A Serious Man makes uncertainty funny without making it comfortable. Michael Stuhlbarg gives the film a recognisable human centre, and the Coens are very good at letting advice make everything less clear.
Spoiler-free review.
Michael Stuhlbarg is excellent at looking as though one more explanation ought to put things in order. Larry keeps trying to locate a reasonable way through his problems. The performance makes that effort sympathetic without making him automatically right. A Serious Man finds a lot of humour in the distance between needing clarity and actually receiving it.
The Coens let conversations go in unhelpful directions with confidence. An answer can be perfectly fluent but still miss the point. I liked how seriously the speakers take their own words. The comedy comes from the exchange itself, not from a joke added on top of the confusion.
The domestic and professional pressures feel ordinary enough to give the film a foothold. Its larger questions grow out of those irritations. That makes the uncertainty more effective than a purely abstract discussion would have been. Stuhlbarg keeps returning the film to a person who would really like his day to become manageable.
The emotional distance can feel cold, and the film doesn't offer much reassurance. For me, that's mostly a strength. Its humour feels closely tied to the discomfort of trying to find a pattern. It's a strange, precise film about wanting an explanation from a world that's not interested in giving one.
2009 · English. Film details · Film details
A Serious Man makes uncertainty funny without making it comfortable. Michael Stuhlbarg gives the film a recognisable human centre, and the Coens are very good at letting advice make everything less clear.
— Desly