The Bad Girls of Film Noir are hanging out in a separate entry (visit them over here) but there are plenty of other releases this week, not the least of which is the Coen Bros.’s A Serious Man (Universal), a serious (and seriously funny) meditation on little themes like the meaning of life and why are we here and how can we know God’s purpose, and is as funny, heartbreaking, questioning, trying, exasperating and sincerely inquisitive a portrait of the human condition as you’ll find on screen. You could call it their take on the story of Job, relocated to the Jewish community of 1967 Minneapolis and reincarnated in the person of university physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), who at least is better off than the Biblical Job, with his suburban home and teaching position. The yearning for meaning and explanation (in a world where, in his own words, “we can’t ever really know… what’s going on”) is real but the ordeal is human, a mix of spiritual questing, existential crisis and cosmic joke. And have no fear: the credits assure us that “No Jews were harmed in the making of this picture.” I reviewed the film in 2009 (read the feature review here) and it since placed on scores of Top Ten lists and critics awards and received Academy Awards nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) makes a stand

The DVD and Blu-ray releases feature a modest collection of supplements. The Coens don’t do commentary but they do sit down for an interview that is woven through a half hour’s worth of making-of featurettes. In “Becoming Serious,” which also includes interviews with cast and crew members and behind-the-scenes footage from the set, they talk about the origins of the story (including the Jewish fable that opens the film, which it turns out they made up themselves), and then take a back seat to the set designers and costumers and location scouts describing the art of “Creating 1967.” “Hebrew And Yiddish For Goys,” a whirlwind tour through the cultural vocabulary, rounds out the extras. The Blu-ray includes the usual generic BD-Live functions.

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Directed and written by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

“React with simplicity to everything that happens to you” – Rashi

“When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies” – Jefferson Airplane

The first quote opens “A Serious Man,” the new film by the Coen Bros. The second is spoken to a Bar Mitzvah boy by a wizened old rabbi, quoting Jefferson Airplane in a scene that (like much of the film) teeters on the edge between anguish and absurdity.

“A Serious Man” is a serious (and seriously funny) meditation on little themes like the meaning of life and why are we here and how can we know God’s purpose, and is as funny, heartbreaking, questioning, trying, exasperating and sincerely inquisitive a portrait of the human condition as you’ll find on screen.

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) makes a stand

You could call it their take on the story of Job, relocated to the Jewish community of 1967 Minneapolis and reincarnated in the person of university physics professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), who at least is better off than the Biblical Job. Larry has a suburban home (bland) and family (unappreciative) and a level of middle class affluence that give him a comfortable living. His torments are neither cosmic nor epic but they are very human and seem random and undeserved. Then again, that’s the world he lives in as a physics professor, somewhere between the certainty of math and the uncertainty of life.

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