Larry Gopnik is a physics professor at a small Midwestern university who faces a plethora of challenges in his life in a relatively short span of time. His wife announces that she plans to leave him for a neighborhood friend. Another neighbor has mowed his lawn to the point where it treads upon the Larry’s own property and plans to build a shed on the mowed area. Larry’s annoying and unemployed brother Arthur has come to stay with him and sleep on the couch, all the while draining an unexplained cyst at all hours of the night. Add to that, Larry’s son Danny is a rebellious young lad with a penchant for smiting his teachers and listening to forbidden music on his portable radio during class.
The tension escalates as the film carries on, seemingly inundating Larry with increasingly difficult conflicts. While watching the film, I thought this felt like a classic Western plot, where the hero is introduced as a well-meaning man and then inundated with pressures until he is finally pushed too far and must react. This story actually moved along these lines, and I kept waiting for Larry to react. Suspense builds as the tension mounts and a possible love interest appears in the story, offering to free Larry from the burdens of his worrisome life. The main question the film puts forward is, how far can a serious (or self-conscious and considerate) man be pushed and when, if ever, will he be morally challenged?
The final payoff will definitely provoke mixed feelings in viewers, depending on how you feel about moral stories and how you feel about Hollywood endings. That said, the development of the characters and the track of the story are very consistent and not unreal from the day-to-day stresses of common life.
