Once again, meticulous and imaginative production design and a level of opacity far beyond most mainstream releases is often confused with profundity.
Comment
10/08/09
A Serious Man (2009)
87
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:162
Fresh:141
Rotten:21
Average Rating:7.8/10
Consensus: Blending dark humor with profoundly personal themes, the Coen brothers deliver what might be their most mature -- if not their best -- film to date.
Rated: 15 [See Full Rating]
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:20-11-2009
Synopsis: Imaginatively exploring questions of faith, familial responsibility, delinquent behavior, dental phenomena, academia, mortality, and Judaism - and intersections thereof - A Serious Man is the new... [More]
Starring: Michael Stuhlbarg, Fred Melamed, Richard Kind, Aaron Wolf
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Reviews for A Serious Man
It has all the earmarks of a personal statement, one of those movies that their biographer will use to connect the dots after they're gone.
10/08/09
While there are plenty of oddball touches, some mystifying (like the Yiddish-language prologue, set in a Polish shtetl and seeming to have little to do with what follows it; and the abrupt ending) -- we see in it some genuine fondness for the characters.
10/08/09
Can art come from jadedness? Will the brothers ever “mean it’’? A Serious Man forces the issue in ways that will either floor you or drive you batty.
10/08/09
A Serious Man has a script, a clarity and a tone that come from craftsmen and wits (dour ones, but wits all the same) at the peak of their game.
10/08/09
This isn't a laugh-laugh movie, but a wince-wince movie. Those can be funny, too.
10/08/09
Top CriticJoel and Ethan Coen have never been known for their cheeriness, yet the bleakness of A Serious Man still comes as a shock.
10/07/09
Hashem might have the last laugh on us all, but until that happens, the Coen Brothers are in on the joke.
10/07/09
Piercingly funny, wrenchingly sad and always brilliant...a small but genuine masterwork from a team that's already given us plenty of them.
10/06/09
...disasters are tightly and relentlessly weaved together by the Coens and the result is a very funny, satiric look into that particular Jewish community [spawned] from the brothers' creative minds.
10/04/09
Dark, dry and masterfully restrained, A Serious Man is plotted with the peculiarities of life and built around a man whose demeanor is like a politely throbbing vein.
10/02/09
A wonderful parable of 1960s Jewish life in Minnesota filled equally with humor and pathos.
10/02/09
It's really bold to set a movie in the world of Jewish tradition. The people who understand this world will love it, and The Coens can do whatever they want for as few people as they want.
10/02/09
Since everyone is turned into such a caricature, the answers feel optional. It's hard to forget that Larry's fate is being controlled not by God or luck or even his own worst instincts, but by the Coens.
10/02/09
A seriously funny film about an angst-ridden Jewish professor seeking the answers to life's questions and getting a metaphysical pie in the face.
10/02/09
Top Critic[The Coens have made] their most personal, most intensely Jewish film, a pitch-perfect comedy of despair that, against some odds, turns out to be one of their most universal as well.
10/02/09
Top CriticIt all feels mean and hard and then, in the final moment, mean and hard and transcendent and right.
10/02/09
A thought-provoking spiritual original by the Coen Brothers that salutes the mystery of God, the futility of seeking answers, and the need to live as best we can in a sea of roiling troubles and uncertainties.
10/02/09
Funny but, yes, also thought-provoking and moving, 'A Serious Man' may be among the Coens' finest works and stands as one of the funniest, freshest and smartest movies of 2009.
10/02/09
The Coens nip at fundamental questions: how we conduct ourselves now, and how such conduct might resonate in an unknowable afterlife. Consider this film as a Rorschach for the soul.
10/02/09
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