A Serious Man

A Serious Man, the Cohen brother’s forage into a 1960s Minneapolis Jewish community, is serious! And the movie asks some serious questions about a man’s worth. Larry Gopnick is put through the mill while facing moral dilemmas like should he pay for your wife’s boyfriend’s funeral, change a student’s grade for money, lust after his neighbor’s wife. He lets everyone kick him around throughout the movie until, it seems, after he gives advice to his even more hapless brother and says, “Sometimes you have to help yourself.” I said yes, Larry, help yourself! So towards the end of the movie he seems to gain a little more strength, but since it’s a Cohen Brother’s movie, he keeps getting slapped around. A Serious Man gives a lot of food for thought while being mostly drudgery to sit through.