MY COEN KICK: PART TWO

THE COEN ITCH CONTINUES

My Cinematic travels through the Coen Brother's filmography continues with some of their greatest achievements and lows in their career.

THE BIG LEWBOWSKI (1998)

    I could easily spend most of my time quoting The Big Lewboski.  It might be one of most quotable movies of all time.

It tied the room together, did it not?

This is not Nam.  This is bowling.  There are rules.

I'm the Dude, so that's what you call me.  That or His Dudeness, or uh Duder, or El Duserino, if your not into the brevity thing.

I could go on .....

    One of the reason The Big Lewboski is the perfect cult comedy, apart from being hilarious, is that it's about everything and nothing.  The genius of The Dude is he can be whatever you want him to be, profit, guru, smoking or bowling buddy.  The Big Lewboski is the Mark Rothko of comedies.  On this watch I noticed a weird military complex hanging over the movie.  The Coen's make it a point of set the movie at the beginning of the First Golf War.  As The Dude reminds Jeffery Lewboski of the rug that tied the room together, 'This Aggression will Not Stand', while Mr Lewboski says he lost his legs legs in Korea, while Walter Sobchak who had friends died face first in the mud so you can enjoy this family restaurant and you bet he's going to stay and enjoy his coffee.  The Coen Brothers are tricksters, there's never a over arching grand theme, just mercurial moments that can change moment to moment.  Perfect for a convoluted Noir style story, and absolutely perfect for a group of very confused characters.     

O BROTHER WHERE OUT THOU (2000)

    I didn't see a Coen Brother's movie till 2000.  There was something about the Depression era Southern Odyssey of O Brother Where Art Thou that was too delicious to ingore, so to the local Hoyts Theatre I went.  To that point I had not seen anything like it, and that screening of O Brother lingers in my memory, the colours, the music, the dialogue and the performances.  It was like eating an olive, that strange salty taste slowly turning sublime and you are reaching for another one before finishing swallowing the first one.  Olive's are the blue grass of eatiables.  O Brother was the movie that switched me from generally movie fan to obssessive watcher.  Even now watching O Brother for the uptenth time there is still a special alchemy to it.  It might be considered lighter Coen, which I'm not entirely sure what that means, but there is something about the corners of O Brother I cannot quite grasp.  But I will always come back to it to watch it again.

THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE (2001)

    I may have been swept up and hypnotised by Roger Deakins't sublimely beautiful black and white cinematopgraphy.  The Man Who Wasn't There is a beautifully and interesting looking movie.  There is a way the shadows of Frances McDormand's 1940s era clothing fold and how they never completely fit her correctly, the dresses often dip and crease at odd anglels.  Frances McDormand is usually a dominate presence on screen and you cannot take your eyes off her, but now she is a badly taylored etherial creature, and she's sublime.  Which just only strengthens my belief that Roger Deakins is a Wizard.

Roger Deakins is a Wizard

     There is a ghostly quality to The Man Who Wasn't There, light dances across the screen.  It's a stripped back Noir,  quiet and meditative, The Man Who Wasn't There shares a lot of DNA with the likes of Blood Simple and The Big Lewboski, characters are working on there own assumptions not what is happening around them.  Barber Billy Bob Thornton, defeated with life in general decides to scam money so he can invest in the new idea of Dry Cleaning.  A silly plot but constructed in all seriousness and tenderness.  It's the kind of movie you want to get dressed up for.

INTOLERABLE CRUELTY (2003)

    I like Introlerable Cruelty.  I think.  Maybe.  Actually I'm still not sure.  Introlerable Cruelty is not one of those movies that doesn't stick to your ribs in any way shape or form.  But, it is a perplexing movie.  It's a  screwball comedy all over.  You could easily imagine Barbara Stanwyck and Cary Grant in it without changing it.  In the contempory version, I like George Clooney and Katherine Zita Jones, they fit the mold well.  Plus it doesn't that their prettiness shine is almost Godlike.  But in like in the Hudsucker Proxy there is a disconnect between the metre and cadence and style.  Intolerable Cruelty feels like an experiement to try and bring the 1930s Scewball Comedy into a modern context.  The two elements don't go together.  Intolerable Cruelty feels like the first time I tried pumpkin pie.  Two distinctive flavours that I usually like but together they were each distinctive and didn't compliment each other.  In Intolerable Cruelty the different elements are there but not together.  

THE LADYKILLERS (2004)

    I didn't like Ladykillers.  It's the first Coen Brother's movies that really pushed me out.  There are some great performances, especially from Tom Hanks (Waffles forwith) and Irma P. Hall.  But over all I think that special brand of Coen Melancholy is missing.  The original 1955 Ealing Studio version with Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers is a light touch dark comedy.  And I think that the Coen's tried to capture this Ealing style.  But when you look at other Coen Brother's movies, there is a melencholy that runs through their movies, it's a great cement that grounds and hold the quirk in place and it makes sure it's not too broad.  In The Ladykillers, the broadness just flies every where with nothing to hold it down.  It's an ugly mess, and that is something you can't usually say about a Coen Brother's movie.  Everyone is trying to do good work, but it never really comes together.  Even if I did laugh at the dog in the gas mask gag.   God help me.

 

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007

    Well if I missed the melencholy in Ladykillers.  I bathed in it in No Country for Old Men.  It's a gorgerously sad movie.  Not entirely sure why it has taken me to this point to watch before now.  No Country for Old Men was a huge blind spot for me.  I loved the sparceness of it all, the barren Texas landscape that creates lost souls, whether they are searching, hunting or escaping, the land is endless in that perfect Cormac Macarthy-ness, there is no escape.  All can you do is sink in and just marvel at the Roger Deakins is a Wizard of it all.  The scene where Tommy Lee Jones is entering a hotel that might contain Javier Bardem's terrifying Chigurh is a perfect cinematic moment of shadow and light.  I think the Coen's best movies are where there is a lot of space to let the Melencholy and light breath.  It's surprising to me this melencholy and light mostly comes from the sociopath.  Chigurh hangs over everything like a specture that is meant to be punishing people for their sins, but got bored and just started screwing with everyone.  With No Country for Old Men it's all about the mood, and I love it.