Every Coen Brothers Movie Ranked Worst To Best
3. A Serious Man (2009)
A Serious Man, anchored by the career-best performance of Michael Stuhlbarg, is a black comedy-drama (where the Coen Brothers excel) about a Jewish man's existential crisis and the events that lead to him questioning his faith.
Over the course of the film, which is set in 1967 Minnesota, professor Larry Gopnik (Stuhlbarg) must face a series of obstacles in his life. His son needs money to pay for drugs, his adventurous daughter won't stop going out, and his brother is sleeping on the couch. On top of this, Larry must also face off with his work stress, which is elevated to new heights when a student bribes him for a passing grade.
A Serious Man is very simple in plot and story, but it is what the Coen Brothers are able to do with such simplicity that makes the film such a wonderous achievement. It's visually stunning, for starters, and is so bleak, dark, cynical and cruel to its protagonist that it's also endlessly engaging - the kind of darkly comic tragedy modern audiences can't turn themselves away from. And it's absolute perfection.