Here's a really old joke from the early '90s: Have you heard about the new video game that's supposed to be the most violent ever? It's called Super Mendendez Bros. Minnesota's Coen Bros. have, like many a filmmaker, expressed a rather morbid taste for excessive violence in their movies. Sick, sick, sick. But let's not get Puritanical (aside: political correctness couldn't have occurred in any other country but the U.S., because for all its supposed "liberalism" its real roots are in the unsmiling intolerance and hatred of human pleasure of of Puritanism, the central driving philosophy behind American society since the 1600s. The founding fathers of Boston would have cheered the anti-meat, anti-sex, anti-tobacco, anti-any fun or excess elements in today's society). Anyway, we all know that supposed critiques of artistic works are just excuses for critics to rant and ramble about whatever they feel like - it's just a matter of artfully weaving your digressions into the review. The way that I call your attention to these devices automatically makes me avant-garde, cutting edge, and worthy of critical study, at least according to the post-structuralists. I'm even more of a genius than Kathy Acker or Bret Easton Ellis, and certainly more than Gertrude Stein. If you don't think I'm a genius, it's because you don't understand me and my work, and are just an inbred redneck yahoo who does not appreciate art.
But back to the Coen Bros. They specialize in what you'd call black comedy. Very funny, very twisted, very entertaining. Some of their movies are darker than others. Some of their movies are better than others. Also, their movies work on two levels, because the Coen Bros. despise your average working stiff American (there are good reasons to, though - you idiots made Celine Dion and Titanic huge. Anyway, it's a complicated issue dealing with the American ideal of egalitarianism that would take too long to discuss here). So their movies not so slyly mock the "common man" - making fun of their main characters is a key Coen Bros. motif. However, your average blue collar moviegoer usually doesn't realize they are being made fun of - they usually just think, "These people are dumbasses." Your more sophisticated viewer, you know the type who have not only been to college but learned how to read and write there, can smirk along nice and elitist like. Not that there's anything really that wrong with being elitist as long as it's snobbery for good reasons, i.e. taste and brains (good snobbery) vs. fashion trendiness and social class (bad, very bad. Caused the French Revolution, you know). Anyway, here are the movies:
Blood Simple (1984): Some cultists believe that their first movie was their best, but I disagree. The Coen Bros. haven't fully mastered the art of moviemaking just yet, which means that the intended humor and intended horror don't fully mesh together as seamlessly as they should. It's in the Comedy of Errors genre, as most of the narrative drive, suspense, and comedy comes from the fact that all of the characters have wrong impressions of all of the other characters. If someone just told the truth in this movie, then things would smooth out - but guess what? Nobody does. A decent murder mystery, if a bit murky; the best character is the hit man, who spouts some classic Coen lines about Texas and how "in Russia, they only make 50 cents a day."
Grade: B
Raising Arizona (1987): In my book, easily their best film. This is one riotous comedy and all-American fun-loving road movie, and perhaps the best movie of either genre that the '80s produced. The plot revolves around Nicolas Cage (an ex-covenience store robber) and Holly Hunter (a cop who he falls in love with during a booking) kidnapping a rich family's baby because Hunter is barren. This sets off a surreal wild goose chase through the trailer parks and 7-11s of the Arizona desert, as a pair of ex-con bounty hunters (a hilarious John Goodman) pursue the couple. Maybe this movie is a little too long, which makes it drag in spots, but otherwise it's a pure classic.
Quote: "Why do you think that you are a woman trapped in a man's body?"
"Well, doc, sometimes I gets the menstrual cramps real bad."
Grade: A+
Miller's Crossing (1990): Proving that they could cut a great comedy, the Coen Bros. now show their hand at a gripping gangster melodrama. I'm a big fan of gangster epics, and while this ain't no Godfather or Goodfellas, it's one of the better examples of the genre. The plot can be hard to follow in a Chinatown kind of way, which makes it entertaining to follow. Problem is that none of the characters are very well drawn - the play's the thing.
Grade: A-
Barton Fink (1991): In the '30s, a lot of talented writers moved West to make a desperate living scripting for Hollywood and found out that the writer is at the low end of the totem pole in showbiz. This follows one such writer (John Turturro) who professes a love for the common man in theory (he's a leftist) while remaining steadfastly uninterested in the common men he does meet (John Goodman in another showstealing role). One of the best scenes is when Turturro meets a writer obviously modeled after William Faulkner, an old drunk from the South, a great writer who turns out to be a drunken boor in person. For further reference, read Nathanael West's Day of the Locust, which the Coen Bros. obviously modeled this film after.
Grade: A
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994): When is a remake of a classic film not a remake? This comedy takes most of its plot and characters from Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, and throws in a few specific references to it if you missed the point ("vas you see, the man displays vat ve psychiatrists call manic depression"). It's really a not bad view, but Jennifer Jason Leigh does what she can to ruin the movie with her bad Katherine Hepburn imitation. In fact, everyone in this movie overacts, and Leigh and Tim Robbins aren't Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur by a longshot. It amounts to a failed attempt at a '30s screwball. Don't watch this movie. Go see a really great movie instead - Mr. Deeds Goes To Town!
Grade: C+
Fargo (1996): Boy, them Minnesotans sure do talk funny, don't they? Buncha tree-logging, ice-fishing, hockey-playin' Swedes you ask me (just kidding). It would be an understatement to say that this movie gains a lot of mileage from its chief gag; at some level, this is really a one-note movie - boy, them Minnesotans sure do talk funny. Luckily there's a good little black comedy involving incompetent murderers/kidnappers here. But the one thing that will stick in your mind after seeing this isn't the infamous woodchipper scene; it's "boy, them Minnesotans sure do talk funny." Overrated, certainly, but entertaining.
Grade: B+
The Big Lebowski (1998) - Like, dude. This, like, movie, involves, like, this, slacker dude, called, like, "the Dude," who, like, gets mixed up in this, like, kidnapping scheme and stuff. It's, like, wicked funny, man. The plot, like, is cool and everything, but like, the best part, is like, the characters the Dude meets. Like, there's his friend, who's, like, psycho, from like, Vietnam and shit. And there's this, like, feminist chick who wants him to, like, get her pregnant. And there are, like, these Germans (Kraftwerk), who like, are after him and stuff. And then there's, this, like, toe. I can't explain, man, just, like, go see it. It's, like, funny, dude.
Grade: A-