This dark comedy from Joel & Ethan Coen is a distillation of some of the duo’s most potent themes. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is our Job figure, a physics professor in suburban Minneapolis who finds his life falling apart both personally and professionally. The principle of uncertainty, introduced early in the film via Schrödinger’s famous cat, becomes a kind of guiding metaphor as Larry navigates the limits of 1960s Jewish faith. Both riotously funny and tempted towards the nihilistic, A Serious Man isn’t ultimately concerned with theodicy or the existence of God; Hashem’s presence is taken for granted. Rather, the question is “What does he want from me?” and even more frighteningly, “Does it really matter?”
—Anders Bergstrom