Movie Review: A Serious Man  By    |   Friday, March 5, 2010
Filed under: Film Tags: , ,  Larry Gopnik wears a most peculiar
expression on his face. He appears bemused, a man who is
gradually learning how silly it is to take life too seriously.
He’s a physicist who finds comfort in the black and white world
of math where everything is yes or no, true or false, right or
wrong. Or, as he puts it to his class, the cat is either alive
or it is dead.  Gopnik is the hero of A Serious Man, the latest
bit of austere craziness from the Coen brothers. We meet him as
he faces enough hardships for three or four Gopniks. He’s being
examined and x-rayed by a worried looking physician. His wife is
fooling around and wants a divorce. He’s up for tenure, but
someone is sending the college letters urging his dismissal. And
some guy from the Columbia Record Club keeps calling him and
demanding that he pay for Santana’s Abraxas.  More than anything
else, Gopnik and his wife and their two teenage children are
identified as being