Writer: Ethan Coen

Ethan Coen studied philosophy at Princeton and the influence is visible in how often the films stage a question about meaning and then refuse to answer it. A Serious Man is the clearest case, restaging the Book of Job in 1960s Minnesota with no resolution offered.

He and his brother won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for No Country for Old Men, a script that follows McCarthy’s novel closely, including the decision to stage the climactic event off screen.

He has also published short fiction and written for the stage, and the prose voice is recognisably the same as the film dialogue.