A Serious Man is a 2009 black comedy-drama film[3] written, produced, edited and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.

Set in 1967,[4] the film stars Michael Stuhlbarg as a Minnesotan Jewish man whose life crumbles both professionally and personally, leading him to questions about his faith.

[5][6][7][8] A Jewish man in a 19th-century Eastern European shtetl tells his wife that he was helped on his way home by Reb Groshkover, whom he has invited in for soup.

Larry's brother, Arthur, is homeless and sleeps on the couch, spending his free time filling a notebook with what he calls the "Mentaculus", a "probability map of the universe".

Clive Park, a South Korean student worried about losing his scholarship, meets with Larry in his office to argue he should not fail the class.

Larry faces an impending vote on his application for tenure, and his department head informs him that anonymous letters have urged the committee to deny him.

Judith empties the couple's bank accounts, leaving Larry penniless, so he enlists the services of a divorce attorney.

Larry consults a second rabbi, Nachtner, for solace, who recounts a parable about a dentist who finds Hebrew inscriptions on a non-Jewish patient's teeth.

During the service, Judith apologizes to Larry for all the recent trouble and informs him that Sy respected him so much that he even wrote letters to the tenure committee.

Considerable attention was paid to the setting; it was important to the Coens to find a neighborhood of original-looking suburban rambler homes as they would have appeared in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, in the late 1960s.

[12][13] A classroom scene was shot at the then-closed Shingle Creek Elementary School in north Minneapolis, due to its 1960's-era design.

[17] The Coens themselves stated that the "germ" of the story was a rabbi from their adolescence: a "mysterious figure" who had a private conversation with each student at the conclusion of their religious education.

[19] Open auditions for the roles of Danny and Sarah were held on May 4, 2008, at the Sabes Jewish Community Center in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, one of the scheduled shooting locations.

[24] The film also contains pieces of Yiddish music including "Dem Milner's Trern" by Mark Warshawsky and performed by Sidor Belarsky, which deals with the abuse and recurring evictions of Jews from Shtetlekh.

The soundtrack also includes the following songs by popular 1960s artists:The film began a limited release in the United States on October 2, 2009.

The site's critical consensus reads, "Blending dark humor with profoundly personal themes, the Coen brothers deliver what might be their most mature—if not their best—film to date.

"[32] In an essay in Jung Journal: Culture and Psyche, Steve Zemmelman considers that the prologue may link to the Jefferson Airplane soundtrack motif, reflecting Larry's normal sense of order becoming increasingly disrupted.

"[33] Claudia Puig of USA Today wrote, "A Serious Man is a wonderfully odd, bleakly comic and thoroughly engrossing film.

[32] K. L. Evans wrote, "we identify it as a Job story because its central character is tormented by his failure to account for the miseries that befall him".

"[37] Slate magazine critic Juliet Lapidos considered that the folktale prologue may be an endorsement of the "gumption" of "taking matters into her own hands".