A Serious Man: Understanding Life and the Consequence of Action or Inaction Anonymous 12th Grade

“What's going on?” (Coen, 2009). That's the question that Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), the ill-fated protagonist of the Coen Brothers dark comedy A Serious Man keeps asking. It's a reflexive and sort of stupid question, one in response to a series of unfortunate events that seem to be tearing Larry's quiet contented suburban life apart without cause. First, his wife demands a divorce, then his student tries to blackmail him for a passing grade. His neighbor infringes on his property, then his wife's lover dies, and he's forced to pay for it. His brother gets in trouble with the law, and he has to pay for that too, then his chance at tenure is threatened by anonymous hate mail. He also gets into a car accident, witnesses the death of his lawyer and is forced to pay for record subscription even though “I didn't do anything” (Coen, 2009). Being parts of a Coen brothers film, each of these situations compound and unfold into one another with surgical precision. They are each individually illustrative of their batch of themes which taken together sort of shape out the central message of the film like one of those optical illusions that demonstrate closure. Of course, there is no real closure in A Serious Man just as there's not...