MovieZeal’s Coen-palooza
By Craig Kennedy - April 2nd, 2008; 11:16 pm
April showers bring May flowers, but before that it’s wall to wall Coen Brothers action at MovieZeal.
Evan Derrick kicked things off on Wednesday with a review of Blood Simple and more reviews are scheduled to follow chronologically each Monday, Wednesday and Friday until they run out of movies or someone pulls a groin muscle, whichever comes first.
On top of that, there will be Top Ten Lists, feature articles and assorted Coen-related goodness from a number of guest bloggers.
So, sit back, fix yourself a White Russian or a bowl of cereal flakes and you will be dazzled…or my name isn’t Nathan Arizona.
Filed under: Miscellaneous
lol, I am doing this too! Snap! It is a little daunting, but it will be fun.
Oh, lord.
1. Fargo
2. No Country for Old Men
3. Raising Arizona
4. The Big Lebowski
5. Barton Fink
6. The Hudsucker Proxy
7. The Man Who Wasn’t There
8. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
9. Miller’s Crossing
10. Intolerable Cruelty
11. Blood Simple
12. The Ladykillers
My daily contribution, a different Coens quote:
“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 and down here, you’re on your own.”
Ah the Coens…I do love them so.
1. No Country for Old Men
2. Barton Fink
3. Blood Simple
4. Fargo
5. The Big Lebowski
6. Miller’s Crossing
7. The Big Lebowski
8. Raising Arizona
9. Miller’s Crossing
10. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Wow, that was really, really tough.
The Coens rule.
Beautiful quote from Blood Simple, Joel.
Those are two very, very different lists. I can see that ranking the Coens’ films is sure to spark some semblance of fanboy debate.
Heh heh…posts like that are flame bait.
It’s difficult to find two people whose opinions align….which is cool if you ask me.
1. Miller’s Crossing
2. Fargo
3. The Big Lebowski
4. Raising Arizona
5. No Country for Old Men
6. Blood Simple
7. The Hudsucker Proxy
8. Barton Fink
9. O Brother Where Art Thou
10. The Man Who Wasn’t There
Interesting lists.
Being #10 for the Coens ain’t no insult; there are no real weak links in any of our respective Top Tens, Jeff and sartre.
I should note that my top four are all my #1 films of their respective years (2007, 1991, 1984 and 1996). The only film that occasionally threatens any of them is ’84′s Amadeus, which I practically have tied with Blood Simple, but I still give the Coens’ debut work the edge.
I am surprised by the high ratings of The Hudsucker Proxy from both Jeff and sartre (#6 and #7 respectively). I like the film well enough and always considered it, before the duo of Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers, to be the Coens’ midway refresher between Barton Fink and Fargo.
Jeff, why can’t you be more like me? Why don’t you love Blood Simple more?
;-)
1. The Big Lebowski
2. No Country for Old Men
3. Barton Fink
4. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
5. Fargo
6. Miller’s Crossing
7. Blood Simple.
8. The Man Who Wasn’t There
9. Raising Arizona
10. The Hudsucker Proxy
11. Intolerable Cruelty
Missed:
The Ladykillers
I agree Alexander. It’s a completely unsatisfying task to rank such high quality apples and oranges. I could easily start arguing and violently grappling with myself over my current rankings, that stupid Tyler Durden knows nothing about films. Hudsucker has steadily improved for me with each viewing, whereas more formal existential efforts like Barton Fink and The Man (both very fine films) haven’t worked as well over repeat viewings.
Ah, interesting.
Doing a Top Ten for the Coens isn’t about what you eliminate so much as what the order is, largely because as wonderful as they are, their filmography isn’t the vastest out there. No Country was their twelfth film.
Um, I just realized I screwed up my Top Ten. I’ve got Miller’s Crossing twice over. I knew there was something strange.
Craig, could you, with all your divine power, please change my #9 from Miller’s Crossing to The Man Who Wasn’t There? Yikes. I kept thinking about the number of Coen films, and how somehow my Top Ten was screwed up and… it was.
Alexander, you also put The Big Lebowski in twice. Just one of those days… haha.
I even enjoyed Intolerable Cruelty (blasphemy in some parts), despite it being last in my list. I’m betting it’s a better ’30s throwback comedy than Leatherheads will be. Lists are inherently imperfect and subjective, but they’re still a fun way to sort preferences.
Wow.
Blame it on my allergy pill. I don’t think my brain is functioning today for some reason. Maybe the Coens excite me too much.
Okay, screw it…
1. No Country for Old Men
2. Barton Fink
3. Blood Simple
4. Fargo
5. The Big Lebowski
6. Miller’s Crossing
7. Raising Arizona
8. The Man Who Wasn’t There
9. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
10. The Hudsucker Proxy
I kept thinking, “Why don’t I have The Hudsucker Proxy?” I figured out that the Coens only have twelve films to their shared name, by looking at IMDB, but I kept going, “Why is my list so f*cked up then? Where’s Hudsucker?”
Grr, I’m going to go lay down, relax for a few minutes and hit the refresh button on myself like Hudsucker was for the Coens. We all need that from time to time. Isn’t that what Norman Bates was really getting at? :-)
Ok, here goes. I was going to qualify my choices, but that’s chickenshit. Here they are. Suck on them:
1 Raising Arizona
2 No Country for Old Men
3 Miller’s Crossing
4 Fargo
5 The Big Lebowski
6 The Man Who Wasn’t There
7 Barton Fink
8 Blood Simple
9 O Brother Where Art Thou?
10 Hudsucker Proxy
11 Intolerable Cruelty
12 Ladykillers
Craig, our top 5s include the same films in different order. Which leads me to note ‘there’s right and there’s right and never the twain shall meet’.
1. No Country for Old Men
2. Blood Simple
3. Miller’s Crossing
4. The Man Who Wasn’t There
5. Fargo
6. Barton Fink
7. The Big Lebowski
8. Raising Arizona
9. The Hudsucker Proxy
10. Intolerable Cruelty
11. The Ladykillers
12. O Brother Where Art Thou?
Indeed Sartre.
O Chuck, Where art Thou??
Them syreens did this to Chuck. They loved him up and turned him into …
Poor O Brother. I guess it’s even pretty low on my own list. It’s a deceptive list though because even at #9, I still really like it.
Yay, Chuck. On a usual day when I could think clearly Blood Simple would probably be my #2 as well. If Barton Fink is the Coens’ Raging Bull, then Blood Simple is their Taxi Driver. Therefore, they’re kind of tough to grade against one another for me. I think now after a few glasses of water and clear thinking I’d also have Blood Simple #2. Even though that new study says you don’t need eight glasses of water a day to be healthy… in Anton Chigurh voice … I think you do.
I love all these lists.
Anybody here seen the IFC Greg the Bunny parody of Coen Brothers flicks? I love Greg the Bunny.
The problem is that you drink too much water, Alexander. It’s ridding you of vital body fluids.
Heh, heh.
Good shooting, soldier!
Jeez, I just dipped into a talkback on CHUD. Thank the blog gods that you people aren’t like that.
Sad to say, but I have not even seen 10 Coen Bros. films. I have seen 9!!!!
I have seen Fargo, No Country, Miller’s Crossing, Man Who Wasn’t There, The Big Lebowski, Barton Fink, Raising Arizona, Blood Simple and O Brother Where Art Thou?
My first was Fargo, and it is still my fave.
I really loved Fargo and it’s up there at the top of my Coens list – in fact, it’s on my all-time favorite movie list. But Blood Simple and No Country for Old Men still tops it.
Were those nine listed in order of favoritism Nick? Alison, I’m curious about the order of your top 10 Coens. No pressure.
Ha, sartre. I’m not ready to list my top 10 yet. :-)
:-( You know how much we guys love lists. Making and reading them, but not so much acting on them.
Hmmm, I’m surprised at all the Blood Simple love going on. I find it to be a competent, although somewhat pedestrian film. As a debut its quite good, but on its own (as in not viewed in the context of the Coens and the rest of their films) there isn’t much to recommend it. Some of the shots and setups are quite amateur, the pacing is fairly off in the third act, and the bartender character is utterly useless (i.e., you could remove him from the film and it would virtually change nothing).
Methinks there is a little Blood Simple prejudice going on.
(are those fighting words?)
Eh, Evan, whatever. ;-)
sartre, I’ll concede that No Country for Old Men is my favorite, so at least you have my #1. :-)
I do not think I am experienced enough in all things Coen to make a list in order of favouritism. I think I love them each for different reasons, and would find it hard to put them in a list.
I must be a very strange guy then, but I am not a fan of lists. I guess I like reading others, but I do not have strong enough nerves to write my own, unless I am under huge amounts of pressure ;)
Blood Simple has an infectious “hey, look what we can do with a movie camera!” quality to it. Part of its charm is its imperfection.
Plus, come on, the whole ending chunk between M. Emmett Walsh and Frances McDormand is classic.
I’ll leave it to others to more thoroughly debate with you Evan. But several scenes and lines from Blood Simple remain happily vivid for me no matter how much time passes between viewings.
Who could forget Dan Hedaya’s character crawling along the highway, illuminated by headlights? Or the dreadful sight of a desperate Hedaya unsteadily raising a gun to shoot the man burying him alive? Or M. Emmet Walsh’s cowboy lying near death on the bathroom floor letting out a laugh of black humor as he finally worked it all out, and then watching a precipice drip slowly working itself free from the leaky faucet?
It wasn’t only homage to film noir iconography and machinations; it embodied the genre’s quintessential tone and themes. I thought the central conceit was beautifully and convincingly played out.
Nick Hornby writes well about the male tendency to compile lists in High Fidelity, Nick. Thank you for the partial list, Alison :-).
Wow, I tempt the flame-bait gods and you all come knocking at the door. Kudos, people. This has been interesting.
I’ve tried this before, but ranking the Coens’ movies gives me a head-ache. I can say with some certainty that Miller’s Crossing, Raising Arizona, Big Lewbowski, No Country, and Fargo would probably be vying for the top five but on any given day of the week that order could change significantly.
Further, trying to rank the remaining five would be a lesson in futility as I love all of them somewhat equally, so once you get past my favorite characters/performances it becomes somewhat painful.
Except for Lady Killers and Intolerable Cruelty. Minus a couple of nuggets of goodness from each, I can do without either one. They are always the low points in any Coen Brothers retrospective.
As for Blood Simple, well I can agree that in retrospect it’s a weak offering from the Coens but it was their first film and the first one I ever saw, way back in the day on Showtime. I fondly recall Siskel and Ebert going ga-ga over this one on their PBS show and a few shots in the clips they showed stuck in my brain so firmly that I was actually looking forward to it arriving on cable. I must have watched it four or five times in the span of a couple months.
Same thing with Raising Arizona, which Siskelbert kind of hated but I regard as one of the funniest movies about kidnapping, bank robbers, and hayseeds ever made.
By the time Miller’s Crossing finally rolled around, I wised up and started seeing these in the theater.
So yes Evan, Blood Simple is freshman effort and very cheaply made, but it’s a gem of an indie. If nothing else, you must commend the dead-on casting of M Emmett Walsh and the brilliance Dan Hedaya as some cranky bar owner in Texas. Dan Hedaya in Texas? And yet…it works.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ray, I ain’t done nothing funny”
To me, Blood Simple is elemental and essential to the Coen oeurve. Thinking about it, on its own it may be rough around the edges, relatively unadorned and a bit scrappy, and not “refined” to a more broadly exciting degree for many people but it really does establish, as well as any feature debut has for a filmmaker (or team of filmmakers) the obsessions and concerns and idiosyncasies they possess.
Watching Blood Simple now, you see that a lot of No Country for Old Men comes from that film. Obviously, the Texas setting. The fan ceilings that hauntingly seem to view down upon the hapless characters. The many shots of doors–and the palpable fear of who or what is behind them. An other-worldly creature stalking his prey.
The concluding movement between McDormand and Walsh speaks volumes about the Coen sensibility. Their films are ultimately about good and evil, about outsiders destroying the harmony of the world, about the temptations of money and the refuge the good take in what they have, which is not money. They also deal in one “insider” betraying his peers, usually loved ones of one kind or another, from Blood Simple to Raising Arizona to Miller’s Crossing to Fargo to The Big Lebowski to No Country for Old Men, intentionally or not–they are the ones who let “it” out. Like Hedaya in Blood Simple or Macy in Fargo. The bosses of the evil creatures let loose, who reside behind big desks and egomaniacally call all the shots, eventually find they can no longer keep the demon leashed (most pointedly in Blood Simple, Fargo and No Country) and they’re often even killed by said demon.
Blood Simple is a “pure,” distilled, honest declaratory statement, and everything since follows in its footsteps. Their subsequent films may take these themes to higher, more exalted levels of philosophical penetration, but as sartre notes, in terms of noirish iconography and the beauty of so much miscommunication and misunderstanding, Blood Simple remains in my eyes the Coens’ “benchmark” in the sense that their films, to me, must be measured against it. (Whether they’re “formally” noirs or screwball comedies matters little, particularly since all their noirs have big doses of humor–even No Country has its quirky, funny scenes–and all their comedies have at least one noirish touch or more, even The Hudsucker Proxy.) As for the offbeat pacing in the third act, I think it’s a given with the Coens. I can’t think of a film they’ve made that didn’t wind down in this way, to one degree or another. And that is often a hurdle that many dislike having to jump but to me it’s usually that way because by the third act the Coens have fallen so much in love with their characters, they want to spend more time with them, arguably allowing the “plot” to become slack.
Marty: I got a job for you.
Visser: Uh, well, if the pay’s right, and it’s legal, I’ll do it.
Marty: It’s not strictly legal.
Visser: [PAUSE] Well, if the pay’s right, I’ll do it.
What Alexander said.
Blood Simple is one of my all time favorite movies and the only realy debate for me was whether to put it at number 1 or number 2, the superb performances gave Country the edge (though Blood has wonderful performances too).
M. Emmet Walsh is one of the definitive noir villians, period, in my opinion. His voice, his sense of humor, his scaley sleaze, absolutely perfect. His scenes with Hedaya are still some of the strongest in the Coen canon (an effortless mix of toxic comedy and danger that they don’t always manage so well).
I love the film’s brutal, beautiful simplicity, its elegant small scale, and the climax, as you guys have said, is just brilliant.
The score. The scary -funny scene where Hedaya throws up in the yard. The underrated Jon Getz (also wonderful in The Fly). I’m rambling. I love this movie. As my list indicates, I think the Coens are much stronger playing the noir sandbox than the comedy. They tend to get a bit precious for my taste (particularly in Brother, the only film of theirs I outright dislike).
Friday, which brings us to Raising Arizona. To say I’ve quoted this movie to death would be to say that if a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its ass a-hoppin’.
So I present you two snippets of HI’s opening monologue:
“I was in for writing hot checks which, when businessmen do it, is called an overdraft. I’m not complainin’, mind you; just sayin’ there ain’t no pancake so thin it ain’t got two sides. I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn’t easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House. I dunno, they say he’s a decent man, so maybe his advisers are confused.”
I love Raising Arizona so much that it’s easily one of my all-time favorite movies and takes a close second to Dr. Strangelove as my all-time favorite comedy. I would suggest it’s a perfect film, with nary a frame wasted, a character underused, or an errant line of dialogue. This movie is so jam-packed with priceless insanity that the Coens revisited it visually in structuring their masterpiece, No Country for Old Men.
“Anyone found bipedal in five wears his ass for a hat.”
It’s a classic or my name ain’t Nathan Arizona!
As someone who for many years has enjoyed occasionally weaving film dialogue into his everyday conversation I can say that no film has provided me with more material.
Though to my great annoyance I’ve never been able to work ‘son, you got a panty on your head’ into chat.
Thanks Evan for provoking such interesting and illuminating comments about Blood Simple from Joel, Alexander, and Chuck. Alexander you should do a thesis on the topic, a jump start for the definitive Coens canon book.
I remember seeing RA soon after its release at the enthusiastic prompting of a film student friend. What initially blew me away was the camera work, particularly the motorcycle astride pov shot going towards the Arizona house, up the ladder, through the window, and into the mouth of the screaming mother.
Joel & Sartre. RA is indeed a most quotable film, rivaled by, but not exceeded by, Big Lebowski.
It gets the top spot on my list primarily as a sentimental favorite.
Great thoughts on Blood Simple Alex and Chuck.
“Who looks stupid now?”
Joel and Chuck, thank you for the back-up on Blood Simple. Chuck, I agree with you that at least a good handful of the best scenes the Coens have ever crafted around the usage of language are to be found in Blood Simple. Having just seen it a month ago in a big theatre, I was struck yet again at all of the ironies I had missed before, and how much deeper the film is than it may superficially appear to be. Not to mention Sonnenfeld’s beautiful bluish cinematography and the eerie music–take a look at a lot of TV shows like The X-Files and it seems like you can see Blood Simple’s influence, whether it is intentionally so or not.
Aha, thanks for the very kind words, sartre, my Kiwi friend. Your suggestion sounds like a very worthwhile endeavor. ;=)
Raising Arizona… Of all the great Coen films it’s the one I haven’t seen in the longest time. I should correct that soon. It’s an astonishing film, however, teeming with hilarity and subtle insight. Ah, remember when Nicolas Cage seemed to give a damn?
Alexander, it’s not the first time I’ve suggested a thesis topic to you. In the end I’m sure you’ll do one far more academically esoteric than the topics I throw up, something like ‘Metaphysics and Intertextuality in the Films of Yasujiro Ozu’ :-)
Hi and Ed are very broad characters yet Cage and Hunter’s performances, ably assisted by the writing and direction, gave them souls. Which helps explain the touching beauty of the ending despite the film’s predominant screwball tone.
One of my favorite things about Raising Arizona, and I didn’t even catch it until a second viewing, is that so much dizzying character detail and plot happens before the opening titles even hits the screen. Granted, it’s a LONG intro, but it’s brilliant. Plus, I love how it cuts back and forth with razor sharp precision between so many details and yet always finds a way to work in the comedy.
“They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and for once they may be right.”
“You missed a spot.”
The editing in Raising Arizona may be some of the best work Roderick Jaynes never did. It truly has the pacing and intensity of a Looney Tunes short, but maintains all the geography and coherency of the best work from Hitchcock or Speilberg.
Plus, there’s all those oddball cameos from actors like Frances McDormand.
“What would Ed and the angel do if a truck came along and splattered your brains all over the interstate? Where would you be then?”
“Yeah honey, what if you get run over?”
“Or you got carried off by a twister?”
And one must commend that brilliant ending dream sequence, which implies a happy ending for all involved is coming. Maybe it won’t happen in Arizona, but a land, not too far away, where all great movies are beloved and appreciated.
Or maybe it was Utah.
Well said Joel.
“is that so much dizzying character detail and plot happens before the opening titles even hits the screen. Granted, it’s a LONG intro, but it’s brilliant.”
It’s an odd/screwball equivalent of a Scorsese prologue.
The music and sound for the opening sequence and the whole film is brilliant too. When I think of the the film I don’t just see it, I also vividly hear it.
Great thoughts on BS. I tip my hat (although I still think we wouldn’t be having this conversation if not for all the films that followed… kind of similar to Spielberg’s “Duel”).
@Sarte:
“I remember seeing RA soon after its release at the enthusiastic prompting of a film student friend. What initially blew me away was the camera work, particularly the motorcycle astride pov shot going towards the Arizona house, up the ladder, through the window, and into the mouth of the screaming mother.”
That shot is a direct homage to/copy of the monster’s POV in Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead.” The Coens, in fact, have close ties to Sam – they started out cutting some of his films, wrote (and even starred in) the atrocious “Crimewave” which Raimi directed, and their model for financing BS was completely based on Sam’s model for financing “Evil Dead.” More fun facts: Raimi got the shot by taking a 6 foot plank and tying the camera to the center of it. Then he had two guys hold it on either end and run with it, achieving a kind of cheap steady-cam.
I love how “Raising Arizona” is, in some ways, a re-purposed version of Bogdanovitch’s “What’s Up Doc?”, although they’ve substituted a baby for the suitcase.
I am humming that crazy score as we speak, sartre.
Thanks Evan. I thought those trademark Evil Dead I and II shots were innovative and cool when I first saw them as well. But I had never made the connection despite knowing that Raimi and the brothers had worked together on Crimewave (which I vaguely recall being uneven yet likeable).
And Raimi has a small cameo in Miller’s Crossing plus Joel was the assistant editor for Evil Dead. It’s a tangled web.
And for those that are curious to see it now that it’s been mentioned, Crimewave is an absolutely atrocious movie. I can only guess it was early in Raimi’s career and he was still experimenting with ideas and that the Coen’s “writing” on the film did not extend to a finished screenplay. There’s a reason why it’s almost impossible to locate, only having been released many years ago once on an OOP VHS version.
I can’t remember hardly anything about the film. Even this trailer prompts little specific recall.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=W5UXIn-vfiE&feature=related
But it looks so bad as to be funny in parts.
It is alive and well on the internets (cough*bittorrent*cough). But I couldn’t make it further than 10 minutes in before deciding that my time was better spent doing other things…like grooming my leg hair.
I have watched the entire thing, and believe me, that was an epic achievement in patience.
Saturday brings me to Miller’s Crossing. Let me offer one of my favorite lines of dialogue from this movie.
Tom: “Think about what protecting Bernie gets us. Think about what offending Caspar loses us.”
Leo: “Oh, come on, Tommy. You know I don’t like to think.”
Tom: “Yeah. Well, think about whether you should start. ”
This exchange isn’t as impressive as other quotables from MC, but because of Gabriel Byrne’s whip-smart delivery and the Coens’ amazing sense of timing, it becomes a crackerjack closer to the intro before diving into that gorgeous title sequence.
Barry Sonnenfeld’s camera work is magnificent, portraying a place and time at once shrewd in its beauty and equally grotesque in its violence. Miller’s Crossing is the crowning achievement of his career as a cinematic artist. I kinda wish he had stayed a DP and not moved on to directing…but that’s a different post entirely.
So many great details to mull over in this film, so many indelible performances, such a beautifully complex yet ethically simple story. Honestly, I can’t offer the level of criticism and insight this movie deserves so I’ll leave it to everyone’s favorite Miller’s Crossing champion, Jim Emerson, to clarify this film’s brilliance.
http://cinepad.com/reviews/millersx.htm
One of the great things about Barton Fink is the Coens discovering Tony Shalhoub, casting him as talent agent Ben Geisler. Eventually he would go on to be cast in his bravura performance as Freddy Riedenschneider in The Man Who Wasn’t There. Shalhoub owns every scene he has in Barton Fink, not the least of which is this exchange:
Geisler: Wallace Beery. Wrestling picture. What do you need, a road map?. . . Look, you’re confused? You need guidance? Talk to another writer.
Fink:Who?
Geisler: Jesus, throw a rock in here, you’ll hit one. And do me a favor, Fink: Throw it hard.
That entire exchange single-handedly sums up the entire WGA strike from earlier this year. Amazing movie, spawned from the difficulty in writing Miller’s Crossing.
Miller’s Crossing is indeed terrific. Of all the Coens’ films, it’s the one that I think I most misunderstood early on and have grown to love more and more with each viewing. There are a plethora of grand subtleties in that film that sort of escaped me on the first go around. It and No Country for Old Men are sort of the “epics” of the Coen filmography (is that word going to be retired at LiC soon? better use it before it goes!) and they’re so superficially pleasing that it’s easy to underestimate their actual greatness.
Barton Fink is psychologically perhaps the most naked film the Coens have made. The ever present duality, a Coen touchstone, is engendered with both grace and wildness, culminating in what is almost certainly the bleakest allegorical exercise they’ve yet produced.
I always get a kick out of finding a certain commonality with directors, which is that at a certain point they all get burnt out, usually as a result of the film they last worked on, and therefore move into a more concentrated direction, with dramatically more personal art, “streamlined” and made with ever greater fervent earnestness. In a few cases, the director waited a while before resuming any project (like Hawks after the relative “failure” of Land of the Pharaohs, which is a much better film than its reputation would suggest) but more often than not, they just jumped right into it, typically in the middle of making the film that was giving them a headache of one kind or another.
Some of the films of this type are, of course, Barton Fink, The Apartment, Yojimbo, The Chungking Express, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Rio Bravo and many, many others.
Fink is the hardest one for me to just sit down at watch, but there’s always been something I like about it. The fact that it’s a movie about writer’s block and was a means of overcoming the same thing has always struck me. It’s like a dark demon that needed to be exorcised.
Thanks for the link to Emerson’s review of Miller’s Crossing, Joel. I pretty much agree with him in all respects, especially in regards to Reagan’s character (he’s simultaneously fascinating and infuriating, because not even he fully knows why he’s doing what he’s doing), but I disagree strongly with Emerson that the film is “emotionally resonant.” Its complex, densely plotted, fascinating to dissect afterwards, but as dispassionate a film as one is likely to find. The Coens seem to have little regard for their characters, observing them from afar like emotionless scientists studying white lab rats trapped in a convoluted maze. “Detached” is the best word for Crossing. For what it’s worth, here’s my review of the film.
i couldn’t disagree with you more, Evan. For evidence of what I believe the Coens are getting at, I’d direct you to Matt Zoller Seitz’s review of No Country, which also acts as a broad overview of the Coen’s filmography and a repudiation of the criticism that the Coens see their characters as “lab rats” as you put it.
http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2007/11/point-blank-no-country-for-old-men.html
Here’s a particulary apt snippet:
“Though they are habitually described as snotty formalists with nothing on their minds but cinematic gamesmanship, the Coens’ body of work is one of the most sneakily moralistic in recent American cinema. To some extent, all of their movies poses questions that supposedly deeper filmmakers have broached time and time again: if we cannot be certain of God’s existence; if there is a possibility that no one’s watching what we do; if, to reference Johnny Caspar in Miller’s Crossing, “morality and ethics” are agreed-upon lies; if the evil can destroy the good with impunity, and if the wicked often die for reasons unrelated to a hero’s good deeds (throughout the Coens’ filmography, bad guys often destroy themselves through vanity or stupidity, or get snuffed out by coincidence or bad luck), then what’s the point of being good? Just because. ‘There’s more to life than a little money, you know,’ policewoman Marge Gunderson tells the dead-eyed killer in the backseat of her police car at the end of Fargo. ‘Don’t you know that? And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day. Well, I just don’t understand it.’”
Perhaps I didn’t express myself as clearly as I could have. I wouldn’t say that the Coens aren’t interested in deeper moral themes (I pretty much agree with Matt’s take on things), but that they approach them with a clinical detachment. I agree that they’re interested in more than “cinematic gamesmanship” (which my ‘lab rat’ comment might have indicated otherwise), but it still comes off as being emotionless.
Let me put it this way: I’m fascinated by their films, love to discuss them, think that they’re amazing masters of form and style, and I praise their writing and humor. However, I am never moved by their films. It’s entirely possible to ask deep questions about life without ever touching on the joy and tragedy of the human experience.
Well, I see what you’re getting at and I suppose one could argue that but then it becomes more of a subjective thing. I read your review and throughout it, it really sounded as though you didn’t like the movie but then at the end you stated your interest in the duality of Tom’s behavior and the mystery behind his motivations was what kept you coming back to it. I found that response really interesting as I hadn’t had those exact same feelings myself, but I could kind of see what you were getting at and where you were coming from.
The typical criticisms of the Coens usually equate them to something similar to Michael Haneke and I just don’t buy that level of cynicism or detachment in their work. I guess I thought that was what you were getting at and what your first comment definitely seems to imply. I don’t think they’re making movies only to manipulate an audience or simply go through the motions of technique and craft. I doubt I could appreciate and enjoy their films as much as I do were that the case.
But then again, they aren’t Bergman either.
In my review I was pretty cynical, maybe a bit too much in retrospect. But I just can’t shake the feeling that the Coens are laughing at me a bit from behind their films. Barton Fink (which I saw for the first time the other night) kind of reinforced that even more.
As you said, “it becomes more of a subjective thing.” But then again, isn’t that all film criticism really boils down to? I guess its all about who can argue their subjective point of view better than the other guy. :) Kudos to the Coens for creating films that spur argument and debate, rather than churning out the mind numbing dreck that the majority of American filmmakers push into the multiplex on a weekly basis. Watching their films through chronologically has been a highly stimulating experience.
Although I loved the multi-faceted cleverness of Miller’s Crossing, what contributed to it being my favorite Coen Brothers film is that it also moved me. The music, cinematography, editing, and direction combined to produce a mournful, elegiac quality at times. Whenever I think of the film, I very much feel that quality too. I also cared for Tom. Although he was hardboiled and calculating Byrnes and the Coens still gave us enough, though subtle, of his character’s personal code and motivations to find them sympathetic, all the more so given the amorality and self-serving motivations of the other main characters. I never had a sense of Tom not fully knowing his own motivations. He acted on a code, even though he knew it wasn’t personally the best play.
The discussion Evan and Joel are having about the Coens feelings about their characters and their audience is sort of at the crux of whether someone loves the Coens or not, I think.
I wish I had time to say more about it, but alas, work beckons. I’ll be catching up to your review soon Evan.
I can’t speak for Evan, but his review does imply he’s a Coen fan.
Spoilers follow. Be warned:
Regardless, I’d have to agree with sartre. Part of the what I love about Miller’s Crossing is that Tom Reagan sacrifices himself to protect his friend and boss. He sees that Leo is going to destroy himself and doesn’t have the courage, the wisdom, or even the will to make the right choices. Verna has a stranglehold on Leo’s heart and through her, Bernie is going to be Leo’s achilles’ heel. Casper exists as the means to that end.
Ultimately, it will consume their friendship and their working relationship but Tom does it anyway. As he goes along, he makes little sacrifices of himself too. It’s not hard to believe Tom has never killed anyone before (one wonders even if he’s ever beaten anyone up before or just taken many beatings?) and so he gives up that part of his soul too to survive and save Leo. He kills Bernie partially out of spite and vengeance, but mostly because his first plan (pretending to kill Bernie, Bernie skips town) has failed miserably and this is the only way to protect Leo.
Tom hides under a facade of cool, but I believe that as the movie ends he is also concealing his own pain and loneliness under the brim of that hat. He’s lost his friend, lost his job, and lost the woman in his life. At the end of the movie, the question isn’t why did Tom do it but what will Tom do now?
Thanks for the thorough and eloquent analysis, Joel.
“Tom hides under a facade of cool, but I believe that as the movie ends he is also concealing his own pain and loneliness under the brim of that hat.”
Exactly. And for me the poignant tone so often evoked underscores Tom’s isolation and self-sacrifice.
Yes, as Joel said, I am a Coens fan, although I can be quite critical of them at times.
Great analysis, Joel, but if I may make a couple comments to further the discussion. :)
Viewing the film through the lens of Tom’s love and devotion for Leo is one approach, but if that’s the case, if he is doing everything to protect Leo (which I initially suspected), then why does he break relationship with him at the end, and do it as bluntly as he does? I don’t think it can be explained that it’s too painful to be around Verna, either. There is a streak of self-destruction running through Tom that speaks more strongly to his motivations than any love or devotion he may have for Leo. I’m not saying devotion to Leo doesn’t factor in somehow, but there’s this mysterious WTF quality to his actions that go beyond that.
Secondly, when he has the chance to execute Bernie the first time, there is genuine trepidation in his eyes… he doesn’t want to do it. We know he doesn’t like this guy, thinks he’s a snake, but he has compassion on him. Later, he shows absolutely zero hesitation when he kills him at the apartment. There is not a smidgen of compassion or regret in his eyes – “What heart?” he says when Bernie pleads with him.
Again, if it’s all about protecting Leo, then how do you explain this dramatic shift? If it really was only because his first plan failed, then why the genuine hesitation the first time, and why the heartless execution the second? You’d think he’d have a “Sorry Bernie, there’s no other way” attitude, but he falls down upon the schmo like an avenging angel.
I think it ties back into not only his self-destructive streak, but also his near schizophrenic compulsions. I don’t see Tom simply as a man with a code, making sacrifices for those he cares about no matter what the toll – I see him as a grim, Machiavellian genius, who operates on cunning as often as he does on emotion. Is he devoted to Leo? Yes. Does that completely account for his erratic, unexplainable behavior? No, I don’t think so. There’s something else burning beneath the surface, and I’m not completely sure what it is.
I can’t speak for Joel. But here are my thoughts Evan.
Tom’s inferred code says that you don’t kill anyone unnecessarily, in part because he feels it would be a wrong thing to do. Being true to that feeling is expressed through the compassion he shows towards Bernie the first time. He finds a way to avoid compromising himself and lets Bernie go even though to do so goes against his better judgement.
This doesn’t mean he is incapable of murder, but that it will come at a considerable personal cost and therefore is something to avoid unless there is no alternative.
The second time round with Bernie the killing appears to Tom as completely necessary (to protect Leo, Vera, and himself). Bernie’s betrayal of his earlier reprieve takes the edge off any compassion Tom might otherwise feel. To me the “what heart” is an expression of the emotional hardening the context demands of him, and more metaphorically an acknowledgement that he is taking himself somewhere less morally defendable – code or no code. This is a big sacrifice.
He breaks it with Leo because their relationship was already broke. He lost faith in Leo’s judgement and leadership. But the loyalty he felt as a mainstay advisor, protector, and friend saw him act out of obligation to his personal code. Once those obligations were met he could walk away from a man (and woman) he no longer respected and cared for.
Good points, Evan, and interesting follow-up, sartre. I’d suggest that the first time out, Tom sees Bernie as a threat that can be controlled and he does pity Bernie, but mostly because Bernie puts on such an amazing act (part fear, part con) and it tears at the heart of Tom’s facade of cool calculator. He hasn’t killed before and he doesn’t want. He THINKS he’s killed Bernie and that’s enough to prepare him to later do it again.
The second time, Bernie has it coming. Not only has he threatened Tom but Bernie being alive no longer has the value that it once did (Verna’s feelings for her brother, Leo’s feelings for Verna). Verna has written Tom off and Bernie is an excellent patsy for Casper’s death. I don’t think Tom wants to kill Bernie so much as he has to. I do think Bernie offended Tom to some extent. Tom is clearly angry with Bernie once Bernie comes back to town, but I don’t think Tom kills him for revenge. It’s just the only to tie up the unavoidable loose ends. I don’t think Tom shows any remorse or hesitation the second time because Bernie played him so magnificently the first time. He’s over whatever hesitation he had to kill now.
I never get the impression Tom is all that concerned with his image. He takes beating after beating, to suit his plan or simply to make up for debts and/or short-comings. But clearly achieving his long-term goals, ultimately by whatever means necessary, is very important to him.
I think he leaves Leo at the end because he can’t live with Leo being with Verna. It’s an insult to Tom’s intelligence, since he thinks Verna isn’t worthy of Leo’s (or Tom’s) love.Tom only sees Verna as a “twist,” not some woman worth actually loving (and he tells her and Leo as much over the course of the film).
The other way to read it is that Tom secretly loves Verna, as much as he protests to dislike her “grifter” ways and that he leaves Leo because he can’t stand to see another man love Verna. Either way, I don’t think Tom wants to leave. Leo is the only real friend he’s got, unless you count the bookie/bartender.
I suppose in a way you could call Tom the ultimate control freak. That might go somewhere towards the mysterious duality you’re noting, Evan.
I don’t think the script spells out every detail of Tom’s behavior but I can only assume that the Coens very carefully helped Byrne craft the expressions he wears in each scene. I guess how we choose to read those probably informs more of our impressions of Tom than his words or behavior do, since much of the time he’s lying to other characters in order to manipulate them.
Splendid discussion, guys. Wish I had more time to chime in, but I’m really enjoying this.
Tom is to me the martyr of Miller’s Crossing the way Getz is the martyr of Blood Simple and Brolin the martyr of No Country. By which I mean they’re the Coens’ spiritual martyrs, guys who follow through sinfully in an attempt to, from their perspective, protect someone they love.
I can see how you could interpret Tom executing Bernie as anger/frustration for Bernie trying to one up him. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, and all that.
On his final decision to break with Leo, I’m much more inclined to go with sarte on this one. I could see how Tom would mistrust Leo’s leadership and choose to having nothing to do with him, even as he continues to care for him as a friend. Verna, in my mind, is practically another one of Tom’s pawns, which he uses to get in good with Casper (by way of angering Leo). That he executes Bernie with such little remorse shows how little he truly cares for Verna. I just don’t buy that Tom breaks with Leo because of his love/affection for her (inversely, I could see how he would break with Leo because of his disdain for Verna).
So, good points, all. I probably need to watch it again to catch all the subtext I missed the first time through.
On another note, is it clear to anyone who it was that knocked off the tail with the toupee early on in the film? I’d like to solve that mystery myself, but only if it’s ‘solvable.’ Perhaps there are any number of answers to that question, just like there are apparently a number of different interpretations of Tom’s motivations.
If I remember correctly, Tom initially assumes Verna killed Rug, the man Leo put on her, because Rug was shot with a “pop gun, a dame’s gun.” But later he realizes it was likely Bernie who shot Rug, to keep Leo in the dark about Verna’s association with Tom. If Leo dumped Verna, then Casper would have an easy angle on killing Bernie.
Miller’s Crossing is one of the most complicated movies I’ve ever seen. I think it took me three viewings to finally get all the details of the story straight.
Alexander, your interpretation of Tom is curious. I can definitely see the connection between Ray and Llewelyn. They are very similar, and about equally capable against their specific adversaries in each film. But I’m not sure if I’d connect Tom to them too directly. Tom is clearly at a distinct advantage through most of Miller’s Crossing. Even when Bernie throws him a curve by turning up in town and threatening him with extortion, it doesn’t take Tom long to adjust his grand scheme to deal with Bernie as well.
I can see a connection, but I don’t think it’s as distinct. I suppose if I thought about it too long and hard, I’d say that Ray and Llewelyn are much closer to Ed Crane in Man Who Wasn’t There, even though his motives and actions are far different from theirs, there’s still an aspect of goodness to Ed that accounts for his status as the protagonist of the story.
I almost forgot I was due for my daily Coen post. I’ll keep this thread alive or my name ain’t Nathan Arizona. Thankfully it’s still Monday here on the West Coast, which bring us to The Hudsucker Proxy.
Hudsucker Proxy is one of those movies with so much potential…but it just doesn’t completely pan out. It’s got a great cast and great production design and some great dialogue and some great ideas in it, but somewhere along the line all that sort of goes astray. The Coens are having a splendid time making this period piece and maybe that’s the problem. It was their first truly big budget, star-ladden studio production (with Joel Silver no less) and it feels bloated and overwrought, as though all that money and resources were more than the boys needed or wanted.
Not to say there isn’t a lot of good stuff in Hudsucker, just that it doesn’t all come together. It does have Tim Robbins as Norville Barns, a great comedic performance for him. Plus Jennifer Jason Leigh and Paul Newman, both chewing so much scenery they could have leveled half the sets with their hamming. It’s fun, but it’s missing something.
“You know, for kids.”
I should note that this is the first Coen Brothers movie with a weird musical-inspired dream sequence (Norville and the feather woman), which the Coens would revisit again with The Big Lebowski. Not sure why that’s important, but the dream sequences in Lebowski are wonderful and the legend I’ve heard is that the Coens were working on that script during the filming of Hudsucker, so the two can’t be mutually exclusive, can they?
OK, maybe i’m just getting ahead of myself. My favorite scene in Hudsucker is the kid discovering the Hula Hoop and the montage showing it taking over the world. I always thought that was kind of excessive until I found out that the hula hoop was such a massive fad that in all honesty, the Coens weren’t far off the mark. Weird to think something as simplistic as a circle could have such an impact on mass culture, but then there was also the pet rock, the Cabbage Patch Kids, and Carrot Top, so who knows?
Tuesday is Fargo day here at Joel’s marathon of Coen’s posting. You can get the finest selection in commentary and quotes on Coen Brothers movies for your bathroom, bedroom, beaudoir!
Where was I? Fargo.
One thing that has always stood out for me with Fargo is the isolation of these characters, whether it’s Jerry having a temper tantrum in an empty, snowy parking lot, Marge taking a break while investigating the crime scene of a crashed car and two innocents killed in an “execution-type deal,” or Carl carefully burying a briefcase of money in the snow, along a fence that goes on to nowhere in each direction.
This notion of desperate characters isolated in desperate places shows up elsewhere in their films. Ray burying an undead Marty in an empty field. Tom Reagan marching (twice) into the quiet tranquility of the killing field of Miller’s Crossing. The vast desert of No Country in which Llewelyn discovers a massacre in and is later trapped in himself (although much of No Country actually takes place in cramped, interior spaces).
This isolation can also be seen in the spaces these characters inhabit, whether its Marty’s large backroom office, Tom’s spacious flat, Leo’s and Casper’s immense office spaces from Miller’s Crossing, the hotel hallways and studio offices of Barton Fink, or the massive executive offices of Hudsucker Proxy. So much space, so alone.
It all implies that these characters are on their own, left to their own devices. In most cases, these characters will not survive to the end of the film. They are like flies that are about to be trapped in the spider’s web; they just haven’t figured out they’re already stuck and that it’s already too late. Their plans have already fallen apart, their cohorts are already set on a path of betrayal, and their sins are already being counted against them.
The three notable exceptions to this are Raising Arizona, Hudsucker Proxy, and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? All are comedies and in each, the characters suffer but don’t die for their sins. They actually come out the other end of the narrative rabbit hole to go on to a (hopefully) better life.
Joel, I actually enjoyed Hudsucker, although it took me a little while to get into it (the fact that they’ve essentially replaced Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy with Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tim Robbins felt very weird…I kept thinking the film should have been in black and white…took a bit to adjust). You mention that it doesn’t all come together. In what way, exactly? It’s fun, light, and very consistent in it’s tone, so I’m curious how it disconnected with you.
And because the horse isn’t dead enough, I have some more thoughts on Miller’s Crossing. After discussing here, I kept wondering if I was off somehow in my interpretation, if there really was a heart to the film that I was prejudicially discounting. But after watching Fargo last night (for the first time in years), I feel more confident than ever in my initial response to Crossing.
Marge and Norm imbue Fargo with such heart, such humanity, that it catapults the film to the top of the Coen’s filmmography. When I said the Coens films didn’t move me, I hadn’t revisited Fargo yet. Their relationship is so tender, so real, their chemistry so palpable in such a down-to-earth way, that it blew me away. I didn’t think the Coens had it in them, but here it was, real people with real lives that I could relate to and care for.
Miller’s Crossing is missing that human element. Tom Reagan (at least to me) is interesting, but not sympathetic. His relationships with Leo and Verna are dysfunctional at best, destructive at worst, and are ultimately lost within the gangster-noir-genre atmosphere that the Coens are primarily interested in creating.
Don’t misread me – I think Crossing is a brilliantly constructed film. But it lacks the heart that they managed to inject into Fargo, and for that I feel it suffers.
Ok, horse is now officially dead. I’m putting away my club.
Good point. I like your comparison of Marge and Norm to Tom et al in Miller’s Crossing, because when you put it that way I can definitely see what you’re getting at. For me, Miller’s Crossing is more classic noir in that the characters are typically set against each other and there’s little room for warmth, compassion, or trust. It is a very dark movie, whether we accept Tom’s undying bond to Leo or not.
But yeah, Marge and Norm are quintessential elements in my argument against the Coens’ critics. Like HI and Ed, Llewlyn and Carla Jean, The Dude and Walter, or Everett and his Dapper Dan, these characters are not cold and cynical to each other. They are wonderful characters with deep connections to each other and it’s that warmth that makes them so memorable.
But I digress. I see your point and I concede your point of view makes sense, if I were to agree that Tom is unsympathetic. I don’t really believe that though. I think Tom is ultimately the hero of the story and as dark and methodical as his behavior might be, he still attempts to do what he believes is right. Ultimately he sacrifices himself in numerous ways to achieve that end. To me, his sacrifice is what makes him so sympathetic.
I don’t mind beating this horse. It’s an interesting conversation. You’ve gotten me to look at a favorite film of mine in a new way and I really appreciate that. I see your point now…and I think you could interpret the movie that way.
I agree that Fargo evokes warmth and heart in a way that Miller’s Crossing does not. But there are other qualities of feeling available to us. As I’ve said, similarly to Joel I found Tom sympathetic because he both possessed a personal code and was committed to seeing it through even though it came at considerable cost. But there was more to it than that. I admired his intellect, his dry and dark humor, his courage, and his acceptance without self-pity of the consequences of his bad choices – emphasized by the regular gambling debt related beatings. There was an admirable integrity to all this. Tom’s throwing up as he neared what seemed like an inevitable execution also played an important role for me in humanizing the man beneath the hardboiled exterior and stratagems. And it contributed to my sense of his aloneness and sacrifice. All these things that made him sympathetic were coupled with the establishment of a deliberately wistful overarching emotional tone by the Coens. The mix didn’t touch me in the manner of Fargo but it offered a different brand of poignancy nonetheless.
Tom never seemed contradictory in his behavior to me. He had an arc, and it was a sad and bittersweet one.
I’m having this thread laminated so I can return to it when I’ve actually got some time. Good conversation people.
Ah sartre, excellent comments. You said exactly what I was thinking in terms of Tom Reagan but much more eloquently than I could have.
Wow, sartre, you really stole my thunder there with regards to Tom.
Miller’s Crossing is more hardboiled and less emotionally vulnerable than other Coen films, to be sure, but I do think there is a linkage between Tom, Ray, Llewellyn and Ed from The Man Who Wasn’t There (glad you brought him up, too, Joel) in that each guy finds himself in a situation he can’t control nearly as much as he thinks he can. Ray is the most knowing in that he realizes he is not really capable of following through with his gambit, and Ed is fairly close to that template as well, while Llewellyn suffers from too much hardheadedness and Tom is easily the most manipulative and ruthlessly intelligent under this larger umbrella.
Each guy loses at the very least, a piece of their soul, and whether they’re guilt-ridden (Ray, seeing himself as saving Abby from prosecution and disgusted by her apparent coldbloodedness or possibly even insanity) or, as sartre points out, so physically moved to vomit (Tom) or psychologically and bodily trapped for good (Ed), or too stubborn to really understand (Llewellyn–motivated by money like so many Coen characters, he is at first blind and then underestimates Anton as “the ultimate bad-ass,” and is finally killed by the Mexicans, depriving both he and Anton the showdown they appeared to be moving towards, he sees himself as doing right by his wife in having her take refuge with her mother, and so many people he encounters are killed shortly thereafter by Anton like a hotel desk clerk, or a random driver) they all at the least possess the rationale that they’re serving a higher purpose.
Tom is the hardboiled noir figure, though, who doesn’t display his deep loyalty to Leo with warmth (his relationship with Verna is an ambiguous one). It’s harder to root for anybody in particular with Miller’s Crossing except that at least Tom does have, I think, as sartre says, his own code of ethics. The arc of that film is how he finally finds himself pushed out of his own code by fate.
This leads to an interesting discussion unto itself, which is, which Coen films are the most moving? Seeing a film in a theatre always makes it more moving to me than it was before at home, so having just recently seen Blood Simple and Fargo that way I found them both more moving (with Fargo being quite so towards the end especially). No Country for Old Men becomes more moving every time I see it, with Carla Jean Moss squaring off with Anton and disallowing him from allowing the coin to decide and Ed Tom Bell speaking of his dream, a perfect ending which becomes more perfect every time I see it. Raising Arizona is clearly highly emotional at the very end with a beautiful, bittersweet, touching finale topped with a great, laugh-inducing line. I do think, though, that Miller’s Crossing is, while not wrenchingly moving, at the very least penetrating in its mournfulness, and the ending with Tom always arouses sympathy from me.
The Big Lebowski, with the ashes… Hilarious but lovely simultaneously. The Man Who Wasn’t There, with the final bit of narration and the moment of spiritual transcendence. Barton Fink with the eccentric drunk writer, which is made somehow strangely poignant. The Hudsucker Proxy (in which I think Jennifer Jason Leigh more like Rosalind Russell from His Girl Friday and Barbara Stanwyck from Meet John Doe than Hepburn). O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Okay, I find them all at least partly moving in some way. Except, I suppose, Cruelty and Ladykillers.
Really interesting observations Alexander, especially enjoyed ‘each guy loses at the very least, a piece of their soul’. That nicely captures why Tom can be responded to as a tragic figure beneath his, as Joel said, hat (and smarts). And it helps make sense of why the Coens went for a grand elegiac tone.
That is my reading of it as well, sartre. Carter Burwell’s score pointedly underlines this as well, with its sorrowfulness.
Interesting. I was going to note that Burwell’s scores hint at the emotional edge of the various Coen Brothers movies but then I realized that No Country has little scoring at all (Big Lebowski and Oh Brother are mostly previously-recorded music).
But Fargo, Miller’s Crossing, Blood Simple, and Man Who Wasn’t There all have more plaintive scoring, as opposed to Raising Arizona or Hudsucker, which are far more upbeat.
Or am I remembering those scores wrong?
Nope, you’re right, Joel. Only thing I’d add is that Blood Simple’s score is a little more eerily foreboding than mournfully foreboding (the way Miller’s Crossing, Fargo and The Man Who Wasn’t There all are… not to suggest there are no eerie elements to those scores, but it’s not their apparent raison d’etre the way Blood Simple’s score is).
Even though it’s short, I find No Country for Old Men’s score very sweet. As in, haunting, eerie, suspenseful and very dark. I’ve recently shoved my Blu-Ray DVD of it in the player just to hear the music for a while.
By the way, Joel, I’m really enjoying and appreciating your daily Coen tributes. I found your thoughts on Fargo and the isolation of the characters particularly excellent and it’s certainly a Coen motif–often when the characters in their films are faced with crunch-time to make perilous decisions, like in Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo and No Country for Old Men, just for starters, they must do so outside from the rest of civilization it would seem.
Evan, Joel, Sartre, and Alexander, I read what you said. You know nothing of our work. How you feel able to speak with authority on anything is totally amazing.
Thanks Alexander. That idea of isolation is more prevalent in some of their films and less so in others and it seems to be something they’ve gotten further away from as they’ve matured as directors, but I couldn’t help but notice that it’s a motif they keep returning to.
It is curious to note that To The White Sea was a project they had on their plate for some time before it finally fell apart. The synopsis I heard was the main character is trapped alone on an island by a ship wreck and much of the film contains no dialogue at all. I can’t really imagine a greater sense of isolation than being trapped/lost in the middle of the ocean, alone.
My namesake:
Oh come on.
Seriously, Joel, get back to work. Suburbicon and Hail Caesar aren’t going to write themselves, and quite frankly, I’ve been doing most of the heavy lifting lately. If I have to venture out into the internet one more time and hunt you down on whatever forum or blog you’ve holed yourself up in – well, I’m confiscating your Oscar for a whole month.
Wait a minute Ethan! Who elected you leader of this outfit?
Let’s get this commentary started back up proper.
Wednesday, (the most oddly spelled day of the week–all things considered) brings us to The Big Lebowski. I apologize in advance if I accidentally misspell the name Lebowski but for some reason my hooked-on-phonics brain wants there to be a second “w” in there.
First this (for those who haven’t seen it), a NSFW shortened version of the Big Lebowski. Headphones required for those in public.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqtgfjkB6Pg
I was a little disappointed when I discovered a few years back that Walter, the Dude, and a number of their specific misadventures in the film were based on real people and real events. I won’t spell it all out for you here because I don’t have the time and frankly, far more devoted fans than myself have littered the internets with this info already. Just google it…believe me, it’s all out there.
Where was I? I think I was rambling there. Oh yes, the Dude and Walter. Well, I must admit I was a little disappointed. But then it dawned on me that you couldn’t make up the Dude or Walter. You couldn’t make up The Dude discovering some miserable brat’s homework as the clue that would reveal who stole his car or Walter’s insistent on explaining to said brat just what happens when you f*ck a stranger in the ass.
You can’t make these wonderful characters up. Well, OK, you might be able to add in the room-tying-together rug, the kidnapping, the porn king of Malibu, Maude and her vagina, possibly even the nihilists. And the ferret. But not the bowling. Or the caucasians.
OK, maybe the bowling and caucasians. But the car doing an endo into the dumpster? THAT’S COMEDY GOLD YOU COULD NOT MAKE UP. I laugh just thinking about it.
My point here is that The Dude is iconic. Walter transcends the inspiration. So it doesn’t matter where it all came from. The Big Lebowski is more than just pederasts, sarsaparilla, and the Seattle Seven.
It’s about a rug that really tied the room together and those that peed on it. It’s about a line in the sand and not crossing it. It’s about not fucking with the Jesus. It’s about Los Angle-les, the City of Angels. But most importantly, it’s about the Dude and his natural state of abiding.
“I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in that. It’s good knowin’ he’s out there, the Dude, takin’ her easy for all us sinners.”
Indeed Stranger, indeed.
Fair to say Joel that Lebowski is greater than the sum of its parts? I have to admit, the parts had to grow on me with this one. My first response on seeing it opening weekend was “Yeah, that was funny, but it was no Raising Arizona” but over the years it’s grown on me in a big way. It’s all the little funny moments and the way the add up into a whole attitude. A flavor that captures a certain time and place and a certain lifestyle.
And yeah, there’s the dumpster. AHAHAHAHAHA.
I still fondly recall seeing this in the theater with 5 of my friends and a room of about 20 people total. I laughed longer, harder, and more often than anyone I was with and afterwards, they all seemed a little surprised by how much I enjoyed the movie. It was one of those moments where you realize you’re maybe not completely normal.
Regardless, this is one of those movies you can gauge your friends by. Not your regular friends, but the folks you know you can truly communicate with on a near-telepathic level.
If you don’t like Big Lebowski, I see nothing wrong with that. It’s a weird, oddball little comedy. But if you love it, then you’re speaking my language. Lebowskifest might be pushing it…but whatever. To each his own.
Lebowskifest concerns me a little, but mostly it’s snobbery on my part. I feel ownership of it and I resent other people staking a claim even though they have as much righ to it as I do.
It would be fun to meet the supporting cast members and hear them speak about making the movie, but dressing up as your favorite character or watching the movie in a bowling alley have no appeal to me. Halloween happens once a year and even then, I have no real interest in getting into a costume. But if other people want to do that, fine by me. I do reserve the right to mock them though.
“Not your regular friends, but the folks you know you can truly communicate with on a near-telepathic level.”
Joel, I’m a huge Lebowski fan. But I don’t think you want me in your head.
NEAR-telepathic, sartre. Near. I don’t want anyone in my head…that’s too Orwellian.
Not to derail the Lebowski discussion, but I just posted my thoughts on Barton Fink and I would love to get some perspectives from those who may have liked it better than I did. To me, it represented all the worst parts of Miller’s Crossing, but I am interested in what it’s defenders have to say.
Here’s a snippet:
“Most importantly there is the Hallway, which could have been pulled straight out of The Shining. It’s standing in for the Road this time, a symbol that the Coens relied on heavily in their previous three pictures, connecting people and places to one another with expansive stretches of isolation and loneliness. The Hallway connects Barton to Charlie, two isolated and lonely islands in the middle of their respective oceans (which, surprise surprise, is also a symbol at work). This Hallway, however, not only connects, it intimidates, a supernatural character in it’s own right. Pregnant with creepy undertones, you anticipate a wall of blood to come rushing down it at any moment. Not surprisingly, the Coens give you what you’d expect, although instead of blood we’re treated to fire.”
“that’s too Orwellian” -> and Philip K. Dickian.
Sorry for getting out of step in commenting on the Coens films. It seems I’m only just reaching Monday. I agree that Hudsucker doesn’t quite meet its potential. But that said, with every re-viewing it edges ever closer to doing so. I love all the 40s screwball comedy genre homage and winking, the satirizing of corporate capitalism, the aspirations it instils and personalities that thrive within such a culture, and the cautionary tale aspect about the personal compromises (Alexander’s ‘losing a piece of their soul’) so easily made when seeking to suit upwardly.
All this is given even more density and form by the creative lengths they go to weave in the circle motif – symbol/concept/organizing principle with so many connotations that it functions as something both simple and metaphysical (here in relation to time). If the film doesn’t quite fully and organically integrate and realize such clockwork components I can only marvel that it comes so damn close.
I agree the movie has a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the subject and nostalgia for its roots in the screwball comedies of the past, but those disparate parts never really come together for me into anything that’s truly satisfying. I want to love it but it just kind of fizzles for me somewhere in the later half and never recovers.
The acting is good, although I’ve never really felt a strong chemistry between Norville or Amy, and so much scenery is being chewed by virtually everyone in the cast that the whole thing is a little too over-the-top for me. When the story finally reaches its dramatic apex, I guess I’m just not emotionally invested in the characters all that much. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the cartoonish aspects of the story, I do (remember my undying love and enthusiasm for Raising Arizona).
I’ve given it many chances, probably a half-dozen times or more, and I’m still luke-warm on it. But I do like it a lot more than I do Intolerable Cruelty or The Ladykillers.
On Hudsucker, I think the film’s problems could be easily summed up by examining one character: the bellhop. He is so over the top, so ridiculous, so gratingly annoying, that he becomes a parody of himself. You can see what they were going for, but he doesn’t work at all. I cringed every time he came on screen.
If you use the bellhop as the pinnacle of the film’s failure, it’s easy to gauge where the other elements fall on the slope. None of them fail as spectacularly as the bellhop, but none of them fully succeed either.
Even so, I kind of dug the film. It’s a bit hollow and silly, but I found it to be a welcome transition from the stuffiness of Barton Fink.
I’m with you, Joel, on your comment that everyone is chewing the scenery until their teeth begin to crack. The whole thing is on overload, and you have a hard time pinpointing exactly what it is, until the needle on the gauge redlines with the bellhop, and then you can point your finger and go, “Yeah, that’s it! That’s why this film doesn’t work!”
I haven’t seen the film in years Evan but your description of the hallway symbolism and echoes of The Shining ring true. You describe them, however, like they’re bad things :-)
The movie stays with me like a tone poem – the oft expressed Barton Fink Feeling.
Evan, for a Coens fan you seem to have some major issues with characteristic aspects of their work.
No one could accuse you Joel of not giving Hudsucker every chance to win you over.
After my last viewing, a year or so ago (which was 5-6 years since the previous time I saw it), that I finally gave into the fact that it wasn’t ever going to grab me. But I really wish it would.
Sartre, let’s say I’m a Coens fan who cannot always buy into what they’re selling.
I love their writing, I love their characters, I love the way the twist and bend genre to make it their own, I love how they remain consistent over each picture even as they craft wildly different stories. Fargo, to me, is their pinnacle, a 5 star masterpiece that embodies the best things about them while imbuing the whole affair with heart and affection.
The one thing that bugs me the most? Their overuse of symbols, which I find pretentious. I don’t care what the fedora means, I don’t care what’s in the box, I don’t care what the girl on the beach symbolizes.
So, call me a healthy critic of theirs. They are some of the most talented filmmakers working today, no doubt, but I’m not in love with all of their quirks and eccentricities.
Fair enough Evan.
I like their symbolism, particularly when it’s more cryptic. The hat and the postcard are good examples. I don’t think there is necessarily any literal way to understand them. They work for me because they’re offered up as motifs for the feel or sensibility of a film, and/or its lead character. In Miller’s Crossing the hat comes to represent for me different aspects of Tom’s nature. The hat among other things masks the face (true face), calculating brain, and the aloneness of the man wearing it. And the postcard girl comes to represent Fink’s ennui, longing for escape, the artificiality of his situation, and his running on the spot (stuck in the same moment, repetition without progress). There isn’t any need for such symbols to represent the same thing for everyone, and I don’t think taking any meaning from them is necessary for appreciating the films. But they work well for me.
All I can add about the symbolism is that they’ll deny that it has any meaning. They’re lying of course, but it works because they don’t hit you over the head with it. It’s there if you want to grab onto it, but it’s optional.
But then, I’m a Coen apologist.
Arguably the most light-hearted film of their entire careers, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? may be remembered most for its insanely popular soundtrack, compiled and produced by T. Bone Burnett, the Coen’s musical collaborator on the Big Lebowski (listed as musical archivist).
But whether its the music or the performances or the goofy adaption of Homer’s The Odyssey, Oh Brother is a fun movie if a very slight one. The Coens jokingly contend they’ve never read the Odyssey but based the story on what they’d heard of it. Considering their Midwestern Boomer upbringing, this seems hard to believe. Regardless, the wink-wink rendition of Homer’s epic is loose to say the least and that’s probably for the best, as the adaption seems to be only a slim narrative tool on which to hang these characters and their shenanigans.
I love the look and feel of Oh Brother, the first time digital timing was used on an entire feature length film to control the look and feel. It’s amazing how well this process works and how powerful a tool it has become in modern filmmaking. Deakins worked hard to achieve the look and feel the Coens insisted on, but eventually gave up on traditional chemical processes in favor of digital manipulation. it’s an amazing achievement.
I really like the soundtrack too, with a healthy mix of “old-timey music” and new renditions of classic tunes. And I enjoy the performances, most specifically the three leads, who all play off each other magnificently. In a sense, we’re getting a variation on Big Lebowski’s trio of lead characters here and once again, the Coens show they can write nutty dialogue with the best of them.
There’s also some fine supporting performances, most notably Charles Durning as Pappy O’Daniel. But otherwise Oh Brother is a fun movie that helped re-establish George Clooney’s reputation as an actor and brought folk and bluegrass back into the mainstream.
Spot on and interesting appraisal, Joel. I particularly like how you underscored the importance of groundbreaking digital application in creating the look of the film, and the how the trio of leads are variants on those in Lebowski. “Shenanigans” is just the right word to describe what they get up to.
Craig there’s no need to apologize for being an apologist :-)
I would like to apologize for Craig’s apologist apology.
Can we have that in triplicate?
The Coens sure like to deny the deeper themes of their films, and conspicuously they enjoy to scoff at claims by their fans (and critics?) of symbolism. Their statements about just liking the shape of the hat in Miller’s Crossing, or the Paul Bunyan statue in Fargo, and going with it in discussing their films, is funny in its modesty and almost Felliniesque levels of obfuscation.
Barton Fink is a heavy film, for good and ill, perhaps, depending on your perspective, and fits in the Coen catalogue in a way not too dissimilar from The Seventh Seal: it may not be the most straightforwardly appealing or even necessarily the all-around best but it’s stuffed with symbolism, allegory and metaphor, a significant amount of which Evan describes.
So what do the hat and the postcard mean to you Alexander?
Sartre, sometimes a hat is just a hat. The postcard, on the other hand, is clearly a sexual metaphor for his mother. You know, Oedipus and all.
Ahahahaha!
I’d love to elaborate more but I’ve got a hot date, sartre… That said, I really love your readings of the hat and postcard girl respectively. Of course, it helps that your views align with mine just about perfectly. In each case the inanimate object is an open cinematic portal into the very being of the protagonist.
Joel, that Oedipus connection is hilarious. It may be true, come to think of it… ahaha…
The way the hat blows in the wind seems to indicate a certain incapability to withstand the forces of nature as well.
Joel, I’m really enjoying the more recent capsule reviews of yours just like the earlier ones. Hudsucker should be a better film than it is considering all of the elements at work; it’s still very interesting, however.
Craig, your thoughts on The Big Lebowski are interesting because I remember after seeing it, thinking immediately, “Wow, they actually outdid Raising Arizona.” I love Raising Arizona… but… it’s The Dude!
Humorously, I just saw Keith Olbermann play a couple of clips of The Big Lebowski to open his show (tying it in with the abysmal bowling of the two Democrat presidential candidates).
I think Tom’s dream and his quick judgment of it probably would figure in to the hat’s meaning. I’ve always assumed that title sequence shot of the hat blowing is related to Tom’s dream.
The postcard…I’m not sure it has a specific meaning. It may just be a postcard, that comes to life after Barton has lost his mind. At least, that’s how I read it.
One thing I’ve always loved about Barton Fink’s ending is that pelican. It couldn’t have been planned, but it’s a great little moment.
I don’t think it could have _not_ been planned, it’s such a great moment.
The point about the opening sequence being related to Tom’s dream has always been an interesting theory to me, largely because dreams seem to be a big Coen motif (Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski and No Country for Old Men, just for starters, all deal with the metaphorical surrealism and deep importance of dreams). Thanks for bringing that up, Joel.
The pelican thing is like that piece of paper blowing right past Orson Welles in Touch of Evil. I think it was planned, and it’s so fabulous because you naturally suspect it couldn’t have been. (Of course, I could be wrong on that, like everything else I write about, heh.)
Yeah, how often in real life does a pelican trip over and its trousers fall down? I mean, come on Joel.
Well there’s no mention an animal wrangler or stunt pelican anywhere in the Barton Fink credits, so until someone tells me otherwise I’m going to assume it was an accident. It’s far more interesting that way.
For all you aspiring filmitists that read this site regularly (and Craig), if you interview the Coens or anyone directly involved in making Barton Fink, make sure to ask about that scene.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Good point about the dreams, Alexander. That is definitely a reoccurring narrative motif in the Coen brothers’ films. Doesn’t Norville’s dance sequence with the feather lady in Hudsucker Proxy count as a dream sequence too?
The Norville dance sequence was one I thought of just after I hit “Submit Comment.” Not to mention The Man Who Wasn’t There is almost the definition of a dreamlike film unto itself.
The issue of dreams in Coen films have to do, I think, with the differences between the real world and the imagined world and the world we all aspire to.
Friday brings us to the barber movie, AKA The Man Who Wasn’t There.
The Man Who Wasn’t There is an odd little movie that rides squarely on the shoulders of Billy Bob Thorton’s mannered, nuanced performance as barber Ed Crane. Without him, the disparate parts of this movie would probably completely fall apart. There are UFOs, a musical prodigy, adultery, betrayal, murder, dry cleaning, and toupees. And haircuts. Or maybe I should say the cutting of hair is a motif.
The Man Who Wasn’t There really isn’t a heavily plotted film noir so much as its a character study with a film noir plot. The Coens dissect Ed Crane, a man who has retreated so far into the periphery of his own existence that he is a shadow of a person. He is a zen master of barbering and cigarettes, achieving something of spiritual contemplation during the act of cutting heads. But Ed’s home life has become less than perfect. He has an odd scheme he concocts to change his life and take charge of his future, but the scheme seems to have a life of its own. When fate throws him a curve he’s more passenger than conductor in the events that follow, offering a verbal narrative that faithfully captures the details but usually underplays Ed’s reaction to them. And if Ed does react, it is submerged under a stoic surface so resolute and so thoughfully paced that Ed mimics more a glacier than a man. He’s not cold so much as he takes his time. We discover him not through his words or thoughts, but how he notes the details of what is going on around him. He’s the spectator to his own life in a sense.
Billy Bob is excellent in the main role, but the supporting work of Tony Shalhoub as Riedenschneider nearly eclipses Thorton’s performance. Shalhoub is chewing the scenery but doing it in masterful style. Riedenschneider is part master lawyer, part carnival barker, part con man. He sees Ed as a paycheck but leaves Ed believing he’s committed to the cause.
Ed on Riedenschneider: ”He told them to look not at the facts, but at the meaning of the facts. Then he said the facts had no meaning.”
The supporting cast of Richard Jenkins, Jon Polito, Frances McDormand, and Michael Badalucco are also all good, each getting to try on different hats in this film. I think James Gandolfini may have been unnecessarily type cast as the heavy here, and while it works he definitely feels out of place to me.
It’s quite a mixed bag rendered beautifully by the amazing black and white cinematography of Roger Deakins. Deakins had to compose and shoot the film in color for foreign release requirements while simultaneously planning every frame for black and white. Deakins actually preferred the look of color desaturated over standard black and white stocks because it could achieve a broader depth of shadow detail, sharper image detail, and less apparent film grain. This attention to detail shows too, especially in the wonderful jail house conference where ace attorney Freddy Riedenschneider is enveloped in a spiderweb of shadows and light. It’s a gorgeous movie.
While it’s never been clear if the movie was actually distributed in color overseas, there have been a few reports of a couple color prints accidentally showing up in a couple American theaters. I feel sorry for those poor souls, because The Man Who Wasn’t There would be robbed of all its meaning in color. It’s film noir to the core (with UFOs), a throwback to the films of the 40′s and 50′s.
I have no idea how to end this post so I’ll leave it here, with a moment of uncertainty coupled with hope much the same way Ed leaves us.
Excellent review Joel. I’ve only seen the film once and I’m now surprisingly foggy on its content. It just didn’t take with me. But your meticulous and illuminating observations make it worth revisiting.
Nice review of an underappreciated Coen film Joel. Has anyone else noticed the tenor of Joel’s reviews almost assume that of each film itself? There’s a contemplative quality to TMWWT that is mirrored in the review. And the Lebowski review reminded me of The Stranger’s narration.
Good stuff.
Also, than you all for keeping LiC interesting while I’ve been unable to participate much.
It’s probably fortunate and appropriate that my two least favorite Coen brothers movies have coincided with weekend posts, if only because I don’t have as much to say about either nor will I likely be able to so readily participate in any ensuing conversation. And so it is with that prologue and apology (mea culpa?) that I introduce our Saturday entry, Intolerable Cruelty.
More so than any other Coen brothers’ film, Intolerable Cruelty feels like it bears the burden of an overzealous producer and studio behind it. To be fair, the Coens involvement was reportedly originally limited to script work (they did not originate the script), but they eventually took on directing duties too.
From the opening title credits though, it’s obvious this isn’t a standard Coen brothers affair. IMDb lists six producers (including the Coens) and three executive producers on the film, with only one of these a regular Coen co-producer (John Cameron). It’s not abnormal for the Coens to have production help, but previously they’ve had a single co-producer and usually, it’s been someone they’ve worked with extensively. Regardless, Intolerable Cruelty feels like a mainstream Hollywood dark comedy for much of its running time and this is likely the result of Brian Grazer, Grant Heslov, and Joel Whitaker’s involvement.
Intolerable Cruelty is about uber divorce attorney, no strike that, uber divorce litigation samurai Miles Massey (George Clooney) and the ensuing war with a gold-digging goddess, Marylin Rexroth (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Massey is taken by Marylin, Marylin simply wants the money. All the money. Hilarity ensues.
Clooney proves once again to be adept at screwball comedy, alternately portraying Miles as a immoral master of the law and as a lovestruck schoolboy in Marylin’s presence. Zeta-Jones is good as the seductive con artist, Marylin, but the chemistry between her and Clooney seems one-sided at best. This might be because they seem to be in two different movies. Clooney channels the same goofball energy he brought to Oh Brother, where as Zeta-Jones is on slow-burn as Marylin. A movie like this can only work when the two leads show some real fireworks between each other, but that never really happens in Intolerable Cruelty, partially because the two performances are never in tune.
Richard Jenkins is once again great as Marylin’s attorney and Billy Bob Thorton offers a straight-faced supporting turn as one of Marylin’s many wealthy husbands. Paul Adelstein is also great as Massey’s hapless assistant, Wrigley. The rest of the cast is a bit more of a mixed bag and to be fair none of them really stand out in the script except for one notable exception, Irwin Keyes as Wheezy Joe. I mention Wheezy Joe because he is the single most Coenesque detail of the film and the one moment during Intolerable Cruelty where it was clear who was directing the movie. I will say no more so as not to ruin it for the uninitiated save to say that Wheezy Joe is a brief yet memorable part of the story.
In a nutshell, Intolerable Cruelty proves that the Coens will never comfortably inhabit the mainstream. I remember seeing this in a mall multiplex opening weekend on a Saturday night, with a crowd that more multiplex audience than Coen fans. As the end credits rolled, most of them seemed disappointed, possibly even perplexed by the movie they had just seen. It was not what the Clooney/Zeta-Jones fans were hoping for. Being a Coen brothers fan, I was in tacit agreement.
It’s not a complete failure as a film, but it’s also not as enjoyable or memorable (for Coen fans) as the Hudsucker Proxy either. Ultimately it’s a fairly forgettable movie, not one that fits neatly within the consistent style and oeuvre of the Coen brothers’ filmography.
I’m far more forgiving of the film than you Joel. It’s not in my top 10 Coen brothers films but I found it a good natured entertainment with no small measure of intelligence behind it and some genuine laugh out loud moments. I had less problem with the absence of chemistry between the leads because I was satisfied that the film was a broad genre parody exercise where characters play type. And Clooney has a real talent for this kind of comedic role, as he displayed in O Brother.
It’s possible, sartre, that were this not a Coen brothers movie I might like it more. As it is, the script does have some witty lines and Clooney in particular is quite funny but my expectations are for something different than what Intolerable Cruelty delivers and it never completely satisfies me when I’ve seen it in the past.
All I can say about IC is that Clooney gives one of the funniest spit-takes ever.
Classic.
I hate the whole opening with Geoffrey Rush however.
“I hate the whole opening with Geoffrey Rush however.”
I usually love anything Geoffrey Rush but I couldn’t agree more, Craig. For some reason that opening just rubs me the wrong way and puts the whole experience of the film on the wrong foot out of the starting gate.
It’s shrill and kind of irritating. The movie actually improves from that point forward, but it never quite seems to find its footing.
Shrill and irritating. Those are precisely the words to describe it, Craig. And you’re right about it improving but never really finding its footing.
The 2004 remake of the Ealing Studios classic, The Ladykillers, may be the most frustrating movie for me in the Coen brothers filmography. By all appearances, it seems to have all the elements to be a natural fit in the Coen brothers’ long list of comedy classics, but something (a couple things) seem to hold it back from really working. And yet, there are so many right elements, it’s truly frustrating this one never seems to gel into a cohesive film.
Deakins’ cinematography is once again spot on, especially the beautiful shots of the thieves disposing of various dead weight from the bridge (these scenes do involve a lot of CGI, to be fair). Then there’s the cast, which includes Tom Hanks, Stephen Root, J. K. Simmons, and…Marlon Wayans. Irma P. Hall and Tzi Ma are also good in supporting roles. And then there’s the story, which follows a misfit band of crooks with a rather elegant heist plan and the morality play that will see fate render unerring justice on them all, a common theme in Coen brothers’ films.
But something (many things) just don’t come together for a satisfying film, no matter how hard I want to like this movie. Let’s begin with Tom Hanks, who marries an extremely mannered Southern accent to a performance rife with odd tics. I want to like it and in parts I do, but something about it just doesn’t work. His professor Dorr is less creepy than he is goofy, and something about that undermines my enjoyment. Hanks doesn’t nail Dorr so much as he buries him under the eccentricity of the performance.
J. K. Simmons gives his all to Garth, but the explosive diarrhea his character suffers from is a lame plot device that we can see coming a mile off. It’s one step removed from the toilet humor of most Marlon Wayans’ roles.
Speaking of, Marlon Wayans is actually kind of funny in this movie, if he didn’t feel like such a ridiculous b-boy caricature. Ultimately I really can’t stand Wayans’ style of shrill comedy and he grates on me to no end. I’m not saying he’s bad, just supremely annoying. Nuff said.
Stephen Root is enjoyable as Wayans’ boss, even if his egocentric dickhead of a boss character is fairly cliche. Tzi Ma’s General is a more physical role than anything else and he sells it well. Irma P. Hall is good in the straight-(wo)man role as Mrs. Munson, a gracious woman with little patience for Prof Dorr and company’s shenanigans.
Then there’s the Southern setting of this story, which takes the Coens into a black matriarch’s home and her world of gospel, fiery church sermons, and that bizarre portrait of her deceased (but still watchful) husband. Watching the Ladykillers, I felt at times like the Coens had turned their sardonic eye towards a sub-culture they’ve only witnessed through films and television and the result was oddly uncomfortable. Maybe my political correctness nerve was being unfairly overly sensitive, but it didn’t feel right. That sense of discomfort, that maybe they’re treading on ground they don’t have a clue about, made the entire movie feel awkward and misplaced.
As much as I love the Coens and as much as I think they tried to make Ladykillers a success, it fails in a number of places for me. It’s an awkward comedy of errors that feels like its more mawkish elements are misplaced,often erring on the side of simplistic comedy and tired cliches. Parts of it are very good, but the whole fails to satisfy.
You nail many of the film’s shortcomings for me Joel. Nowhere better than in your description of Hanks’ inability to carry the film – “[he] doesn’t nail Dorr so much as he buries him under the eccentricity of the performance”.
Uneven and generally misfiring, this is the only Coens film I consider a failure.
I check out for a day or two and come back to 30+ posts.
Seriously, Joel, you should take all of this and write an article for my site for Coens month. Game?
I’ve never seen Intolerable Cruelty, and its been ages since I’ve seen The Ladykillers, so I’m looking forward to approaching what most consider to be the worst of the Coens’ ouevere. Knowing my proclivities, I’ll probably love them.
Heh heh, well if you can fully enjoy them Evan then more power to you. As I said, I think both films have their pluses, they just don’t overcome the minuses for me.
Thank you for the offer, although I’m not sure what I would have to say beyond my current comments. If I come up with something worthy, I will let you know. As it is, I think I may burned my current Coen candle down to nothing but a nub with this film-a-day thread.
Thanks Joel for such well crafted, erudite, and illuminating comments on each of the brothers films. I really liked how you consistently noted the contribution of their key collaborator Roger Deakins.
I’ll miss your daily reviews. Perhaps a repeat performance with another director? Kubrick?
And thanks to everyone else who contributed to making this thread such a stimulating read. Special mention though to Evan whose comments often prompted more thorough discussion.