Date: March 25, 2010
Contact: Carol Connelly, Director, Media & Communication Services, ext. 5267, cconnelly@pnc.edu

PNC, Libraries to Host “A Serious Man” Film Screenings

WESTVILLE – Public showings of the Academy Award-nominated film "A Serious Man” will be offered through a collaboration of the Purdue University North Central Odyssey 2009-10 Arts and Cultural Events Series, LaPorte County Public Library and Michigan City Public Library. The showings are free and open to the public.

Showings will be Sunday, April 18 at 2 p.m. at the Michigan City Public Library, 100 E. Fourth St., Michigan City; Tuesday, April 20 at 6 p.m. in the LaPorte Library, 904 Indiana Ave., LaPorte; and on Thursday, April 22 at 6 p.m. at PNC in the Library-Student-Faculty Building Assembly Hall, Room 02. The film is rated R.

"A Serious Man” was written and directed by Academy Award-winning brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. The film earned 2010 Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Original Screenplay.

"A Serious Man” is a black comedy set in the suburban Minneapolis Jewish community of 1967, closely mirroring the Coen's roots. The “serious” man noted in the title is Larry Gopnik, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, who earned a Golden Globe Best Actor nomination for his performance. He portrays a university professor who is married with two children and while he tries to be the best person he can be, his life unravels in a way only the Coen brothers can portray.

As he finds out his wife is leaving him for his best friend, his son is smoking pot in Hebrew School , his daughter is stealing money to pay for a nose job, his brother is sleeping on his couch and other woes continue to mount. Yet Stuhlbarg plays Gopnik as a hopeful man, not a sad sack or loser.

The “Los Angeles Times” states, “Gopnik just might be the most out-and-out normal person ever put at the center of a Coen brothers film, and his everyman status helps explain one of the film's apparent paradoxes: its ability to be intensely Jewish and speak to everyone. . . it's impossible to watch his travails without feeling they will speak to everyone who's been battered and blindsided by life's crises and wonders why.”

PNC Odyssey Arts and Cultural Events Series features events throughout the year. A schedule can be found at www.pnc.edu . For information about this film, or any event in the Odyssey series, contact Judy Jacobi, PNC assistant vice chancellor of Marketing and Community Relations, at 785-5200, ext. 5593. Persons with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact Jacobi.

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