Serious Consideration give the Coen's Serious Man, Michael Stuhlbarg

In New York magazine this week, Eric Kohn profiles Michael Stuhlbarg, the star of the new film by the Coen Brothers, A Serious Man. Here's the lede, in which Kohn gets to the essence of what makes Stuhlgard's performance work:

Michael Stuhlbarg gets his breakthrough film role with the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man. And as far as breakthroughs go, it’s a bravely quiet one. Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a rational physicist forced to deal with all sorts of irrationality when his wife first asks for a divorce, then moves her lover into their house. The film could just as easily have been called The Straight Man, since Stuhlbarg is essentially reacting to everybody else’s outrageousness—his nagging wife Judith (Sari Lennick), a good-for-nothing brother (Richard Kind), and various rabbis consulted for spiritual guidance. In any other actor’s hands, Gopnik’s passivity would be unendurable, but the actor finds so many subtle ways to register bafflement and good-natured exhaustion that his suffering becomes endlessly entertaining. “The danger was that the performance would become some sort of shticky thing,” says Ethan. “The guy’s kind of a schlemiel, and that could be a Woody Allen character. Michael brought a soulfulness that rescued the character from that.” Stuhlbarg read for three parts; he was so perfect for two of them that at one point the brothers joked about having him play both. “It was a weird casting conundrum we’d never had before,” says Ethan. “We would have cloned him if we could have,” adds Joel.