Like his biblical equivalent, Larry Gopnik is a serious man. He is an associate professor of physics at the local university and is being considered for tenure. While he may not be a wealthy man, Larry manages to take care of his wife and two children. His son has an impending bar mitzvah, where he will be recognized as a man in the Jewish community. Larry is also a man of faith.
This is the pleasant life Larry believes he has. In actuality, his wife, Judith (Sari Lennick), is throwing around the word “divorce,” preparing to leave her husband for an old family acquaintance, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), who meanwhile offers to console Larry during the trying process. “Sy Ableman?” Larry asks with a look of pure disbelief on his face. It’s not hard to see why: his wife’s paramour is a homely widower who could be Dr. Phil’s Jewish counterpart.
Additionally, Larry’s son is a burgeoning pothead who would rather listen to the tunes of Jefferson Airplane on his radio than the voice of his teacher at Hebrew school. He consequently gets his radio taken away, and with it, a stash of money to repay his dealer, who threatens him with certain ass-kicking. His daughter sneaks money out of Larry’s purse to save up for a nose job and spends most of her time fighting for bathroom time with her Uncle Arthur (Richard Kind), who constantly has to drain a cyst on the back of his neck. Having fallen on hard times, Arthur is bunking on his brother’s couch, and shows no immediate signs of leaving.
There’s also the small matter of Larry being bribed by one of his disgruntled students who refuses to take an “F” for his grade. Larry’s problems continue to multiply when his review for tenure is being questioned by the university in light of some slanderous letters written by an anonymous author. Larry panics at the possibility of losing the steady paycheck which is barely keeping him afloat of his family’s expenses, including the bill for his divorce attorney and the cost of the aptly named Jolly Roger Motel, where he starts staying with his brother during the divorce proceedings.
With his life in shambles, Larry turns to his religion to obtain solace and understanding. He seeks counsel with two different yet equally unhelpful rabbis, one who waxes philosophic about a parking lot, trying to get Larry to see that his life isn’t as bad as he thinks, and one who relays the story of “The Goy’s Teeth,” in which a dentist discovers a message in Hebrew on the back of a non-Jewish man’s lower front teeth, although the meaning behind the anecdote is never made clear.
Neither meeting is very fruitful, which leaves Larry to request the guidance of a third rabbi, although this proves to be an impossible task. Despite all of his hardships, however, Larry remains a pious man. His faith in God is unshakable, even when it seems that no one can provide him with the answers he needs to make sense of his life. All Larry can do is wait and hope that his faith will eventually be rewarded.
In Larry Gopnik, the Coen Brothers have created a character with whom the audience can empathize. The man behind Larry, Michael Stuhlbarg, deserves the credit for breathing life into the character with his exaggerated facial expressions and excellent comic timing. Stuhlbarg is perfectly cast in his role, as is the rest of the film’s meticulously-chosen ensemble.
“A Serious Man” may not be as action-packed as the Coen Brothers’ Academy Award-winning thriller “No Country for Old Men,” but it is gripping in its subtlety and unpredictable in its novelty. The script from the Coen Brothers is equal parts funny, offbeat, serious and revealing, from the opening sequence of a Yiddish ghost story — which may or may not connect to the rest of the film — to the end, which leaves as many unanswered questions as it settles.