Joel and Ethan Coen took the title of their latest film, "A Serious Man," from the dialogue they created for the characters in their surreal, darkly affectionate look at a Midwest Jewish community.
In one scene, a rabbi giving a eulogy refers to the deceased as a serious man. Later, the Coens’ desperate hero calls himself a serious man as he tries to gain an audience with his synagogue’s elusive senior rabbi.
The phrase is the brothers’ take on the Yiddish word mensch, an upright man, someone of substance and decency.
