A Serious Man

The Coen Brothers often provide an apparently unrelated short film as a lead in to their main feature, a signature element that they repeat in A Serious Man.

In this case the short starter, a sort of Jewish fable, is entirely in the Yiddish language, with English subtitles and runs just long enough for half the audience to start to worry that they are in the wrong auditorium.

The main film that follows is set in 1967 in a Jewish community in a small Minnesota town where a Physics Professor is about to have his world unravel. His wife informs him that she is leaving him for another man, his free loading brother is engaging in increasingly bizzare activity, his foreign student appears to be bribing him for an improved test score and his employer repeatedly and unconvincingly tells him not to worry that anonymous allegations about his moral turpitude will affect his application for tenure.

All of this, and more, is played out in total deadpan style with the driest of dry humour. I imagine this film will make more sense if you are Jewish or at least are familiar with Jewish culture and practice but even then I suspect most viewers will scratch their heads and wonder how they might better have spent the two hours.

I rather liked the attention to period detail and also - as a lover of dry humour - had a few laughs but I would have been in the minority.