Retrospective Film Review

A Serious Man (2009) • 15 Years Later — thought-provoking comedy-drama keenly explores the meaning of life

A Midwestern physics teacher watches his life unravel over multiple sudden incidents.

How can we understand suffering? Can internal pain be rationalised as a chemical imbalance? Can ill health or the loss of a loved one be overcome by recognising that these tragedies are commonplace and that a cluster of them occurring in your life is little more than bad luck? For the protagonist of A Serious Man, middle-aged professor Larry (Michael Stuhlbarg), it’s as if the world has trampled on his happiness and cast him aside. Every event in his life, whether minor or calamitous, feels to him like a targeted attack to crush his spirit, as he helplessly tries to uncover why he can’t seem to get anything in order.

While there are certainly valuable (and even enviable) aspects of this protagonist’s life, it’s also in a continuous state of turmoil. His wife is leaving him, her lover talks to him as if he’s an adult-sized baby, his children are indifferent to his…