The Coen Brother's latest film is so anchored in Jewish culture that I'm not sure that I'm even supposed to 'get it.'  At a basic level, I do get what they are after here--this is a loose retelling of the Book of Job and it's easy enough to track where the story is going.  The film's hero, Larry Gopnik, is a meek but honorable man with a job and a family and a faith that he isn't really sold on and from there, his life begins to fall apart quickly.  His wife wants to leave him for an obnoxious widower, his kids could give a shit about Hebrew school, his boss has an uncanny way of leading him to believe that he might not get tenure, one of his students is bribing him, he's getting sick, and his shut-in brother is a sweet nuisance.  Those are the basic threads that start to unravel, and the movie revels in that downward trajectory.  There's a certain amount of black humor in all of it, but by the end, it kind of just feels like a downer.

If this is the Coens' expression of atheism then it's pretty effective.  Where Job is put through the ringer to prove his love and obedience, Larry Gopnik seems to go through it just for sick laughs.  There's no light at the end of the tunnel, no scene where things really look up for Larry, and no point at which Larry or the audience are led to believe that God is involved in the situation at all.  If you are expecting Larry to be rewarded for his dedication to God, you'll be sorely disappointed.

Then again, there's a moment at the film's end where Larry finally makes a bad decision.  He crosses the line and goes against his moral compass (which frankly, hasn't gotten him too far up to that point) and that might just be the point of the movie.  Either the Coens are fiercely skeptical of Judaism or they firmly believe in it and they are telling the story of Job where he finally cracks and therefore loses the game for the good guys.  Maybe we should all be rooting for Larry--in a way you can't help but like him despite the fact that he doesn't exhibit much of a spine--and maybe if the film made you root for him more overtly, the ending would have a punch.  Instead, it seems like the obvious conclusion so when the screen finally goes black, you just have to shrug and maybe nod and say 'yep, that's about the size of it.' 

In the Coen filmography, A Serious Man falls well below Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men, and The Big Lebowski, but it's still a good deal better than Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers.  Ultimately, it feels like an inside joke that I am on the outside of, so I can't say it left much of an impression.  That's OK, we'll always have Fargo.