A Serious Man 2009

"A Serious Man" by the Coen Bros. The story revolves around a Jewish man looking for guidance while everything around him starts slipping through his fingers. He's basically a bitch and just doesn't know how to deal with things.

The movie has a lot of a awkward and dark humor and it really just does whatever the hell it wants to in terms of story and our expectations. The main character spends the entire movie trying to find meaning to what's happening to him and his family, and I left the movie with the understanding that it's your own meaning that you get that is important. The truth is that you can get lost looking for meaning. The point is, that there is no point. Nothing matters and everything matters.

The acting was great and the Coens have shown in this movie that not only can they provide meaningful choices in the plot through writing and dialogue but they can also do it symbolically and provide visual manifestation of "things to come". The ending shot provides us with the example of them and creates an understanding of who the characters are and does provide a character arc overall.

Everything was well-made. Definitely check it out.

Sy Ableman: "I'm a serious man, Larry."

'A Serious Man' has to be the Coen Brothers most unappreciated movie when it comes to naming the Coen Brothers best movies, and yes there's plenty of outstanding movies from them, but lets not overlook movies such as this. The Coen Brothers have yet to disappoint me, even through I haven't seen every movie from them, but the ones I have watched I've given glowing reviews and so is this one, because 'A Serious Man' is a superb and wonderful piece of film making that I can't believe it took me this long to watch it.
The Coens are masters of film making and there's no point of me pointing that out for you, since you can watch one of they movies (expect for The Ladykillers) and see the brilliance in the dialogue scenes and the reverse shots by them keeping the shots simple but precise enough to keep you engaged. And in this movie, the Coens did just that and that's take a simple man like Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) and put him in an endless cycle of torment, for serious or comedic effect. That's what I was so amazed by from start till finish, not because of the writing or the cinematography (which are perfect by the way), but that I easily related to the main characters struggle and the dying questions about his own religion and he's life. Many times in the movie Larry tries to seek help and answers, but gets shut out or doesn't get satisfying answers. This hit home for me as I know what that's like. Bravo Coens.

Michael Stuhlbarg was absolutely fantastic in this movie and it's honestly one of he's best performance of his career (In my opinion). Stuhlbarg really dose bring a lot of emotion, depth and the human side to this character that we can easily simplify with. His reactions to hellish situations was spot on and realistic. It's hard to believe that he didn't get at least an Oscar nomination for this and just the thought of it is really hard to digest. Brilliantly performance Michael Stuhlbarg.

Roger Deakins is one of the best cinematography's working today and it wasn't surprising that the best part of this movie was the cinematography, as it was flawless. Most of the time the camera is right close up to the characters and it has a wide lens to it so you would feel a sense of presence of being right there with somebody. It really dose add a lot to the scenes in this movie, I mean it made some scenes of the movie uncomfortable or kind of funny. That's the work of Roger Deakins everyone and it's glorious.

I'm not going to spoil the ending to this movie, because I hate when people do that in reviews without any warnings, but let me tell you that the ending is such a gut-punch and will leave you completely speechless.

Now for the problems: ...

Overall rating: 'A Serious Man' is an outstanding movie with brilliant performances from everyone and top notch writing from the Coens. If haven't seen this movie yet, then do yourself a favor and watch it.

What's the point? Is a question " A Serious Man" dives into, Are there consquences to our actions? Do we control our own fate and what happens to us? Im not sure how to feel about this movie the acting is great, the score is really good and the movie is indecisive. It has this constant build up of not necessarily waiting for something terrible to happen but smaller scale wondering what's the point of everything going on and what's it leading to. Now {spoilers} events happen in this movie and then the movie just kinda ends which I can appreciate and hate at the same time because in life there isn't always a worthy conclusion sometimes things happen and then then you move on to the next thing without it coming back up again or life just ends. I watched an analysis video of this movie after watching to see if I was missing something and this movie is very subtle for what it's going for almost too subtle to the point where I blame the coen brothers for not getting across the point they were trying to make but at the same time im amazed by what they did. I feel like I could give this movie anywhere from a 5 to 10 on anyday it's definitely something i'll have to revist at somepoint to see how much I appreciate it after knowing everything going in.