Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

“This is the kind of picture you get to make after you've won an Oscar," writes Todd McCarthy in Variety. The devastating tragicomedy has been called the Coen brother’s most serious, mature and possibly best film. It is certainly their most personal and intensely Jewish. The Coens open with a quote from Rashi: “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.” Next comes a dark folk tale set in the old country, spoken in Yiddish and starring Fyvush Finkel no less. This prologue forecasts an evil spell, which is exactly what seems to be cast over the film’s hapless hero, physics professor Larry Gopnick. A modern retelling of the Book of Job set 1967 in the Jewish suburb of Minneapolis of the Coen’s youth, this comedy of despair tests all our assumptions about life, faith, love, family and friendship. This cinematic meditation on cosmic injustice is horrifying and hilarious, and quintessentially Jewish.

“Man plans, God laughs, and so do the Coen brothers.” Colin Colvert, Star Tribune