Senior Cita • - inner S Bread Deli and Restaurant "Where you grow up is part of The unsettling sequence sets the your identity," Ethan Coen said. "That tone for the rest of the film, which doesn't go away, even if you've been revolves around Larry Gopnik away for a long time." The credits at (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics profes- the end of the film joke,"No Jews were sor whose uneventful suburban life harmed in the making of this movie." is shattered by an existential crisis. As they did with Fargo, the Coens Two weeks before his son, Danny, a cast Minnesotan actors — this time, Talmud Torah student, is to become Jewish ones — to portray minor a bar mitzvah, Larry's wife, Judith characters and extras. For the leads, (Sari Lennick), announces she wants they conducted an extensive audition a divorce in order to marry a family process, focusing on lesser-known friend, whom she regards as a more Jewish actors rather than the celebri- "serious" man than her husband — a ties (think George Clooney and Brad person of substance, a pillar of the Pitt) who have starred in Coen movies community. like Burn After Reading. The stunned professor is soon ban- Stuhlbarg was called in numerous ished to a seedy motel with his brother Arthur (Richard Kind), a volatile child- times to read various roles before man who feverishly scribbles into a spi- the Coens cast him as Larry. The 37- year-old Juilliard graduate — who ral notebook he calls his Mentaculus, became smitten with the theater while a probability theory about how events performing at a Long Beach, Calif. unfold in the universe. Arthur also has Jewish community center at 11— is a penchant for racking up expensive an esteemed veteran of the New York legal fees for Larry to pay. Meanwhile, an unscrupu- lous student threatens Larry's tenure. Danny, who hates his archaic Talmud Torah day school, prefers to get stoned, watch F Troop and listen to Jefferson Airplane. Larry's daughter is preoccupied with her social life and saving cash to pay for a nose job. Larry seeks counsel from three rabbis — a Hebraic version of Dickens' Christmas ghosts — but they offer neither wisdom nor comfort. Even when it appears Larry's Writer/directors Joel & Ethan Coen on the set of luck has finally turned, the their new film A Serious Man elements seem to conspire to crush him — literally stage, having earned a 2005 Tony and metaphorically — as a tornado Award nomination for his turn as Billy approaches. Crudup's creepy brother in the black Just as Minnesotans were initially comedy The Pillowman. offended by what they perceived as Stuhlbarg had also portrayed the Fargo's portrayal of locals as simple- tormented lover in Tony Kushner's A tons with exaggerated accents, some Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds; Jewish viewers may be taken aback an Auschwitz sonderkommando (a by aspects of A Serious Man, which Jewish prisoner who manned the depicts a spiritually vapid Jewish crematoria) in the stage and film ver- community, inept rabbis, demanding sions of Tim Blake Nelson's The Grey wives, stoned bar mitzvah boys and Zone, and, along the way, has done Jews who condescendingly refer to readings with Joel Coen's wife, Frances non-Jews as "goys." McDormand, who took her husband The filmmakers preemptively to see Stuhlbarg perform in David address the issue in the movie's pro- Mamet's adaptation of the morality duction notes: "People can get a little play The Voysey Inheritance. uptight when you're being specific Some time later, a script of A with a subject matter:' Joel Coen said. Serious Man landed on Stuhlbarg's "From our point of view, A Serious desk, which thrilled the actor. "I had Man is a very affectionate look at the seen every single one of the Coens' community and is a movie that will movies," he said. "I love their sense of show aspects of Judaism, which are not usually seen." 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