The Coen Brothers
© 2011 by John Varley; all rights reserved
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The Coen Brothers
© 2011 by John Varley; all rights reserved |
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I stumbled across a list of the 50 Best Directors Working Today at the IMDb. It looks like it was compiled by one person (screen name michaakchoti) and he ranked them in order. Here are his first 10:
It’s not a bad list. Surely movie buffs could argue endlessly about it (and the other 40; only one woman?). For myself I wouldn’t put Spielberg at the top, but somewhere a little lower. I wouldn’t have Fincher or Aronofsky in the Top 10 at all. Malick? He’s only made five films, and though it’s true that three of them are masterpieces, that’s a mighty thin record. If I was picking Number One, it would be either Scorsese or … two for the price of one: The Coen Brothers. There’s no doubt in my mind that they are the most innovative directors (and writers and producers and editors) working today. People speak of “a Coen Brothers film,” and it’s true there are certain characteristics that one can point out common to their movies, but in another sense they have been all over the place. They have made comedies and dramas, and seem to be working their way though most of the well-known film genres and having a great deal of fun with them. (I eagerly await the Coen musical comedy, if they ever get around to it.) (O Brother Where Art Thou doesn’t count; sure it’s full of great music, but I’m talking about where characters suddenly burst into a musical number to express their feelings. The Good Old MGM Stuff.) And, yes, they have made at least one stinker … but so did Hitchcock, so did Kurosawa, so did Fellini, so did Scorsese, so did Spielberg, so did Bergman, so did … well, I can’t say that about Kubrick, and I’ve seen all his films except the first, Fear and Desire. He made some lesser films and some greater ones, but never a stinker. Kubrick is God, let’s face it. I have seen all the Coen films, too. But we thought it would be fun to go back and look at them all again, sequentially. So that’s what we did …
The world is full o' complainers. An' the fact is, nothin' comes with a guarantee. Now I don't care if you're the pope of Rome, President of the United States or Man of the Year; somethin' can all go wrong. Now go on ahead, y'know, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help, 'n watch him fly. Now, in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else... that's the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas, an' down here... you're on your own. What unfolds then is the damnedest story, one where at almost any point if someone had said something, everything would have fallen into place and two people would have lived. But that’s the whole point. They became blood simple. So might we all, in a similar situation. The movie is bloody as hell, and not one drop of the blood is gratuitous. It is gruesome. A man is buried alive, another has his hand pinned to a windowsill with a knife. And it all worked. What a script. And what acting. Dan Hedaya is another who got a lot of good parts based on his chilling performance. And of course there is Frances McDormand. This is her first screen credit. She came out of nowhere (Chicago, actually), and just kept going. I’ve never seen her be less than great in any of her films. She married Joel Coen soon after this picture, and has been in a bunch of Coen films. I’d have sworn she was from Texas after seeing this film, but she’s equally at ease as a Minnesotan in her Oscar-winning role in Fargo. She’s willing to take non-starring roles, and still works in the theater when she can. One hell of an actress. IMDb.com
This was Holly Hunter’s first starring film role and she totally nails the quirky character of police officer Edwina “Ed” McDunnough, who is wooed and won (entirely during the times she is taking his booking photo) by hapless, sad sack, multiple-time-loser Herbert I. “Hi” McDunnough, Nicholas Cage, who also hilariously narrates. They find she can’t have children. (“Edwina's insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.” He talks like that all the time.) Meanwhile, the wife of Nathan Arizona, the unfinished furniture king, has quintuplets. Ed reasons they’d hardly miss one, and she and Hi set out to take one. Just one. Is that so bad? The rest of the movie is madcap antics as Hi and Ed battle two of Hi’s escaped convict friends, John Goodman and William Forsythe, and the biker from Hell, Randall “Tex” Cobb, and their wife-swapping neighbors, including Frances McDormand. It is all deliberately WAY over the top, with people bursting into tears without warning, yelling maniacally, spouting wonderfully philosophic lines. Tex’s bike leaves a trail of fire on the highway, and he seems to be invisible some of the time. Is it symbolic? Who cares? It’s funny on just about any level you want, from wry satire to out-and-out slapstick. Where else are you going to hear Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony picked out on a banjo and yodeled? And it has one of the funniest final lines of any movie I know. (SPOILER WARNING!) Here is Hi’s final speech, made while a series of dream images shows on the screen, and considerably shortened:
This is a stunning movie. John Turturro is the guy who frequently appears in CB films: the hapless fellow in way over his head, without a clue what is going on. (Just like me.) Or what to do about it. He’s a serious playwright, convinced he can change the world through his writing, and he has almost no conversation beyond that. On the strength of a hit play in New York, he is offered a job in Hollywood (I’m crying out don’t! Don’t!). He checks into a hotel reminiscent of the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in Disneyland. Though the long, long corridor has shoes put out at night for every room, we never see anyone but his neighbor, traveling salesman John Goodman. They hired him for his social conscience, so what do they assign him to write? A wrestling picture, naturally. Well, they did it to Faulkner, and there is a Faulkneresque character here, nicely played by John Mahoney. The wonderful Judy Davis is his lover/secretary. Poor John has absolutely no idea how to write a boxing picture. He is totally dominated by the studio head, Michael Lerner. (His office is perfect; the offices of the Thalberg Building at MGM, where I had many a meeting, are exactly like that.) He got an Oscar nomination. But the picture is totally dominated by John Goodman. He is physically dominating simply by his size, but it’s more than that. His weird personality strikes you right in the face, and you never know from one scene to the next what he’s going to be like. I’m not going to get into the end, which is shocking, but will say that it involves a gruesome murder that happens off camera, revelations about Goodman, and a spectacular fire in the hotel. I was totally mesmerized this time around, and to hell with symbolism. IMDb.com
Only Tim has an idea. He always shows it to people as a simple circle dawn on a piece of paper. His only explanation: “You know … for kids.” They figure this for a sure-fire loser, and make millions of them. Trouble is, it’s the Hula Hoop. So here’s a reversal. With some previous CB films, I didn’t like them much on the first viewing, and liked them a lot later 20 years down the road. With this one, I recall liking it quite a bit … but not so much now. I still laughed a lot, and was wowed by the sets and camera work and such, but the characters never really came alive. I still enjoyed it, but it is far from the Coens’ best. IMDb.com
The only possible reason I can see for not liking this film is the violence. It is there, certainly, and some of it is gruesome, but no one ever makes a feast of it, as is done in so many movies now. I remember being stunned at the scene when Steve Buscemi’s psycho partner puts a bullet in the state trooper’s head, and Steve just sits there with the cop’s brains all over him, muttering “Oh, daddy. Oh, daddy.” That was closely followed by another scene no other director would have done. A car chase at night on an icy road, and all we see are the distant taillights. Suddenly they’re gone, and soon we’re driving past an overturned car, headlights still on, engine still running. Come on, really? Can you imagine any other director not making a huge deal out of that? Probably with slomo and multiple camera angles? Been there, done that. This is so much more effective. But what really sets this movie apart is the character of Marge Gunderson, as written by the Coens and brought to brilliant life by Frances McDormand. Yah, yer durn tootin’! She has pointed out something people tend to forget: that her character doesn’t appear until far into the film. The main story is really about Macy’s character, the world-class loser Jerry Lundegaard. And he is brilliant. But Marge steals the picture. Totally against what you would expect, this pregnant small-town police chief is one sharp cop, way ahead of everyone else every step of the way. And she is so darn nice! I love her, you love her, everyone loves her. Every question is followed by a brilliant smile. You could call her a cliché, I guess, but she’s such an attractive one. She is listed at #33 on the AFI’s top 100 film heroes. This is one of the finest movies ever made. Every scene is a classic, there is no way it could have been improved. It was much better than the Oscar winner that year, The English Patient, which is already pretty much forgotten while Fargo lives on, and Bill Macy was better than Cuba Gooding, Jr., and should have won. I’m glad McDormand won, and the Coens for the screenplay. And I’m so happy it was the break-out role for Macy, who after finally coming to the attention of the casting directors after almost 20 years in the business, suddenly found himself with more work than he could handle. He is currently listed as having no less that nine projects in the works, and I’d see any of them, just on the strength of his name. There was an excellent short on the DVD, called “Minnesota Nice,” where all the principle actors and the Coens tell their stories about the movie. Joke: What’s the best way to get four Minnesotans out of a swimming pool? Say, “Would you please get out of the pool?” William H. Macy declares that his life changed after Fargo. Suddenly he was offered parts he knew he never would have gotten, and his career really took off. IMDb.com
Peter Howell, in his review for the Toronto Star, wrote, "It's hard to believe that this is the work of a team that won an Oscar last year for the original screenplay of Fargo. There's a large amount of profanity in the movie, which seems a weak attempt to paper over dialogue gaps." Howell revised his opinion in a later review, and more recently stated that "it may just be my favourite Coen Bros. film. That’s quite a turnaround. I recall many people doing similar about-faces for 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Bonnie and Clyde, films I loved instantly. We all make mistakes. This is the story of Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, who early on is mistaken by some seriously dumb thugs for a very rich asshole of the same name. He and his bowling buddies, including Steve Buscemi and John Goodman in one of his patented scary maniac roles, set out to … well, I’m not really sure, and neither are they. Their misadventures pile on each other and are very funny. And that’s basically it. Who knew it would turn into a giant cult classic? The story is only the surface. It all revolves around Jeff Bridges and his amazing performance as the laid-back Dude. He slouches through the role, looking half asleep most of the time, and it’s perfect. He really just doesn’t seem to want to be bothered by life and its strife. He’s content to bowl every night, smoke sweet dope, and make it through the day moderately unscathed, taking it easy, going with the flow. Did you know there is a semi-joke religion now, called Dudeism, or The Church of the Latter-Day Dude? I didn’t, either. They claim over 100,000 ordained priests. Holy Cow! All from one little film! IMDb.com
Yes, it’s based on the Odyssey (which the Coens admit they never even read) with Ulysses Everett McGill trying to find his way home to his wife Penelope (Holly Hunter) and daughters, encountering Cyclops (John Goodman) and a group of sirens along the way, but that’s the least of the pleasures here. He and his trusting companions John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson also ride with Babyface Nelson for a while, and pick up Robert Johnson at a crossroads where he has just sold his soul to the devil. They later break him out of a Klan lynching that is at the same time both one of most chilling and funniest scenes I have ever seen. Like in Raising Arizona, the dialogue is deliberately more poetic and educated than these characters are likely to speak, and it works very well. Don’t expect the story to make much sense, or to get anywhere. Like the Odyssey, it is a series of adventures on the road (well, the sea is a road, when you’re trying to get somewhere). And the title … well, when I first heard it I was overcome with joy, and knew I would see it, no matter what. That’s because it was brazenly stolen from one of my favorite films by the great Preston Sturges, Sullivan’s Travels. In that picture, Joel McRae as Sullivan was tired of making stupid comedy movies like Ants in Your Pants of 1938. He wanted to make a serious picture about poverty and human suffering (things he knows absolutely nothing about). So he’s bought a book called O Brother, Where Art Thou? The movie was never made by the fictional director … but now it exists! Hurray! But the real attraction is the music, always. We go from one lovely set piece to another, each one showcasing a different aspect of this wonderful music. I bought the soundtrack as soon as it came out, and listened to it over and over. And many of the musicians on it got together for the “Down From the Mountain” tour, which did very good business and brought some of these people a new career and revived the careers of others, I’m happy to say. For that alone the Coens should be thanked, but they have also made a sweet and astounding movie that I’ll be happy to see over and over again. IMDb.com
So all the technical stuff works fabulously. The story is a humdinger, too, sordid and ironic as noir should be. Acting is uniformly first-rate, with Tony Shalhoub as a fancy city lawyer, and several others we’ve seen in previous Coen movies, including Joe Polito as a sleazy and improbably gay man selling dry cleaning franchises. (Dry cleaning was one of those post-war “miracles,” like television and TV dinners.) Scarlett Johannson—16 at the time—is very good. The wonderful Frances McDormand appears in her sixth Coen film (she has said that sleeping with the director—her husband Joel Coen—hasn’t hurt in getting parts in Coen films), and is as good and different as usual. She sees herself as a character actress, even though she frequently stars, and she’s right. She can become almost anything. Billy Bob gives a performance so motionless, emotionless, and restrained that you almost want to fit him for a casket. This works … most of the time. If the film has a flaw it is that the deliberately slow pace sometimes felt just too slow. Here and there I wanted to hurry it along a bit. I also wasn’t quite sure of the choice of music. It’s almost entirely Beethoven piano sonatas, most often the Pathétique. I love the music, but I sometimes didn’t think it fit that well with the noir story. It would have been interesting to see it re-scored by one of the big Hollywood composers of the era, who would certainly have written something more dramatic. But that’s a quibble. This movie continues the Coens’ streak of brilliance to nine. Are they heading for a fall, like Pixar finally did with Cars 2? Tune in next week for the next exciting episode. IMDb.com
But that’s the problem, I thought. Is there anyone in the world more cynical than a divorce lawyer? Anyone more grasping than a woman who marries for nothing but money? The movie is very good while it keeps these characters true to their nature. Then George becomes infatuated with Catherine, shows his weakness. That’s great, but when she makes a fool of him, he behaves uncharacteristically. And she does, too, and that’s where it feels false. It would have remained funny if they had continued to joust with each other, instead of the sappy ending we get here. I didn’t believe a roomful of divorce lawyers applauding George’s epiphany, and I didn’t like Catherine softening. They were both con artists, and it should have remained a duel of wits until the end. And beyond. That would have been a decent Coen movie; this is not. It shows none of the real strengths of the brothers, and in the end is nothing but an okay, but routine, romantic comedy. That may be because they never intended to direct this picture in the first place. They had rewritten it from the original writers eight years before, and others were set to direct, but dropped out, and they took over. Not a good idea. Don’t misunderstand me, though. I laughed a lot, I had a good time. But it hadn’t stuck with me. A second viewing was like the first, in that I had no idea what was coming up. It wasn’t a Coen Brothers film. IMDb.com
However, he did write one good book, and that’s this one. It’s a good story, skillfully told, and has some decent people in it. All is not despair, though, of course, it’s a long way from cheerful. That’s not a problem; I read a lot of books that explore the uglier sides of life. This one does, and there seems little hope, but at least there is the country sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones, totally superb in the role) who, though dumbfounded by the new levels of violence he sees around him, still does his best against the rising tides of anarchy and despair. There will be some SPOILERS here. This book might have been written with the Coens in mind. As in so many of their movies, nothing goes as planned, and the plot doesn’t unfold as expected. I’ll quote once more from Detective Loren Visser (M. Emmett Walsh) in Blood Simple: “Now I don't care if you're the pope of Rome, President of the United States or Man of the Year; somethin' can all go wrong.” Those were the very first words spoken in the very first Coen Brothers movie, and they could serve as the theme of most of the ones that followed. Here a man (Josh Brolin) comes upon a drug deal gone bad in the West Texas plains. Dead men and dogs and weapons all over the place. A pickup full of heroin. A briefcase full of money. He can’t resist. Takes the money back to his double-wide and his mousy wife (Kelly McDonald, and who would guess she’s really a wee Scottish lassie?). But one man had been still alive, and had pleaded for agua, which Josh didn’t have. He can’t sleep, goes back with a gallon of water … and is ambushed by people looking for the loot. He barely escapes. The irony is that, had it not been for his humanitarian impulse, he probably could have gotten away clean. Still, you never know. Something can all go wrong … The story is remarkable in that the three main characters—sheriff, thief, and hired killer—hardly ever meet. The killer relentlessly tracks the thief, and they shoot at each other, but that’s as close as they get. And the thief, who we are rooting for, or at least I was, dies … off-screen! This hardly ever happens in a movie. I’d say never, but someone would probably come up with another instance. In a brilliant scene, the sheriff hears a lot of gunfire as he approaches the motel where he expects to find Brolin, sees gunmen fleeing in a truck, and comes upon the aftermath of a big gun battle. A dead woman by the pool, a badly hurt man crawling away, and Brolin, shot to pieces. Like the night-time car crash in Fargo, any other director would have made a big deal of this scene, showing every bullet hit in loving detail. This is so much more effective. Some have said that Tommy Lee Jones is the center of this movie, but I think it is the killer, Anton Chigurh—called “Sugar” by most of the cast in the fascinating DVD extras—played by Javier Bardem. (He won the Supporting Actor Oscar.) He has been compared to Hannibal Lecter, but I think he’s better. I never believed in a man like Lecter. He’s fun in the movies, but no way, no way. Sugar is real, a psychopath with a twisted set of rules, a man who seems indifferent to pain, and not conversant with anything we would think of as humanity. He is so chilling he could give you nightmares, with his sleepy eyes, his weird haircut, his low, emotionless voice. He smiles once, and it’s a frightening thing to see. It’s a real accomplishment for Bardem. Anybody else and you would expect a sequel, like that awful Hannibal book and movie. After all, he’s still alive at the end. And we never know what happened. We don’t see Sugar kill Brolin’s wife, though we’re sure he’s done it. The sheriff doesn’t get his man. He retires, fed up with it all. The thief doesn’t get away with it. Woody Harrelson shows up as the cocky bounty hunter only long enough to get blown away. Good does not triumph, but neither does evil. I wasn’t even clear on who got the money, but it wasn’t Chigurh. Little is resolved, there is no neat little package all tied up. It’s sort of like … well, like real life. IMDb.com
It’s all very funny, very sly, and as so often in Coen movies, hardly anybody does anything very smart. They are all more or less average people in way over their heads. Not a James Bond or a Jason Bourne anywhere in sight. It is unexpectedly violent here and there, including one scene so startling we had to back up the DVD and watch it again to be sure just what happened, but it’s really all played for laughs, and it all worked for me. Great acting, great writing, unconventional story, but not really top-notch Coen. IMDb.com
Another Coen film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? was broadly based on The Odyssey, and this one seems to have been inspired even more broadly by the Book of Job. It concerns a good man who bad things happen to. Larry Gopnik spends most of the picture trying to understand what it is Hashem (God) wants from him. He is your archetypal schlemiel. A schnook. (Isn’t Yiddish a wonderful language?) He consults a rabbi, then another, and the best they can come up with is, “Who knows?” And, oh, brother, the people he’s surrounded with! Within the first thirty minutes I got a better understanding of why somebody might suddenly grab a pistol and start killing everyone in sight. His permanent houseguest brother is a whining crybaby, a total loser. His daughter spends all her time washing her hair, if she can liberate the bathroom from its permanent occupation by the brother. (“Out in a minute!” he shouts a dozen times.) His son cares about nothing but adjusting the TV antenna so he can see “F Troop” and getting seriously fucked-up on grass. He’s stoned at his Bar Mitzvah. His wife is cold and angry about something he doesn’t understand, and is leaving him. She wants a gett. (“A what?” everyone asks. A ritual divorce. Oh, a gett.) She’s leaving him for Sy Ableman (Sy Ableman, that putz? everyone asks), brilliantly portrayed in one of the most teeth-grating performances I’ve ever seen by Fred Melamed. I mean, thirty seconds after he appeared I wanted to drag him out to the parking lot, kick him in the nuts, break both his arms, and knock out all his teeth. Now do you want to hug and talk it all over, you loathsome putz? And I’m not a violent man! I’ve never done any of those things to anybody! But this is the mid-sixties, and he’s one of those touchy-feely gumballs who wants to give you a hug, who invades your personal space, whose every statement is so goddam reasonable that you’d be an ingrate to disagree with him. This, from the man your wife is divorcing you so she can be with him! This may be the most Jewish movie I’ve ever seen, including some from Israel. These are not the funny-hat Jews (clothing is a good rule of thumb for judging how weird, ingrown, insular, and stupid a religion is, particularly hats; with Mormons it’s underwear), but they are orthodox, and a lot of their lives revolve around religion. Some have accused the Jewish Coens of ridiculing Jews. Well, so what? They kidded Texans, Minnesotans, and plenty of others. Why not Jews? From my perspective as an atheist they are pretty silly. As are, I hasten to add, all other religions. As always, every character has something quirky about him, and as in most of their films, they don’t care about what other people consider the right timing for a scene. This annoys some people, but I find it a welcome change from cookie-cutter directing and editing. I can see why actors love working with them; it gives them a chance to stretch out. It’s not their best film, but it’s up there in the top 20%. With the Coens, that means it’s better than 99% of Hollywood’s output. IMDb.com
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