarity in a universe. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances, Sy Ableman, who seems to her a more substantial person than the feckless Larry. Larry's unemployable brother Arthur (Richard Kind) is sleeping on the couch, his son Danny is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah is filching money from his wallet in order to save up for a nose job. While his wife and Sy Ableman blithely make new domestic arrangements, and his brother becomes more and more of a burden, an anonymous hostile letter-writer is trying to sabotage Larry's chances for tenure at the university. Also, a graduate student seems to be trying to bribe him for a passing grade while at the same time threatening to sue him for defamation. Plus, the beautiful woman next door torments him by sunbathing nude. Struggling for equilibrium, Larry seeks advice from three different rabbis. Can anyone help him cope with his afflictions and become a righteous person -- a mensch -- a serious man?

 

As of February 10, 2010, it has had worldwide gross earnings of $31,312,437.

 

It has received mostly positive reviews from critics, with an aggregate score of 89% from Rotten Tomatoes, based on 194 reviews. Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, rated the film four out of four stars, feeling that it "bears every mark of a labor of love", and Variety's Todd McCarthy commented that "the Coens' filmmaking skills are sharply attentive", and that A Serious Man is "the kind of picture you get to make after you've won an Oscar". Claudia Puig of USA Today writes, "A Serious Man is a wonderfully odd, bleakly comic and thoroughly engrossing film. Underlying the grim humor are serious questions about faith, family, mortality and misfortune."

 

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.