Simply in terms of sheer film-making craft, this is the Coens, and certainly cinematographer Roger Deakins, at the peak of their respective crafts. The recreation of a late 60's heavily Jewish mid-western locale is pitch-perfect. Not a scene feels wasted, not a shot expendable.

Michael Stuhlbarg does a fantastic job portraying the conflicted and confused but down to Earth Larry Gopnick that embarks on the craziness and randomness that is his life.

It's very heavily Jewish and being as "Goy" as they come, the cultural references flew straight over my head and I found the constant religious references utterly bewildering.

Then there's the ending, or perhaps, lack thereof. Not unlike the ambiguous note that No Country For Old Men went…

A common criticism of the Coen brothers' films is that they have a tendency towards a kind of studied neatness. The plot will tick over nicely, the patiently conceived ironies will all come to the boil at the appointed times, every gun on stage will eventually be fired: everything runs like clockwork. The result being that while their films contain many scenes of individual brilliance, the whole is often dry and lifeless. Starting with 2004's No Country For Old Men and continuing through 2008's Burn After Reading, the Coens became interested in randomness - in having things or characters in their films that seem to destabilise their careful world. A Serious Man is the summit of this approach, in that…

"A Serious Man" is many things: a Hasidic fever dream, a modern-day (give or take) Dostoevsky novel; a eulogy, a blessing. Few movies go this deep. But maybe the most impressive thing about "A Serious Man" is how the Coens frame its juicy bleakness -- a middle-aged university professor Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg, in one of the best roles and delivering one of the greatest performances of the decade) searching for answers in a middle-class life that calls asking why a step over the line. Be a dull boy, Larry. And the genial Coen brothers? Settle for whirling philosophical treatise. Don't bother with explosions of color, cinematography, and tricks of the camera. This shit's dense enough as it is.

Fuck…

De gebroeders Coen maken opnieuw school: tussen een fantastische ouverture (een absurde proloog die zich afspeelt in een 19de-eeuwse Joodse Sjetl) en een slotgeneriek die opgesmukt is met de vocalen van Jefferson Airplane, zit een nieuw meesterwerk geprangd: een pseudo-biografische reflectie over het suburbane Amerika van de late sixties, een postmoderne versie van het Bijbelse Jobverhaal en bovenal een rake observatie van een cultuur, zijn taal en zijn gebruiken. Met 'A serious man' spelen de Coens opnieuw een thuismatch en wederom hebben ze met verbluffende bravoure gewonnen.

Larry Gospnik, hoogleraar fysica aan de universiteit van Minnesota, heeft zich de toorn van Hashem (het Hebreeuwse woord waarmee het goddelijke wordt aangeduid) op de hals gehaald: zijn vrouw vraagt een scheiding aan,…