Oscars in tow, Joel and Ethan Coen don’t seem to know the meaning of a slow period. Their latest project, A Serious Man, just like Burn After Reading before it, is a small film with big ambitions. It is a family drama; it is a memoir of the golden age of American suburban rabbinic Judaism; it is a study of the intellect’s struggle with the belief (or disbelief) in a higher power. Acerbically funny and virtuously moody, this film is yet another feather in the cap of the brothers Coen.

In a landscape littered with cinematic imposters, A Serious Man features a main character who can accurately be described as a classic “schlemiel”. Larry Gopnik, played with remarkable sincerity by Michael Stuhlbarg, is a man who never asked for anything from God in his life, but when he is faced with trial upon trial, Mr. Gopnik finds his latent bent to the point of imminent breakage. A Physics professor at the local university, Larry is an impotent, small man who gets trampled from every angle. His wife is leaving him, a student is stong-arming him into a getting a better grade, his pothead son’s Bar Mitzvah is approaching amid mounting financial pressure, and his awkward brother takes up the only remaining space in his home. Read on…