Did you read Sean Nelson's great review of A Serious Man, the new Coen Brothers movie?

A Serious Man plumbs depths even major Coen devotees might not have imagined were there. It's not a departure, exactly—except in the way all their films are departures. It's an expansion, a magnification, a breakthrough. Yes, like all their movies, it's kind of a big joke, but a joke with the darkest punch line ever. The Coen brothers, who for 25 years have been called cold formalists with more interest in Steadicams and storyboards than in human characters, have made a movie about the twilight of the Jewish soul.

I saw A Serious Man last night, and I can't stop thinking about it. I've watched the trailer a dozen times since I came home from the theater. Have you seen it? It's one of the best trailers ever:

It's an especially fitting trailer because every scene in the entire movie seems to be based on some sort of rhythm; either the scene is based around a song, or the cameras seem to be moving to an unheard beat. I'm a huge Coen Brothers fan (except, as Sean points out in his review, for The Ladykillers, which was a painful aberration), but this movie feels different than the standard Coen Brothers film. It has so many layers and emotions at play in every frame. It's about faith (and not just religious faith, either: As commenter Guillaume smartly points out on Sean's review, the movie has a lot to say about quantum mechanics, too) and love and hope and everything else that makes life worth living.

Watching A Serious Man, to me, was maybe the closest that a cinematic experience can ever get to reading a novel. It was so dense and honest and powerful. I recommend the hell out of this movie.