“I’ll meet you on…
God’s golden shore…”
You know you’re watching a Coen Brothers’ film if…
Nearly every Coen brothers’ film features a crime
that fails tragically, comedically, or both.
The inciting incident in a Coen brothers’ film
is often this:
a character is faced with a problem — a moral dilemma.
“I’d be making money, going to parties,
meeting the big shots, sure, but I'd be cutting myself off
from the wellspring of that success, from the common man.”
“You're the toast of Broadway and you have the opportunity
to redeem that for a little cash – strike that, a lot of cash.”
They choose to forgo the lawful or moral action
for a more expedient and criminal alternative.
“Now, I’m in a bit of trouble.”
“What kind of trouble you in, Jerry?”
What follows can feel like fate or the cosmos itself answering human sins
with inescapable punishment.
The underlying philosophy of the Coens is often described as “Old Testament”
--
in other words, brutal and absolute, harsh and unforgiving.
“Now, we had a deal here.
A deal’s a deal.”
“Is it, Jerry?
You ask those three pour souls up in Brainerd if a deal's a deal!
Go ahead, ask 'em!”
It’s basically a given that someone will die,
most likely in a violent way.
“I guess that was your accomplice in the woodchipper.”
The Coens’ morality feels strict... yet it can be difficult
to pinpoint its rules, exactly.
As Vox’s Peter Suderman describes it,
“watching a Coen brothers movie can feel like watching
an elaborate inside joke that you’re never quite sure you’re in
on.”
“What did we learn, Palmer.”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“I don’t [BLEEP]-ing know either.”
Because while we sense that this is a universe
deeply concerned with morality, it’s not a universe
that always delivers justice - evil characters often escape,
and good people get taken out as casualties for other people’s sins.
We have to fear punishment if we do wrong, but if we do good,
we can’t trust that the world will be good to us in return.
“I’ve tried to be a serious man, you know?
Tried to do right, be a member of the community…”
As film critic Tasha Robinson put it,
“God may be capricious about rewarding the just,
but never about punishing the guilty.
It’s impossible to earn success through good works,
but easy to earn failure through bad ones.”
So on the one hand in the Coens’ universe we have an Old Testament-style
vengeful God cutting us down when we transgress;
but on the other, we have a world of chance
where good doesn’t necessarily triumph, everything just might be
arbitrary and meaningless, and innocents can fall like flies
while the guilty escape.
It’s safe to say, at least, that if you get involved in crime
in a Coen Brothers movie, someone will be punished for it --
even if it isn’t you.
“Things have changed.
Circumstances, Jerry, beyond the, uh, acts of God.
Force majeure.”
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We’re in a world of randomness and monsters.
This brutal, unfair world pushes us to acknowledge
the terrifying role of randomness in our lives.
Life in a Coens’ film is endlessly mysterious,
“Who the [BLEEP] are you?
Why are you following me around?”
uncertain,
“The Uncertainty Principle.
It proves we can't ever really know...
what's going on.”
and full of coincidence.
“Accept the mystery.”
Cruel chance is embodied in Anton Chigurh’s coin toss
in No Country for Old Men--
“You need to call it.
I can’t call it for you.
It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I didn’t put nothing up.”
“Yes, you did.
You’ve been putting it up your whole life,
you just didn’t know it.”
The regular person witnessing this world of monstrosity
may feel it’s okay for them to act monstrously, too --
but if monsters can escape the consequences of their crimes,
regular people usually won’t.
Burn After Reading would seem like an exception to this
because Linda - who’s the cause of all the disaster --
lives and even gets what she wants: plastic surgery.
Yet we come to realize Linda was never one of the regular people;
she’s been one of the monsters all along.
“There is more material?”
“There's a lot more.
But we want to be paid first.”
In the face of uncertainty, most of us humans are best off
trying to be like Marge in Fargo: capable, kind, humble and optimistic
yet aware of what we’re up against… and not broken down by seeing
the terrible things people can do to each other.
“And it’s a beautiful day.”
Nicholas Brady of Taste of Cinema notes that in most cases,
the lead character is their own antagonist.
Many characters are hapless, incompetent and make very bad decisions.
“You two are just dumber than a bag of hammers.”
They might have something special about them
like Everett’s smooth-talking in O Brother Where Art Thou
“I detect like me, you’re endowed with the gift of gab.”
or Tom Reagan’s unshakable cool in Miller’s Crossing.
But even these characters veer into the silly and ridiculous.
“I guess it'd be the acme of foolishness to inquire
if you had a hairnet.”
And for the most part, characters are average.
What’s interesting is how these unremarkable everymen
cope with remarkably absurd situations, or challenges where they’re
way out of their depth.
“I could be sitting here with just pee stains on my rug.”
“Yeah.”
As an audience we don’t particularly like or want to be like these characters;
more often, we cringe, waiting for the inevitable car crash.
Of course Jerry Lundegaard’s plan to have his wife kidnapped
was bound to go awry.
And it’s obvious to everyone but Llewelyn Moss
that if you happen across a gruesome crime scene
populated by murdered drug dealers that you should not take that money.
Yet we do feel bad for these characters --
“Most guys I just feel sorry for.”
their suffering is sympathetic.
“Wouldn’t mind a hangin’…
But the layin’ in the grave so long, poor boy…”
It’s just that no feeling (from us or them)
can alter the consequences of what they’ve done.
And once the sin is committed, characters can’t do anything
to redeem themselves.
It doesn’t fit into just one genre but has a clear tone.
The Coens play with genre, moving from neo-noir,
to slapstick comedy, to gangster period piece
from film to film, and also within the films themselves.
The throughline is their distinct tone -- you could say it really
ties their work together.
“Yeah, man, it really tied the room together.”
Coen Brothers’ films exist in what critic Brian Papish calls
“a slightly embellished reality.”
They’re darkly funny, broad, bizarre…
stylized yet down-to-earth, with surprisingly heartfelt moments.
“Heck Norm, we’re doing pretty good.”
“I love you Margie.”
“I love you Norm.”
yet always ruthlessly anti-sentimental.
“I don’t think we’re going to make a movie which is sentimental.
I don’t think we’re going to make a movie about
the triumph of the human spirit.”
A Coen brothers movie won’t leave you feeling totally hopeless
and pessimistic, though.
Even though the Coens get accused of having a “Kubrickian coldness”
to their films, the feeling they’re communicating
is more that the darkness and comedy of life
exist side-by-side.
“You'll lose her vote if you make her a widow.
And who'll play catch out in the back with our kid?
Oh!
Please, Mr. Kennedy.”
“I think we both have a horror of sentimentality.
I like it when you leave a movie feeling good but you want to say,
you know, ‘look how horrible people can be, isn’t life great.’”
The Coens are from Minnesota, and their films often have
a midwestern or southwestern setting, or they may weave in elements
of a traditional western.
But through the Coens’ eyes, small town Americans’ lives
become bizarre, offbeat, dark and dangerous.
Just as Flannery O’Connor is known for the Southern Gothic style,
the Coens craft what we might call Midwestern Gothic.
Fargo could not exist in any other place.
“I’d be very surprised if our suspect was from Brainerd.”
Blood Simple asserts within the first minute
that understanding its Texas setting is essential to understanding
the characters’ motives.
“What I know about is Texas, an' down here...
you're on your own.”
The Big Lebowski is inextricably linked to Los Angeles.
“Sometimes, there's a man, well, he's the man
for his time and place.
He fits right in there.
And that's the Dude, in Los Angeles.”
The dialogue in a Coen brothers movie
has a deliberate, stylized rhythm and wit
“It's a fool looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.”
“I’ll show you the life of the mind!”
“If the rule you followed brought you to this...
of what use was the rule?”
Dialogue style is so interconnected with the world of each particular story
that it feels like the world cannot exist without characters
who speak this way.
“Oh ya?”
“Ya!
Ya, is that useful to you?”
“Oh, you betcha, ya.”
“Smokey, this is not 'Nam.
This is bowling.
There are rules..”
and those characters wouldn’t speak that way
outside of this world.
“Huh.
Would that it were so simple.”
There’s a familiar visual language from film to film:
tracking shots down corridors, conversations in cars,
a shot of a screaming character (specifically the one that critics
fondly refer to as “the howling fat man”),
and dream sequences or fantasies.
Wide lenses exaggerate camera movements and actors’ features,
and show us more of the environment.
So, visually, too, these characters
are inseparable from their worlds.
The Coens have a gift for visual precision --
they know how to zero in on an defined subject,
and remove the clutter -- so there’s a certain cleanliness
in their images.
What we see is incredibly specific, and neatly organized.
There’s almost something intangibly Midwestern
about the framing in a Coen film.
Broad, wide, and open, more complex than what’s noticeable
at first glance.
Surprising, incongruous visual combinations
yield images that stay with us.
Cinematographer Roger Deakins has worked on twelve
of the seventeen Coen Brothers feature films.
Ethan describes the experience of being on their set as this:
“There’s a guy who is working and making the movie
named Roger Deakins, and Roger has two friends
who sit around and read the newspaper.”
Deakins is a big part of why the Coens famously film
dialogue scenes with a wide lens, placed inside the conversation
rather than over the character’s shoulder.
“Personally I’m sitting here talking to you and you’re filming me
from over there on a shoulder on probably a single.
Where, I’d rarely do that, cause I think, you know,
the camera wants to be…
To me, I would shoot singles inside here.”
Composer Carter Burwell has also worked on ten
of the Coens’ films, creating the ambient scores
that are vital to establishing that Coen-esque atmosphere.
You see the same familiar faces over and over,
in roles written specifically for the actors.
Frances McDormand, John Goodman,
John Turturro, Steve Buscemi,
George Clooney, Tilda Swinton,
Josh Brolin, Jeff Bridges and more.
Many of them are oddballs with character, who look like real people,
instead of having stereotypical movie star looks.
When watching a Coen film, you may find yourself asking
“haven’t we seen something similar to this before?”
It’s a question that the filmmakers occasionally ask themselves:
“Haven’t we shot this scene before?”
More generally, it feels the Coens return
to certain thematic grounds, circling fundamental questions
of morality and existence.
They’re a rare example of the auteur-as-partnership.
The Coens exercise complete control over every aspect of their films --
writing, directing and producing, even editing
under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.
And there’s no separating one brother’s fingerprints
from the other’s.
“There’s no real separation of labor.”
Actors who work with the Coens note how organized, specific
and in sync the brothers are.
“And what you realize is you never actually
do it your way, you always do it their way,
but they make you feel like it’s all your idea.”
It’s full of cultural references, from a wide variety of historical,
literary, cinematic and cultural sources.
The Coens are nuanced and innovative in the way
they draw from sources -- as well as seriously well-read
and informed by a wide range of diverse cultural influences.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is a reimagining of Homer’s The Odyssey
set in depression-era Mississippi, and its title comes from
Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels,
which is about a director who wants to make a movie
called “O Brother Where Art Thou?”
The Big Lebowski was influenced by Raymond Chandler’s novels,
while the Gutterballs dream sequence takes visual inspiration
from choreographer Busby Berkeley.
A Serious Man is based on the Biblical story of Job
and weaves in semi-autobiographical details from the Coens’ own upbringing.
Miller’s Crossing pulls from the works of Dashiell Hammett.
The Hudsucker Proxy is an ode to the art deco era
of New York City, while Hail Caesar!
is affectionate parody of all things Old Hollywood.
Barton Fink draws from Jim Thompson’s A Hell of a Woman
and the nonfiction book City of Nets, about German expats in Hollywood.
The premise was partly inspired by Roman Polanski’s Repulsion
and The Tenant;
and the Coens have suggested that Barton Fink himself was based on
playwright Clifford Odets, while W.P.
Mayhew’s character
was loosely based on William Faulkner.
“Well, me, I just enjoy making things up.”
The Coens reappropriate reference to feel new and refreshing.
So not only do the filmmakers adapt source materials
and phrases to different contexts
“Childen are man at his strongest.
They abide.”
“The Dude abides.”
but even their characters do the same.
“This will not stand.”
“’Cause this will not stand.”
The characters don’t necessarily get anywhere, learn anything,
or become better.
They likely don’t get what they want.
“I always figured when I got older...
God would..
sort of come into my life.”
He didn’t.”
The Dude gets no reparations for his rug.
Larry Gopnik achieves no real understanding
of why bad things happen.
Llewyn Davis takes a beating while Bob Dylan gets the big break
he’s been dreaming of.
Characters often wind up right back where they started
or worse off.
In the end, it’s about the journey.
If the big answers often elude the characters,
the Coens’s answer to the big questions their movies ask
seems to be that life is endlessly mysterious
and rife with uncertainty.
There’s no way to know what will happen next,
except that something will happen.
All we can do is accept our powerlessness
in the face of that truth and go along for the ride,
embracing the tragicomic absurdity inherent in our human existence.
“Well, you know, that’s just, like,
your opinion man.”
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