Slate Ponders A Serious Man

Over at Slate, Juliet Lapidos has gone against the advice of Clive's father in A Serious Man, namely to "Accept the mystery." Instead, she has immersed herself in the rich complexities of the Coen brothers' latest, which she terms "enigmatic to the point of inscrutability," a film which "leaves audiences in a state of interpretive uncertainty, popcorn uneaten, wondering what the Coens are getting at."

In the course of trying to make sense of the troubling tale of Larry Gopnik, she poses - and tries to answer - three questions: Why Larry?, Why the Yiddish Prologue?, and What Does the Ending Mean?

You can see what conclusions she reaches here.