“A Serious Man,” 3 December 2010 (2009), DVD. Should it be called “Jew the Obscure?” This 2009 black comedy is a return to serious film making for the Coen brothers At times it makes your skin crawl, at other points it is laugh-out-loud funny as it chronicles Larry Gopnik, an assistant professor of physics, as his life falls apart in a Midwestern town in 1967 His wife announces her affair with a much older man and demands a divorce, his kids are a pot-head about to become bar mitzvah and a bitchy daughter who wants a nose job He’s under huge pressure at work as both his tenure case and problems with a student who tries to bribe him for a higher grade loom large What does it mean, if anything? Wonderful acting all around, especially by Richard Kind as his deranged Uncle Arthur The cast is mostly Jewish and the caricatures are paced slowly for exquisitely excruciating pain, like Woody Allen slowed down to 33 1/3 from 78 rpm It is funny It hurts It’s supposed to The film begins with a brief seemingly related faux Yiddish fable that really has nothing to do with the film These guys really are amazing Any film that ends its credits with the line “No Jews Were Harmed in the Making of this Film” is a real keeper The music, especially Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane’s “Surrealistic Pillow” pervades the film as does a wonderful running joke about the vicious Columbia Record Club (I was a member too, weren’t we all?). But here they also get it wrong. They have the stoner son buying “Abraxas” and “Cosmo’s Factory,” both from 1970. Intentional?. I think so, as they spoke of their commitment to staying true to 1967 (see the feature on the DVD about this). It may, therefore, be another joke of theirs, although sort of a snarky one, making fun of those who don’t really know when things were made and see the time as a unitary piece. Or, it might just be a joke on people like me who obsess about trivial points like this. In any event, see this film.