A black comedy boiled down to pure metaphysical dread, A Serious Man is the Coen Brothers at their most enigmatic. Set against the quietly buzzing anxieties of 1960s Midwestern suburbia, it’s not a story so much as a spiral: a man, a question, a universe that refuses to answer. Larry Gopnik, a physics professor, seeks meaning while his world collapses with sublime indifference. This is not the Coens’ most famous film—but it may be their most personal. Born from their own Jewish upbringing in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, the film opens with a cryptic Yiddish folktale and closes with an approaching tornado. In between: rabbis, bar mitzvahs, Jefferson Airplane, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Shot by Roger Deakins in a palette of nicotine and despair, A Serious Man doesn’t explain—it stares back. A cosmic joke with perfect timing.

Loan of the film print with kind support of HfG Karlsruhe.