A SERIOUS MAN
Year: 2009
USA: Focus Features
UK: Universal Pictures International (UK)
Cast: Michael Stuhlbarg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick, Adam Arkin, Aaron Wolff, Jessica McManus, Peter Breitmeyer, Brent Braunschweig, David Kang, Benjamin Portnoe, Jack Swiler, Andrew S Lentz, Jon Kaminski Jr, Ari Hoptman, Alan Mandell, Amy Landecker, George Wyner, Michael Tezla, Katherine Borowitz, Stephen Park, Allen Lewis Rickman, Yelena Shmulenson, Fyvush Finkel, Ronald Schultz, Raye Birk, Jane Hammill, Claudia Wilkens, Simon Helberg, Adam Arkin, James Cada, Michael Lerner, Charles Brin, Michael Engel, Tyson Bidner, Phyllis Harris, Piper Sigel Bruse, Hannah Nemer, Rita Vassallo, Warren David Keith, Neil Newman, Tim Russell, Jim Lichtscheidl, Wayne Evenson, Scott Baker
Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Countries: USA / UK / France
USA & UK: 105 mins
USA Rated: R for language, some sexuality/nudity and brief violence
UK Certificate: 15 contains strong language and soft drug use
USA Release Date: 2 October 2009
UK Release Date: 20 November 2009
Synopsis
Imaginatively exploring questions of faith, familial responsibility, delinquent behaviour, dental phenomena, academia, mortality, and Judaism - and intersections thereof - A SERIOUS MAN is the new film from Academy Award-winning writer/directors Joel and Ethan Coen.
A SERIOUS MAN is the story of an ordinary man's search for clarity in a universe where Jefferson Airplane is on the radio and F-Troop is on TV. It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik (Tony Award nominee Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed), 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 (Aaron Wolff) is a discipline problem and a shirker at Hebrew school, and his daughter Sarah (Jessica McManus) 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?