Keeping up with every movie worth watching is a real Sisyphean task.

Right now I've only seen six of this year's Best Picture nominees, and watching movies is literally my job. The answer, as usual, is to blame someone else.

Lots of stuff looks bad, or gets mismarketed, or is hardly marketed at all. Others, like 2009's A Serious Man, may not have hit your local theater in the first place.

Professor Michael Stuhlbarg's life has hit the skids. His kids are running into trouble at school. Out of the blue, his wife wants a divorce. His tenure is in jeopardy. Troubled and confused, he seeks the counsel of his rabbis, but they might not be able to stop his life from unraveling completely.

I don't think A Serious Man saw wide release, but then again it's a Coen Brothers production. All they've ever done is create The Big Lebowski, aka The World's Most Rewatchable Film (Non-Money Shot Division), win major Oscars, and make wonderful movies for 25 years, so it's not like they have a dedicated cadre of fans so loyal they'd watch two hours of the Coens euthanizing puppies.

Then again, some of their stuff is more watchable -- or at least more comprehensible -- than others. Like Barton Fink and The Man Who Wasn't There, A Serious Man is what you might call challenging or oblique. As usual, that's my code-speak for "I don't really know what the hell's going on here."

Not to say it made no sense. The main plot's straightforward enough. In the meantime, it's got some funny moments, too, in that particular dark and absurd Coen way.

Let me digress to say I would rather be punched in the eye than do or be involved in anything that draws the Coen brothers' skeptical attention. A Serious Man's '60s-era satire knocks the teeth out of everything from the easy answers of New Age thinking to the usefulness of the oldest religious traditions. Quiet like snipers, the Coens' detached attacks are brutally effective.

So yeah, some parts of this movie must have penetrated my dense brain case. But I could feel other parts slipping past me, as if they were designed to elude understanding. Then again, when one of your main arguments is "we can't really ever know what's going on," what are you going to do, have your characters hold up big signs declaring what they're really talking about?

Nah. Just film something, like A Serious Man, that has people ready to watch it again before they're done with the first time.

* Contact Ed Robertson at edwrobertson@gmail.com