THE COEN KICK PART 3

 The last part of my Cinematic Coen Itch....

BURN AFTER READING (2008)

Burn After Reading is a movie I like with performances I love.  Everyone is great, and really builds and walks on that fine line of being Simpsons' characters and characters with depth and an inner life.  It's filled with characters the Coen's do best, like George Clooney, the idiot that thinks he's the smartest in the room.  It's a kind of performance where he is not taking it seriously and having fun, his main of the movie is to make a sex toy, which he makes himself out of materials from Home-Depo; the reveal of the penis seat is even on a second watch a brilliant moment.  You also can't help but feel sympathy for the likes of daffy Brad Pitt or unrequited Richard Jenkins, or Francis McDordmand who just wants her plastic surgery.  They have unwitting found themselves in a spy movie and don't know the rules.  But are all lonely and unsatisfied enough to go along with it.  Maybe that is why in the third act falls apart for me a little, the Spy Movie has to start grounding his gears and move along with the plot, even if the characters are not ready or have a clue what is happening.   And if IMDB can actually be believed, Tilda Swinton gave herself a Mrs Krabappel hair cut (Ha!) - but when you look at it, she does a little.

Ha!

A SERIOUS MAN (2009)

Some times you just have to let a movie wash over you.  And that is A Serious Man, it feels like the most Coen of Coen Brother's movies.  As in when you try to say what it is about you face becomes remarkably similar to that of Michael Stuhlbarg when he is trying to figure out what is happening around him.  The whole movie is a mystery with no real answer.  It is everything and nothing at the same time.  That is why it is categorized as a dark comedy, Google doesn't know what to call it either.  Michael Stuhlbarg's general confusion of the world is familiar to me Like many other people I suffer from Depression, which I find a painfully confusing and a certain experience at the same time.  I know how things should be, but when ever I start asking questions that there are no answers too, I start to make the Michael Stuhlbarg's face all over again.  I'm in a forever circular process.  A Serious Man digs into the ridiculous and messiness of life, and what happens when you try to impose some sort of logic to what is happening around you.  I don't think I ever stopped making the Michael Stuhlbarg face through out the movie, because  you keep waiting for the many different baffling characters and anecdotes will come to some sort of point.  It never does.  At a certain point you have to sit back and accept the mystery.  For me A Serious Man is one of the Coen's best movies.   

TRUE GRIT (2010)

True Grit is one of the those great easy to watch movies.   Everything works; the dialogue, structure, performances, lighting (well it is shot by a Wizard) and editing.  There is a really nice languid pace you do not usually see in modern era movie making of this budget and stature.  True Grit is content to take it's time and just settle into the scenery.  True Grit in texture and construction feels like a classic Western.  I am starting to love the hard bitten Western as in, the cold and hard landscapes, it gives everything more of an edge.  Over all, for me it's the dialogue I love, the metre sounds Coen, but of it's own universe.  It's why I'm really interested in Joel's take on his up coming Shakespeare movie, I would love to hear what the dialogue is going to sound like.  You can see actors just revelling in the dialogue.  And it's makes Hailee Steinfeld's impressive performance that much more interesting.

Steinfeld's fourteen going on forth Matty Ross can eat that Coen dialogue with the best of them.  However, you see her really working at it, to try and sound more adult than she is.  The intricacy of the dialogue it gives a wonderful intricacy and vulenerbility to her performance.  This is maybe  my third viewing of True Grit and it was this viewing where I had a wee weep, it might have been the 2020 talking.  Not surprising, it involved Matty's horse Blackie.  It's with Blackie where we see Matty smile, see her childish features.  Matty doesn't like people but she likes horses.  It is why (and spoilers for the ten year old movie) the death of Blackie is a gut punch.  It's a brutal death, even if it's in the survice to save Matty's life. Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn is beating the tired horse relentlessly until the only thing he can do is keel over with a pleading Matty.  For me it puts into focus the harshness of landscape the character's they have been tramping through and their relationships.  It's brutal, functional and incrediably emotional.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2013)

Sometimes it's okay just to like a movie.  I don't love Inside Llewyn Davis, and I'm not entirely sure why.  Early 1960s New York has never been envovked so beautifully by Roger (is a Wizard) Deakins gives everything this beautiful winter evening blue/grey haze.  It has a beautiful texture.  The Coen's are masters at using music to create their setting and folk music used conjures up all the texture and tranist nature of Greenwich Village.  Oscar Issac singing King Henry and Hang Me are beautiful and tragic, especially with the cutting 'I see no money in this' - it hangs over the whole movie.  However, as much as I love Isaac's performances, as a man who can not get out of his own way, and as much as I love the texture, I can never just sink into this movie or accept the mystery like I can my favourite Coens.  Inside Llewyn Davis is one of those movies where every time I throw a critism at it, you'll here me praise another movie for the exact same things, and I know that makes me a hypocrite.   Some times you just can't accept the mystery.  Inside Llewyn Davis is a great movie, and I do like it a lot.  And that sometimes that is okay. 

HAIL CAESAR! (2016)

Me liking Hail Caesar! more than I do Inside Llewyn Davis might be make some kind of Monster.  But I love Hail Caesar!  It's been interesting watching The Coen's Brother's in chronological order like this because you can see the evolution as the Coen's as film makers and see their movies slowly slide into vignettes and then into full anthology.  I just think the 1930s Hollywood System works perfectly for a religious parabel anthology-ish movie.  Hail Caesar! is filled with false Gods, profits, scholars, movie stars and of course Communists there's always the Communists.  It's how legends, myths and relgions are created.  I've always considered the movie threatre a church, and Hail Caesar! only validates this for me.  

As always, I love the playfulness of the dialogue and performances in Hail Caesar!  George Clooney does this wonderful little head wobble when he's pretending to under stand what is happening.  'Squint! Squint at the Glory!'   The more I delve into movie history the more I love and keep coming back to the 1930s the more I love when the Coen's do as well.  The Channing Tatum Sailor dance sequence, the Busby Burkerly Mermaid, the grand biblical epic.  Hail Caesear! feels like it's having fun, like the movie has a twinkle in it's eye.  Movies are about story telling, but Classic Hollywood was about presenting a reality, on and off screen.  And the religious parabal fits so perfectly into the Studio mold.

Would that it were so simple.

THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS (2018)

Watching Joel and Ethan Coen's filmolography in chronological order it feels fitting that The Ballard of Buster Scruggs is my final movie.  The boys did it.  They finally made an Anthology.  The Coen Brother's through out their career felt like they were working toward Buster Scruggs.  They tend to like playing around with set pieces and vignette's within the narrative.  Now they can just let go of the over all structure and play around with just those moments.  Each segement has it's own palette, texture and moves between intimate and expansive.  I love how the book concet is used as the anthology wrap around, it adds that weight of history and mythology.   For me it's between the pages where legends live.  With The Coen's style of dialogue, their movies have always felt literary.

 On my first viewing I wished I was in a dark theatre, not on my couch with my cat hitting me with his tail.  Buster Scruggs is one of The Coen's best looking movies, and it's not even shot by Roger - I'm a Wizard - Deakins.  The All Gold Valley Segment feels like the Valley stretches out beyond the frame, while something like Meal Ticket is as claustrophobic as poor Harry Melling's world and oppertunities.  The Ballard of Buster Scruggs is one of the Coen's darker movies, because it is very about human limitations and infailbities within the West.  No matter how dark Scruggs get will always get so much enjoyment from Steven Root yelling Pan Shot!

The Coen Brother are one of my favourite Directors.  They have a signature style but are able to do so much with it.  The duo are one of those creators that is about to really tap into a type of American Mythology that is incrediably lyrical.  Watching The Coen's back to back I really started to appriciate how the Coen's use music and dialogue, it's a mythological tool as much as anything else.  The Coen's are one of the more quotable writers working today, they will often create a character and a movie through a few pieces of dialogue,  it tied the room together did it not,  or all that for a little bit of money.  Through this The Coen's have created their own worlds, with mythology, laws and traditions with their many talented colaborators, like Roger Deakins and Carter Burwell.  The Coen Brother's movies are often my happy place, and revisiting these has been a joy.

For my next Cinematic Ich I'm going to be diving into a Director that I have gained apprication for over the years, but I have a lot of gaps in his filmography.  The Gentle Wise Man of the Horror Masters, Wes Craven.