A Key for Understanding "A Serious Man"

I have heard two kinds of responses to the latest Coen movie.  1) misunderstanding of the film and attempting an interpretation which is off base and 2) confession of total befuddlement.

Here it is. The point of the movie is Uncertainty, from beginning to end. I am certain of it. Any theological talk is just more stuff that we are uncertain about. We are uncertain about virtually everything in the movie, and the Coens are showing the frustration that comes from uncertainty, not trying to answer any questions, not relieving the tension, not resolving the story. They are just letting us stew in uncertainty in an entertaining, movie-world, story. A Jewish sort-of response to uncertainty is, "just accept it", and that's all we are left with.


Here are some of the ways that this theme is presented.

1. Larry Gopnick is a physics teacher. In the two classroom scenes, he is describing first the so-called Schrodinger's Cat experiment and then later Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. These are well known problems in physics that rest on uncertainty.
2. His brother Arthur's "Mentaculus" is a probability map of the universe. It apparently works because Arthur uses it to win at gambling, but he is caught and, combined with a sodomy charge, gets in trouble with the law.
3. I probably should start with this: the opening scene with the couple speaking Yiddish and the old man said to be a ghost (dybbuk). At the end of this scene, the viewer is left with the question - was the old man a dybbuk or not? It was never resolved. Has God cursed them (as the woman said), or not? It seems at the end, that yes, whether he was a dybbuk or not, God has cursed them because either they are visited by the dead, or she has stabbed and possibly killed a great man in their community. Either way, they are ruined. The movie never comes back to it. You the viewer are left uncertain about it.
4. The opening quote by Rashi, even before the scene with the Yiddish couple, says "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you."
5. Words to the song that shows up a few times: "When the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within you dies, dont you want somebody to love..." Larry says "...a bolt from the blue...everything I thought was one way turns out to be another." Uncertainty again.
6. In his argument with Clive over the bribe money we first hear that actions have consequences - not just physics. Morally. Clive says, "mere surmiser. Very uncertain." There it is again.
7. Clive's father confronts Larry in the driveway with a humorous no-win lawsuit situation that ends with "accept the mystery."
8. There is talk of morality, yet the phrase is mentioned in various contexts "but I didn't do anything."
9. None of the three rabbis are able to help him, though the first two at least offer mild "be positive" advice similar to the quote from Rashi above.  But the point is that theologians don't have answers, and no longer ask the questions themselves, and encourage people not to get uptight about the questions.
10. Arthur "never complains" we hear early in the film. Larry wonders if its wrong to complain about paying for Sy Ableman's funeral. Toward the end, Arthur can hold it no longer, and bursts into a torrent of complaining that Hashem has never given him anything. This is a motif, but doesn't really illuminate uncertainty.
11. The frustrating story of the Goy's Teeth - there is no point. These questions are like a toothache - you feel it for a while, then it goes away. This is the second rabbi. Larry wants answers definitively but he's told God doesn't owe us answers. The rabbi is OK with this, but Larry is not. Perhaps his own study of uncertainty should inform him.
12. Can any one doubt that the Coen's smoke pot?
13. The tenure committee "doesn't make moral judgments".
14. Even at the end, though you may strongly suspect things, you dont actually know what happens:
• dont know if the tornado killed everybody
• dont know if the teacher got the door unlocked before the tornado came
• dont know if Fagel ever got his money back
• dont know what the doctor found - he just wanted Larry to come in to talk about it
• dont know who was sending the anonymous letters to the tenure committee (they continued to come in after Sy died)
• dont know if Arthur was really guilty of sodomy
• dont know where the property line actually is on Larry's yard (the attorney who was going to illuminate it died of a heart attack before he could tell what he found)

I think the Coen's are full of questions and dont pretend to have any answers.