“A Serious Man” begins with a man (Fyvush Finkel) thought to be a dybbuk (a restless soul or evil spirit that takes over the body of a living person) being unintentionally invited to eat dinner with a poor Jewish couple.
The film then jumps forward a few hundred years to 1967, to the life of Larry Gopnick (Michael Stuhlbarg), a physics professor whose life is pretty much falling apart. His wife (Sari Lennick) openly leaves him for another man and asks for a ghet (a Jewish religious divorce). His son (Aaron Wolff) is smoking a countless number of joints behind his back and the FBI is tracking his brother (Richard Kind) for God knows what.
Meanwhile, a mysterious wad of cash is sitting on Gopnick’s desk, possibly put there by a student who doesn’t understand Larry’s obsession with Schr