A Serious Man: Critic Reviews

A Serious Man isn't perfect -- I'm still grappling with the powerfully offbeat ending -- but it's cathartic to see the Coens finally show you a bit of who they are, or at least where they came from.

A Serious Man is, like its biblical source, a distilled, hyperbolic account of the human condition. The punch line is a little different, but you know the joke. And it's on you, of course.

Euphoric, sad and thoughtful all at once... The Coens have finished the noughties as America's pre-eminent film-makers.

The Coen brothers may just have made their masterpiece with this, their 14th feature and yet another hairpin-bend change of direction, which has been their trademark for their entire career.

A Serious Man is a wonderfully odd, bleakly comic and thoroughly engrossing film.

Mostly, A Serious Man succeeds because it engages questions worth asking. What is integrity? Does our atavistic need for stories illuminate the meaning of life or further obfuscate it? What does it mean to be good and how are we to achieve it?

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.

The production notes are larded with the Coen Brothers' disclaiming protestations of affection for their hapless characters, but make no mistake: We're being invited to share in their disgust.

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.

What do the Coen brothers want of us? More specifically, what do they want us to think of the repellent people in this pitilessly bleak movie?

It's the best film of their careers.

This parable of the welcome-unwelcome guest is less a key to the ensuing domestic drama than a teasing reminder of the traditional roots of the brothers' singular skill with humor and violence.

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.

A Serious Man is not only hauntingly original, it's the final piece of the puzzle that is the Coens.

As a piece of moviemaking craft, A Serious Man is fascinating; in every other way, it's intolerable.

This isn't a laugh-laugh movie, but a wince-wince movie. Those can be funny, too.

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.

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.

Embrace the mystery, the Coens tell us. At the same time, they can't resist pulling the rug out from under our feet.

Man plans, God laughs, and so do the Coen brothers.

Life is pain. Life is funny. Things happen randomly, with no purpose or reason that can be discerned. Searching for answers is futile. Enjoy what you can.

Not one of their best films, but because of its sincerity and the parsing away of sentiment and pretension, it is, in many ways, one of their most likable.

A Serious Man is the kind of picture you get to make after you've won an Oscar.

A Serious Man may not have the starry casts of the Coens' more recent films, but it has plenty of heart and soul. It's a movie mitzvah.

Their most inside joke ever, it leaves you with a lot to chew on, if not a lot to enjoy.