For American artists with Jewish backgrounds, there always seems to be a reserve goldmine from which to dig out quirky characters, tales of youthful mischief and old world-isms. The microcosm of American Jewish neighbourhoods – where fumbling boys experiment with pigtailed girls, steal money from collections for the Jews in Palestine, and enrage their elders – have provided many entertaining and considered meditations on modern life in general. And now to Woody Allen’s Queens, Philip Roth’s Newark and Neil Simon’s Brooklyn, we can add Joel and Ethan Coen’s Minneapolis, where their latest film, A Serious Man, is set.

However, this is no nostalgia trip or celebration of Jewish traditions. The suburban, 1960s Jew-dominated landscape of A Serious Man is a non-schmaltzy, sun-drenched flat landscape of ticky-tacky duplexes fitted with satellite dishes and identical square lawns and inhabited by bored housewives, country-club members and pot-smoking teenagers. It is an insular community, which looks at the outside world with nervousness and derision. The only non-Jews that our loser-hero, physics professor Larry Gopnik, interacts with are his white-trash, gun-toting ‘goy’ neighbours and a Korean student who tries to bribe his way to a passing grade.

In O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Cohen brothers set Homer’s Odyssey in the 1930s deep south. Here, they put Larry Gopnik through a modern-day version of the trials of Job, in a time when America was about to be hit by winds of anti-conformism and social upheaval, where the certainties of old were questioned and turned on their heads. And so they are for Larry, whose trials and tribulations will have you squirming, cringing, gawping and guffawing.

Physics professor Larry Gopnik is a freier, a sucker, whose cushy life is shredded to pieces as his tzuris mount. (A Yiddish dictionary might come in handy when watching A Serious Man.) His hectoring wife demands a get, a ritual divorce, so that she can re-marry the smarmy Sy Ableman; Larry is forced to move into a Jolly Roger motel with his snoring brother, who nurses a sebaceous cyst and works on a ‘probability map of the universe,’ the Mentaculus; the Columbia Record Club is chasing Larry for a membership fee for a scheme he never signed up to; an anonymous adversary is sending letters to Larry’s tenure committee; Larry’s daughter is stealing money from him to fund a nose job; it’s only two weeks until the Bar Mitzvah of Larry’s truant son, Danny, who is more interested in getting stoned than in rehearsing his Torah portion; and as Larry’s legal bills pile up, resisting the temptation to pocket those hundred dollar bills that the Korean student indiscreetly left on his desk gets harder and harder.

‘Why me? What have I done to deserve this?’ cries Larry. A friend tells him that while it’s not always easy to figure out what God is trying to tell us, at least as Jews they have a lot of wonderful stories and traditions to seek answers from. The friend wears leg braces.

Are the Coens laughing at the Jews? No, the Coens are laughing at Larry’s – and man’s – futile attempts to find answers to the riddles of the universe, whether it’s through consulting rabbis and folk tales or quantum mechanics. And the Coens are laughing at man’s inability to accept coincidence, an inability which leads us irrationally to cling to unearthly mysteries and conspiracy theories instead of, as the medieval rabbi Rashi, quoted with some irony at the start of A Serious Man, said: ‘Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.’

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Marge Gunderson of FargoWhile marked by murder, mayhem, deception, and all manner of chaos, there is an order—a moral order—to the world depicted in Joel and Ethan Coen’s films.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that when the moral order is upset, the consequences can be dire, brutal, and swift.

The Coeniverse is not a godless place, but the Almighty isn’t necessarily a God of mercy and grace. Sometimes God is all about fire and brimstone, retribution, and blind justice. Other times, God seems absent—a clockmaker who winds the watch and walks away. Still other times, God is a projection of our imagination and a representation more of our wants and needs than a real divine force.

Drawing on the theology of their own Jewish upbringing—as well as Christian, Buddhist, and nontheistic worldviews they may not share themselves—the Coens tackle confounding questions about the meaning of life, the nature of faith and God, and the karmic cycle with equal honesty and aplomb. The result is a complicated gospel—one that, it would seem, the filmmakers want viewers to navigate for themselves, rather than showing them the way.

That said, there are certain clear do’s and don’ts in the Coeniverse. As Walter Sobchak so kindly reminds us, “There are rules. This isn’t ’Nam.”

Walter Sobchak of The Big LebowskiTHE 14 COENMANDMENTS:

I. What goes around, comes around. Even though divine intervention happens from time to time, don’t count on it to save you from your sins.

II. Every action has a reaction. What you do has consequences, even if you don’t see them immediately.

III. Don’t mistreat women. They’re all special ladies.

IV. Whatever you try to hide, somebody will discover. In other words, your sins will find you out.

V. It is better to be kind than to be right, and love always wins.

VI. Take chances. Don’t be paralyzed by doubt or fear.

VII. Beware false piety. Sometimes there’s a stranger in your midst come to destroy you.

VIII. Don’t get too hung up on dogma and legalism. It’s just, like, your opinion, man.

IX. All moments might be key moments. Act like they are.

X. No one knows the quality of a person’s heart except for God.

XI. When it comes to suffering, don’t ask why. There’s no good answer.

XII. No one ever really knows anyone completely. Remember, you only know what a person chooses to let you know.

XIII. Be compassionate, respectful and generous — especially to strangers. You never know when you might be talking to a lamed vavnik, a prophet, or an angel in disguise.

XIV. You don’t know what God is thinking. So quit acting like you do.
Larry Gopnik of A Serious Man