A Serious Man

A Serious Man is a 2009 American black comedy-drama film written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. Set in 1967, 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 2000s and of the 21st century. Plot 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".