The Coen brothers’ best movie is a painfully funny comedy about a physics professor, Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlberg), benumbed but bewildered by his wife’s announcement that she’s fallen in love with their neighbour Sy Abelman (the unctuous Fred Melamed) and she wants a get (a divorce). Professionally, too, things take a turn for the worse when a failing student tries to bribe and blackmail Larry for a passing grade. Indeed, things get so dark that the professor is moved to consult with a rabbi…
The Coens — cultural magpies whose movies are often inspired by literature and other films — drew on their experience of growing up in a Jewish suburb of Minneapolis in the late 1960s for what is, probably, their most personal film. It’s also, one should add, their most “serious”, an intellectually rigorous existential inquiry into faith, and, for some of us, their funniest.
This is the first Coens’ film to address religion head-on, and a fat lot of good it does Larry, who stumbles from one crisis to the next, never resolves anything and only pleads helplessly that he “hasn’t done anything.”
Jul 29: Intro by Marc Staehling, broadcaster
As funny, heartbreaking, questioning, trying, exasperating and sincerely inquisitive a portrait of the human condition as you’ll find on screen.
Sean Axmaker
A philosophical and painfully relatable tale that contends with big questions… the most blisteringly honest in the Coen catalogue.
IndieWire
The scariest comedy ever made.
Sean Fennessy, The Ringer
Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
Michael Stuhlberg, Richard Kind, Fred Melamed, Sari Lennick
USA
2009
English
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Credits
Screenwriter
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Cinematography
Roger Deakins
Editor
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Original Music
Carter Burwell
Production Design
Jess Gonchor
Art Director
Deborah Jensen
Also in This Series
These movies speak to our times and push the boundaries of the art form — the true modern classics we’re confident will withstand the test of time.
In the Mood for Love
Wong Kar-wai's most acclaimed and popular film is a love story about two neighbours (Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung) who are drawn together by the long absences of their respective spouses + a newly released short companion piece from 2001.
Paprika
A device capable of transmitting dreams falls into the wrong hands in this dazzling anime meta-movie from visionary filmmaker Satoshi Kon. The imagery here is never less than overwhelming; it's probably the greatest scifi movie of our times.
Certain Women
Spare, incisive portraits of four Montana women (Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone) brushing up against the everyday wears and tears of difficult men, their own circumstances, and the desire for something better.
Melancholia
Lars von Trier squares up to the end times with this grandly luxuriant but surprisingly punky sci-fi, set in an imposing country mansion house, where Justine (Kirsten Dunst) blows up what's supposed to be the happiest day of her life.
Moonlight
Moonlight is many things -- a portrait of a young black man coming of age in Miami in the 1980s, a film about fathers and sons, about mentorship and about the scourge of drugs -- but it is also one of the most piercing movie romances of the last decade.
Lady Bird
Greta Gerwig's first film as writer-director is a delightful, painful comedy about "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan), a Sacramento teen on the point of swapping high school for college, and her hard-working mom, Marion (Laurie Metcalf).
Silence
This sober, probing examination of faith, ego, cruelty and compassion is the most underrated film from the often under-valued latter half of Martin Scorsese's brilliant career; a passion project, about Catholic missionaries in 17th Century Japan.
Synecdoche, New York
Charlie Kaufman wrote Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- all great, all successful -- then turned director with Synecdoche, which is a masterpiece and which basically went unseen. It's overdue rediscovery.