Playing a character inspired by Joel and Ethan's academic parents and their colleagues, Michael Stuhlbarg (Body of Lies) plays Larry Gopnik, physics professor, husband and father of two. With his son's bar mitzvah approaching, his tenure application up for review and his unemployed math genius brother (Richard Kind) sleeping on his couch, he is knocked for a loop when his wife asks for a divorce so she can marry another man, played by the velvet-voiced Fred Melamed (Shadows and Fog). Larry seeks guidance from two different rabbis -- played by George Wyner and Big Bang Theory's Simon Henberg -- but each is unhelpful in his own way, and a third, legendary rabbi can't even give him the time. Even his lawyer (the hysterical Adam Arkin) is unable to fully combat the tide of injustices being heaped on him, including the divorce, a property dispute with his neighbor, a bribery offer from a failing student and the arrest of his brother for trolling at a gay bar.

Eventually, Larry and his brother are asked (by the velvet-voiced cuckolder) to leave the house for a nearby hotel, where they at least don't have to listen to Larry's ungrateful children complain about their uncle hogging the bathroom, or the lousy reception on F-Troop. Besides being unable to watch his favorite program, Larry's son has more serious problems, in that he stole $20 from his sister (who stole it from their father) to pay off his pot dealer, but the money was confiscated by a teacher, along with his pocket radio. (Jefferson Airplane is his groove of choice, and their music and lyrics permeate the film.) Now he gets chased home from the bus stop every day (luckily, his dealer is slightly overweight), and he spends his evenings fending off his sister while practicing for his bar mitzvah.

Larry's family is played entirely by unknowns, with only theater credits to their names, and even Mr. Stuhlbarg is not a well-known screen actor, which lends itself to the perception that this is an average, ordinary family in the Midwest. After the star-studded spectacle of the Coens last outing, Burn After Reading, it's a refreshing change of pace, and reminds one of a time when the biggest actor in their movies was M. Emmet Walsh. Aside from two or possibly three (it's hard to tell) relatively zany dream sequences, the film is more or less firmly grounded in reality, with the exception of the opening segment. In an old Jewish folk tale (made up by the Coens), a man meets a dybbuk (or dead man's spirit) on the road home, and invites him in for soup. His wife thinks this means they are cursed (although she should be happy actor Fyvush Finkle is visiting), and she reacts accordingly, and violently. I'm still not quite sure of the significance of this story, but it probably has something to do with Larry's perceptions of misfortune infiltrating his life.

In the end, this may be the Coen Brothers' most important film, because the question of why these terrible things happen to Larry -- and, in a larger sense, to most Coen Brothers characters -- is more or less answered, with the explanation that God is mysterious. Bad things happen to good people all the time, and looking for reasons or meaning behind it is pointless. The best way to deal with it is to simply go with the flow -- a technique utilized to great effect by the Dude in The Big Lebowski, I might add, and one which Larry eventually learns to adopt himself. Naturally, that's when God hits him with a doozy.

...And by "God," I of course mean the Coen Brothers.

Did you see A Serious Man? What did you think? Seriously, tell us below.