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Michael Stuhlbarg in "A Serious Man"

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R (2009) Publication Date Oct. 16, 2009

The camera pulls back from the wall-sized blackboard that college physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbar) has covered with numbers. "Even if you can't figure anything out, you're still responsible for it on the midterm," the professor says to the stunned class.

In Ethan and Joel Coen's latest film, "A Serious Man," it's not only the students who are baffled. So is Larry, who's like the schlemiel -- the guy to whom everything happens -- in a thousand Jewish jokes. His wife wants a divorce so she can marry smarmy family "friend" Sy Ableman; Larry's bar-mitzvah-boy son Danny is smoking dope; his daughter Sarah steals money from his wallet to save up for a nose job. One of his students is trying to bribe him to change a failing grade. And on it goes.

Larry consults three rabbis, one of whom advises that "you have to see these things as God's will." The other two aren't any better help. Since God gives the questions, wonders Larry, why doesn't he give the answers too?

Set in an arid, practically treeless Minneapolis suburb in 1967 -- the kids listen to transistor radios, a doctor smokes in his office -- "A Serious Man" is based much more closely than the Coens' other films on their own childhoods, and many of the actors are local talent. But the subjects it deals with are far from provincial. In their unique blend of black comedy and existential bafflement, the Coen brothers pose no less than the ultimate question: What is the meaning of life? (Without, of course, making it seem as portentous as that.) "A Serious Man" is a serious film that makes you squirm, laugh and ponder all at the same time.

Rated R for language, some sexuality/nudity and brief violence. 1 hour, 45 minutes.

- Renata Polt