"Look in your heart." - My Coen Brothers list

For me, the Coen Brothers are the ultimate modern American film makers.  Their only real rival is Ridley Scott.

The Coens have a gift for capturing the essence of slices of American culture in a way that constitutes a kind of ethnological survey of the country.  What could be more arch-typically and wonderfully Southern than "Oh Brother..." or more upper Midwest than "Fargo?"

Some of these films do not appeal to me.  I will not name them.

"Blood Simple" still stands at the head of the list for me closely followed by "Miller's Crossing," a wonderful, beautifully stylized meditation on the Irish in America just as "Blood Simple" speaks powerfully of the relentless, invincible hardness and cruelty of Texas, "A whole other country."

"No Country for Old Men" is quite different.  The underlying material in that film is Cormac  Mcarthyy's masterful novel.  The same thing is undeniable for "True Grit."

I think the oeuvre of the Coen Brothers should be judged on the basis of textual material of their own devising.  pl 

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Comments

[Maureen Lang]

There are only a very few current American film makers whose works I go to see on opening day-
John Sayles, Sofia Coppola, Jim Jarmusch (for better or worse), David Lynch (ditto), Paul Thomas Anderson, & Joel/Ethan Coen. "True Grit" is another wonder by these two- so glad they went back to the novel for their source material.

I've been a huge fan of the Coens since a friend persuaded me to go with him to see "Blood Simple" many years ago. He'd already seen it, was eager to see it again ("You HAVE to see this film, Maureen!")

Private Detective Visser: The world is full o' complainers. An' the fact is, nothin' comes with a guarantee. Now I don't care if you're the Pope of Rome, President of the United States or Man of the Year; somethin' can always go wrong. Now go on ahead, y'know, complain, tell your problems to your neighbor, ask for help, 'n watch him fly. Now, in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else... that's the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas, an' down here... you're on your own.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086979/quotes

[ex-PFC Chuck]

Being a born and bread Minnesotan I greatly enjoyed Fargo. At the time it came out my daughter was as student at Dartmouth and saw the film in the campus theater. She said that she could tell that a lot of the references and jokes had gone over the heads of most of the audience because she recognized the laughs of those few who found those items amusing were those of her fellow upper mid-westerners.

By way of minor correction, No Country for Old Men is based on a story by Cormac McCarthy, not Larry McMurtry.

[Maureen Lang]

And...I have always considered "Miller's Crossing" a film I would watch at the drop of anyone's blown off/chased hat, due to being one of my top five list of Coen Original Oeuvres.

That, plus its having a strong undercurrent of Hammett's "The Glass Key" & his Continental Op stories, particularly "Dead Yellow Women". Big Hammett fan here.

[Okanogen]

'Miller's Crossing' is one of my favorite films (and yes, it is an uncredited mashup of Hammett's 'Glass Key' and his Continental Op novel 'Red Harvest'). I am a huge fan of their work in general, and their appreciation for Hammett - one of the greatest American authors - is referenced in many of their films. That said, they aren't infallible, and 'No Country for Old Men' for me was violence porn, a bloodless, passionless exercise on the same level as 'Natural Born Killers'. 'Hudsucker Proxy' was also forgettable, and 'Burn After Reading' was interesting, but no masterpiece.

Being in Minnesota, I actually was lucky enough to read the script for Fargo prior to shooting. My girlfriend was given a copy as she was potentially going to work on the film. That didn't happen (she worked on the concurrent "Beautiful Girls"), but reading the script, the incredibly dry humor is difficult to understand, I had no idea they would translate what I read as a fairly straightforward noir crime story into the dark humor masterpiece they created. Their amazing artistry is in the translation from the written word and concept, to fully realized depiction on film. Fleshing out the story from a one-dimensional medium, into a three-dimensional medium, adding the visual wit and humor which transforms it. Like the difference of a five-star chef showing you the picture of a meal they will cook, and then your experiencing the meal itself.

I'm reminded of one of the first scenes in 'Miller's Crossing', where a droop-lidded child pulls the "rug" off a dead "Rug" Daniels. Or the too-small, fur-lined coat Steve Buscemi wears in 'Fargo'. These details aren't fleshed out in a script, they are created out of the artist's vision. Akira Kurosawa also had this gift of visual narrative, like one of the opening scenes of 'Yojimbo', where a small dog prances past Toshiro Mifune's character carrying a severed hand: setting the stage for events moments later.

Thank you for your appreciation of the Coen's work, and the opportunity to discuss it.

[James ben Goy]

Some films should not be remade. True Grit was one of them.

[KlementsForbes]

"For me, the Coen Brothers are the ultimate modern American film makers."

They are post-modern, which means their films are about other films, not America or real life.

"Their only real rival is Ridley Scott."

Ridley Scott has not made a good film since Blade Runner. Black Hawk Down was rediculously racist.

"The Coens have a gift for capturing the essence of slices of American culture in a way that constitutes a kind of ethnological survey of the country."

I think this is very untrue. They play jokes on, and caricaturize, races. Think about that Japanese guy in Fargo, or any of the other caricatures they laugh at.

"What could be more arch-typically and wonderfully Southern than "Oh Brother..." or more upper Midwest than "Fargo?"

But it has nothing to do with the Bible Belt or the South. It's a parody, a joke.

""Miller's Crossing," a wonderful, beautifully stylized meditation on the Irish in America..."

How is Miller's Crossing a "meditation on the Irish in America"? It's a parody of Yojimbo, with noir tropes added.

"No Country for Old Men" is quite different."

Like all Coen films, No Country is about the chaos of the universe and the way nothing ultimately matters. Every Coen film says the same thing: people are idiots and nothing matters. In a sense, they are art-nihilists. They deny art's revolutionary or transcedental function. Nothing matters to them other than tongue in cheek irony and jokes.