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There are two things present in every Coen Bros film – crime and fools.  Usually the fools are the ones committing the crimes and trying (failing) to get away with them.  However, it never feels like the brothers have any sympathy towards the “heroes.”  On the contrary, it often feels like they enjoy making up idiots so they can point and laugh at them.  In this film, though, they seem to finally flip that and reach out a helping hand to Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), obscure as that help may be. The Coens are among the smartest writer/directors working today.  Heck, they translated Homer’s Odyssey into a Depression-era Midwestern road trip.  Their worldview finds humor in oddities and  discomfort – a handshake that lasts a few seconds too long, an unwanted hug, an awkward silence after a bit of stupidity has been uttered.  It is in the mundane that the Coens find their comic muse and, in this film, there is a lot of humor to be found.

This movie is along the lines of Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn’t There – more of a fable then a straightforward narrative.  It even begins with fable, a ghost story of sorts, spoken entirely in Hebrew.  People not knowing this side of the Coens may not be prepared for this, and the ending of this film is likely to enrage more people than the way they ended No Country For Old Men.  However, the great score by Carter Burwell, with its slightly off-tempo repeating 8-note motif subconsciously prepares you for this slightly off tale.  Plus this film is chock full of Jewish culture, so much so that I felt a bit of culture shock by the time the movie ended and was positive I had missed out on jokes and deeper meanings along the way.  That’s not to say that the movie is not accessible to everyone, but I’m sure that it means much more to someone practicing the faith.  We follow Larry Gopnik, a mild-mannered and meek physics teacher as his life slowly starts to unravel.  His wife (Sari Lennick) asks for a divorce to marry a family friend (Fred Melamed), his brother (Richard Kind) is constantly draining his sebaceous cyst and won’t move into his own home.  A student (David Kang) is trying to bribe him for a passing grade and his son (Aaron Wolff) simply cannot get a clear enough signal to catch F-Troop.

As he sees neither reason nor rhyme for all the new stress that has started flooding his life, he searches for answers first in his knowledge and education.  However, a thorough, albeit brief, scan through Schrodinger’s theory and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle bring him nothing more then that which he already knew, that he can’t ever know what’s really going on.  He then returns to the faith he had abandoned to see if that could be of more help.  Junior Rabbi Scott (played by The Big Bang Theory’s Simon Helberg) and Rabbi Machtner (George Wyner) give us the main words of wisdom in this film.  In common Coen fashion, their seeds of wisdom are folded between layers of hilarity.  Often important lines are placed in the mouths of people with funny voices or are covered within a comic story.

Take, as an example, this story told by Rabbi Machtner about a dentist who finds Hebrew words engraved in the back of one of his patients teeth.  The dentist goes crazy trying to find out why “Help me” was written in his patient’s mouth.  Was it a code to be broken?  Was God sending him a sign?   In the end, well, let’s just say he didn’t find what he was looking for, but he found what he needed.  We may feel like Larry and ask “Why does God make us ask the questions if he’s not going to give us the answers?”  In the same way, at the end of the film, I wanted to ask the Coens why they made me feel the questions were so important if they were not going to give me answers.  I found myself thinking, “The bros are too smart to create art for the sake of art, but they do have the sense of humor to make something that means nothing to them and crack up at all the deep philosophies people will read into it.”  I wondered if they had pulled a fast one and if now I was the fool they were pointing and laughing at, while I tried to make some sense out of this inanity, these random scenes, that infuriating ending.  Then I realized that they had given me the answers.  Everybody is waiting for the punch line, for the grand finale. The Coens are saying that it’s the journey, the setup, the little things learned along the way that are more important.  That happiness and contentment can be found by changing your perspective – like looking at common things, like a parking lot, with a renewed sense of awe.  Perhaps, these are the only things that are of importance.  In the end, the brothers are asking you to receive with simplicity all that happens to you.  Accept the mystery.

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