COEN CRAZY

by John M. Floyd

As I grow older, I tend to gravitate toward certain authors I know I like. I still experiment now and then, and that’s a good thing: otherwise, I might never have discovered Marcus Sakey, Joe Lansdale, Harlan Coben, Steve Hamilton, and other fantastic writers whose books I tried without first having heard anything about them. But there’s a certain comfort in sticking with names that I know produce entertaining fiction.

I feel the same way about film directors. Some of them — Scorcese, Spielberg, Ford, Hitchcock, Leone, Capra, Huston, Eastwood, Hawks, Welles, Peckinpah, Coppola, and many others — are/were so good that I know I’ll probably like their films even before I see them. (Yes, there are occasional disappointments, like The Happening and The Last Airbender by the previously reliable M. Night Shyamalan — but usually a fine director means a fine movie.) And God help me, I always like Mel Brooks and Quentin Tarantino.

But one of my alltime favorites — two, I suppose, if you consider them individually — is the team of Joel and Ethan Coen.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, here’s a list of their movies and my ranking of them, with (what I consider to be) the best at the top:

No Country for Old Men (2007)
Blood Simple (1984)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Fargo (1996)
True Grit (2010)
Raising Arizona (1987)
Miller’s Crossing (1990)
O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001)
Burn After Reading (2008)
The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
The Ladykillers (2004)
Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
Barton Fink (1991)
A Serious Man (2009)

I’ve been a fan of the Coen brothers since their very first effort, Blood Simple, a film that seemed to fly underneath everyone’s radar for many years. I’ve seen it half a dozen times now, and I like it so much I’ll probably do a separate column on it soon — like The Man Who Wasn’t There, it’s a good example of the kind of noir fiction that seems to fascinate us Criminal Brief types.

And twenty-seven years later, the Coens are still coen strong. I thought their most recent project, True Grit (which I mentioned in my last week’s column about movie remakes), was excellent. I liked it partly because of the fine acting of Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, and others, but that’s not the main reason; after all, the original John Wayne version featured Robert Duvall, and he’s one of the best actors ever. I’m convinced that what made the remake so good was the fact that the Coens were the directors. The authenticity, the score, the cinematography — everything about that movie seemed exactly right. I was disappointed that it didn’t do well at the Oscar ceremony the other night, but I was pleased that it received several nominations.

I also find that I appreciate different things in different Coen films. Lebowski and Raising Arizona had some of the best humor I’ve ever seen, Fargo and No Country some of the most memorable characters, and Blood Simple some of the most gripping suspense. In the “icing on the cake” category, most of O Brother was filmed here in central Mississippi, so the locations in that one were fun (for me at least) to see on the screen.

I probably notice this more than others because I’m such a rabid fan, but I even like the fact that they often use the same actors in different movies. I recall seeing Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, M. Emmet Walsh, Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, Charles Durning, John Turturro, Richard Jenkins, Michael Badalucco, Holly Hunter, Peter Stormare, George Clooney, Jon Polito, Stephen Root, Josh Brolin, and John Goodman in several of their films. (Torturro and Goodman appeared in four each, Buscemi and Polito in five, and McDormand in — I think — six or seven.)

But in theme and genre and setting, the Coens’ movies range all over the place. If there is any one feature or quality that stands out in most of them, it’s probably dark humor.

And maybe plot twists. The Coens seem to love plot twists.

Don’t we all?