The latest offering from the Coen Brothers is the mildly amusing A Serious Man.

The movie follows the trials and tribulations of Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg) a physics teacher in the 1960s. Gopnick is trying desperately hard to make sense of a life that is rapidly testing not only his resolve but his faith. At home his wife wants to leave him for an smarmy acquaintance, his oddball high maintenance brother who is living with him is getting into all types of scrapes, his son seems to only be interested in TV and smoking pot, his daughter is obsessed with getting a nose job and his attractive neighbour is taunting him by sunbathing nude in the garden. At work his hopes of tenure are being apparently sabotaged by a mystery letter writer and one of his students tries to bribe and then sue him for defamation.

You can’t accuse the Coen brothers of not making interesting, entertaining or funny movies and A Serious Man is another film to add to that growing repertoire. The black humour that undercuts the movie is amusing without adhering to being too esoteric or knowing. The tone and direction of the film is subtly endearing as a portrayal of just an average man’s existence of which given the darkly comedic circumstances is no less an achievement. But then the best of the Coens work always seems to be grounded in a sense of the mundane and of attributing motivations for characters even in the face of the sometimes outlandish. In A Serious Man Gopnick is facing existential angst of epic proportions as he tries to find meaning for what he has to cope with and ultimately a way to put things right.

The film is seen as the Coens most personal work to date as they have drawn on their experiences of a Jewish upbringing in a small Midwest town. It will arguably be more cogent to people who know that kind of world and appeal to die-hard Coen fans but although it has its moments and its humorous subtexts it kind of drifts off aimlessly towards the latter stage.