Ç BIG TOP ANDYTOWN | Main | RIP PAUL NEWMAN È
September 23, 2008
THE COEN BROTHERS (Part 1)
For the last twenty-odd years, Joel and Ethan Coen have put their unique stamp on the film landscape. To put their movies together is to create a patchwork quilt of history, American culture, film lore, and completely original zaniness. Despite a few failures (mild in scope), their successes are the kind that all filmmakers aspire to - every Coen Brothers movie is an event, offering the kind of unexpected thrills but completely expected quality
Before I get to their latest, BURN AFTER READING, I'll go through their whole filmography. (This will probably take two posts):
BLOOD SIMPLE - BLOOD SIMPLE is a cult favorite whose makers have gone onto the type of success usually not offered to such a niche. That the film is a dark comic noir is not particular unusual; in the early '80s Hollywood was caught in noir fever. But BLOOD SIMPLE didn't merely recycle old clichés, it took the genre to dark new places, operating with kind of realism that even most noirs ignore. When disposing of a body becomes a terrifying, confusing, bloody ordeal, the Coens deal with a situation that most films bypass for the sake of storytelling. And to top it off is M. Emmett Walsh as one of the many "big men" who manipulate the story by the sheer force of personality. BLOOD SIMPLE introduced the world to Frances McDormand, Joel's future wife, many-time star of his films, and perhaps the most prolific actress of her time.
RAISING ARIZONA - The next film could have not eschewed the trappings of the first any further. RAISING ARIZONA is everything BLOOD SIMPLE is not: light, sweet, intentionally hilarious, and slapstick. I could make an argument that Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter have never been better. Overlooked in the stark ongoings of BLOOD SIMPLE was the Coens' gift for dialogue and set-pieces. Where BLOOD SIMPLE was all about mood and setting, RAISING ARIZONA could be conceived as a Tex Avery cartoon. The film also offers the first of many masterpieces of the Coen's idea of regional dialogue, perfectly spouted by Cage's H.I. and (R.I.P.) Trey Wilson's Unpainted Furniture Salesman. The movie goes off the rails a little at the end, but what can you really expect from something as free-wheeling, inventive, and wacked-out as this amazingly rewatchable little film.
MILLERS CROSSING - Moving from the invented hick-talk of ARIZONA to the filmic language of gangsters, the Coens perfectly matched the respective darkness and humor of their first two films. What CROSSING brought to the table was a rich knowledge of film lore; BLOOD SIMPLE rejected a lot of noir stylings, but CROSSING wears its debt on every scene. The Coens are most interested in the gangster movie as a personal morality tale, and the way decisions and choices haunt even the most disaffected types. It's also a flawless recreation of the period both in scenery and costume. Released around the same time of GOODFELLAS, it offers a different take on the gangster genre - one where the stoicism is often challenged by the tendency toward humanistic impulses, and the way that compassion doesn't ultimately function in a too-real world.
BARTON FINK - A spot-on parody of both the pretentious 30s Broadway scene and the Golden Age of Hollywood, BARTON FINK gives career roles to two Coen favorites: John Turturro and John Goodman. As an integrity-driven writer scoffing the plasticity of Hollywood, Turturro has never been better. This is the best movie ever made about writers block, as Barton's room becomes his cell and the world he once laughed at becomes a living nightmare. This is balanced by Michael Lerner's studio boss, a man just as vapid as Barton thinks himself principled. FINK is at times brutal and grotesque, and it spirals to a hellish conclusion that its opening artistry doesn't predict. The more I watch it, the more I appreciate it.
THE HUDSUCKER PROXY - Waiting three years from their darkest film, the Coens returned to the comic well with this uncharacteristically clean take on the fifties. In many ways, this film would have been as a Dupont Movie in 1957. Tim Robbins' innocent becomes the pawn of Paul Newman's Faust-like corporate string-puller. The film both idealizes and demonizes the industry of the fifties, but its visually inventive to the core, and like ARIZONA, endlessly quotable ("It's for kids!"). More than any other movie of the 90s, this resembles a silent movie with its smooth, virtuoso visual storytelling. Many montages are wordless, relying on clever cuts and evocative close-ups. Also like ARIZONA, the film goes into cloud-cuckoo land at the end (when a godlike janitor stops time and saves the life of the suicidal Robbins), but it takes elements of thirties screwball comedies and appropriates them in unforgettable ways: from Jennifer Jason Leigh's Rosalind Russell imitation to the jovial elevator man to the Rube Goldberg scenario that inexplicably gets Robbins his job.
(To be continued: Up next, FARGO, etc.)
| By Andytown | 9:49 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://memphisblogs.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/555
Comments
Good thoughts. I will be interested to read what you have to write about Burn After Reading.
Posted by: Harvey at September 24, 2008 1:43 PM