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The Whole Durn Human Comedy: Life According to the Coen Brothers
The Coen Bros. have attracted a wide following and have been rewarded with Oscars and other honors. Some of their films such as Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and No Country for Old Men are cult favorites and box office hits. Yet this team of filmmaking brothers remains misunderstood in some critical circles, partly because, like John Ford, they mischievously refuse to explain themselves to interviewers, preferring to let their work speak for itself. Ethan and Joel Coen also delight in unsettling cinematic conventions and confounding audiences while raising disturbing questions about human nature.
Mixing film genres and styles, playing with narrative in postmodernist ways, the Coens’ films display shocking tonal shifts as they blend comedy and drama and, most controversially, comedy and violence. This potent mélange of themes and stylistic approaches makes the Coens’ films adventurous, unpredictable probes into social anxieties and reflections on the omnipresence of evil in the modern world. In their trenchant satire, these brilliant writer-directors are heirs to Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, and as satirists tend to do, the Coens sometimes provoke audience anger and incomprehension along with enjoyment of their penchant for black comedy.
Film historian and critic Joseph McBride jousts with the Coens’ detractors while defining the filmmakers’ freshness and originality. The quirkily individualistic Coens are the kind of personal filmmakers the increasingly conglomerated American cinema rarely fosters anymore, a distinction partly attributable to their following in Europe and their partial financing by European sources. This critical study goes beyond the often-superficial and confused nature of Coen criticism to illuminate their artistic personalities and contributions to cinematic culture.
Mixing film genres and styles, playing with narrative in postmodernist ways, the Coens’ films display shocking tonal shifts as they blend comedy and drama and, most controversially, comedy and violence. This potent mélange of themes and stylistic approaches makes the Coens’ films adventurous, unpredictable probes into social anxieties and reflections on the omnipresence of evil in the modern world. In their trenchant satire, these brilliant writer-directors are heirs to Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, and as satirists tend to do, the Coens sometimes provoke audience anger and incomprehension along with enjoyment of their penchant for black comedy.
Film historian and critic Joseph McBride jousts with the Coens’ detractors while defining the filmmakers’ freshness and originality. The quirkily individualistic Coens are the kind of personal filmmakers the increasingly conglomerated American cinema rarely fosters anymore, a distinction partly attributable to their following in Europe and their partial financing by European sources. This critical study goes beyond the often-superficial and confused nature of Coen criticism to illuminate their artistic personalities and contributions to cinematic culture.
116 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 23, 2022
My review for Book and Film Globe: https://bookandfilmglobe.com/film/let...
Growing up in the 90's, my friends and I always waited for the new Coen Brothers movie with excitement. It wasn't just that they were going to give us a good night out at the movies, it was like someone out there really seemed to get us, what we specifically liked to see. The characters chattered on in the rat-a-tat voice of old timey gangsters, which we loved, the jokes were slapstick and dark, just like we liked them, and the cinematography and the soundtracks were reliably dope.
I think a lot of people felt this way-- especially after the Cannes and Oscar winning Fargo, the Coens became household names. And everyone wanted to see what they would do next. Would it be another romp like Raising Arizona, O Brother (one of my favorites of all time), and Lebowski, or something dark as hell like Barton Fink, No Country, or Blood Simple. You've got to love an artist who can toggle between those two poles and consistently make it work.
It's like the Coens were too smart, too literate, too witty, and too bleak to be held back by the usual conventions. Geniuses that they were, it was like they knew how to break the rules and get away with it. Make the audience and the genre come to them, rather than the other way.
Seeing a new film of theirs felt like we won.
McBride definitely knows his stuff, and he's paid attention to the Coen's filmography.
I agree with much of what he says--for all their obsessions with nihilism and evil, the Coens do have some sympathy for the good people who occasionally appear in their stories. Margie Gunderson in Fargo, The Dude.
But I think he misses the point on a few occasions, as with the great film Miller's Crossing, which he discards as "pretentious." And I think he thinks far too much of the utterly abysmal Ladykillers.
And really, the biggest problem here is that the whole thing is really too brief. A good start, someone should write a longer and more penetrating study of the Coens.
March 31, 2022
My only complaint about this look at the work of the Coen Brothers?
It needed to be 350 to 400 pages longer...
It needed to be 350 to 400 pages longer...
January 21, 2023
The title suggested something different from the drily academic film criticism that it is.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews