Director Deep Dive is a chronological look into a director’s filmography to see how they and their works grow and change.

Throughout their career, critics have often accused the Coens of being indifferent or downright malicious to their characters. It makes a certain sense when you consider most of their films deal with criminals and other malcontents. Many of whom exist on the margins of society and meet brutal ends. Despite the often cynical tone of their work, the Coens frequently show sympathy to the characters they consider morally upstanding. So, where does that leave a man like Larry Gopnik?

Larry (Micheal Stuhlbarg) is a professor in Minnesota who seems to live your average American life: wife, two kids and a standard mid-60s house in the suburbs. This idyllic existence crumbles when his wife, Judith (Sari Lennick) announces that she is leaving him for a pillar of the community, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). To make matters worse, someone has been sending letters to the tenure committee urging them to deny Larry, and a disgruntled student appears to be both bribing and blackmailing him. Not to mention Larry’s unemployed brother Arthur (Richard Kind) who has taken a residence on his couch and spends most days drawing a “probability map of the universe.”

A Serious Man is probably the closest we’ll ever get to a personal work from the brothers. Set in their hometown during their own adolescence, the film tackles faith, specifically Judaism, in a style that feels distinctly Coens. It often feels like a modern Book of Job in the near-comical level of punishment it deals out to Larry. Is it God testing one of his followers or is it simply a normal life taking a downward trend?

Roger Deakins returns for his 10th collaboration with the Coens and brings his continually impressive craftsmanship into every frame. True to the film’s nature, Deakins isn’t showy with his work and simply lets his images wrap you in. The editing by the Coens, (once again using the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes), further heightens the movie’s secrets. It is the type of work you expect from three masters who are completely in-sync with each other.

The Coens counter the A-list cast of their last feature with a group of mostly unknown actors. Richard Kind is by far the most well-known member of the cast and he delivers beautiful work. Arthur is another of the film’s mysteries, but Kind imbues him with a sadness that is affecting even if we, like Larry, can never fully understand him. Fred Melamed is a comedic delight, a patronizing force of nature that invades Larry’s life until facing his own karmic punishment. Sari Lennick’s Judith is a lighter presence, really shining in the terrific scene early in the movie where she reveals her affair to Larry.

Like Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn’t There before it, A Serious Man hinges on its lead performance and Michael Stuhlbarg nails it. Larry may not be a serious man, but he is certainly a complicated one. Hapless and unsure of how to deal with the shambles of his life, Larry turns to the foundations of faith and family for comfort and finds none. Like many Coens’ protagonists, Larry is a passive presence, but Stuhlbarg imbues him with a sense of decency that makes it hard to root against him. The Coens obviously have affection for this poor soul as well, even as they continue to rain punishment down on him.

So, why do all these terrible things befall Larry Gopnik? In the simplest, most Coens appropriate terms: because they can. Life is suffering and if Larry is getting an extra hard lesson, well, that’s just how it goes sometimes. If there is a spiritual force at work in this film, it’s an uncaring one. One that expects its followers to be good and receive nothing in return.

A Serious Man is the Coen’s cheapest film since Fargo and while it didn’t make Fargo levels of money, it performed well at the box office. The film also became a critical hit, earning rave reviews and giving the Coens another Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards. Time has only added value to the movie. It is a smaller and quieter affair, but stands among some of the duo’s best work. It is certainly one that I appreciate more with each rewatch.

I’ve referred to the Coens as cynical before, and A Serious Man definitely falls on the more sardonic side of the scale. It opens with a Jewish folktale whose moral is unclear and closes with a shot of impending doom seemingly brought on by God. Yet it never feels needlessly cruel. There is a purpose at work and we can try to understand it and fail or accept that we can’t know everything.

Next: The Coens step into the Western genre and mostly play it straight with their adaptation of True Grit.

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