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Home , Animal Factory, Blood Simple, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Usual Suspects

November 18, 2014 (Series 29:13) Joel and Ethan Coen, FARGO (1996, 98 minutes)

Fargo won 2 Academy Awards in 1997, Best Actress in a Leading Role, Frances McDormand, and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Ethan Coen and Joel Coen.

Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen Written by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen Produced by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen Music by by Film Editing by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen Special Effects by Wilfred Caban, Dieter Sturm, and Yvonne Sturm

William H. Macy ... Jerry Lundegaard ... Carl Showalter Peter Stormare ... Gaear Grimsrud Kristin Rudrüd ... Jean Lundegaard Harve Presnell ... Wade Gustafson Tony Denman ... Scotty Lundegaard Steve Reevis ... Shep Proudfoot Frances McDormand ... Marge Gunderson Cliff Rakerd ... Officer Olson José Feliciano ... Himself Grit, 2009 , 2008 , 2007 No Bark Beetle ... Narrator Country for Old Men, 2004 The Ladykillers, 2003 , 2001 The Man Who Wasn't There, 2000 O Brother, Joel and Ethan Coen (director, writer, producer) Where Art Thou?, 1998 , 1996 Fargo, 1994 (b. Joel Daniel Coen, November 29, 1954; Ethan Jesse Coen, , 1991 , 1990 Miller's September 21, 1957 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) won 4 Crossing, 1987 , and 1984 . Academy Awards: 1997 Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for Fargo (1996), 2008 Best Motion Roger Deakins (cinematographer) Picture of the Year for No Country for Old Men (2007), which (b. May 24, 1949 in Torquay, Devon, England) has been the they shared with Scott Rudin; 2008 Best Achievement in cinematographer for 75 films and television shows, including Directing for No Country for Old Men (2007); and 2008 Best 2013 Prisoners, 2012 , 2010 True Grit, 2010 The Writing, Adapted Screenplay for No Country for Old Men Company Men, 2009 A Serious Man, 2008 Revolutionary Road, (2007). Joel has 23 producer credits, 23 writing credits, 19 2008 The Reader, 2008 Doubt, 2007 The Assassination of Jesse director credits, and 14 editing credits. Ethan hhas 24 producer James by the Coward Robert Ford, 2007 In the Valley of Elah, creddits, 27 writer credits, 19 director credits, and 14 editor 2007 No Country for Old Men, 2005 Jarhead, 2004 The credits. The two usually edit under the name “Roderick Jaynes.” Ladykillers, 2003 House of Sand and Fog, 2003 Intolerable Some of their films are 2013 , 2010 True Cruelty, 2001 A Beautiful Mind, 2001 The Man Who Wasn't

Coen—FARGO—2

There, 2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou, 1998 The Big of Life, 2006 One Night with You, 2005 The Brothers Grimm, Lebowski, 1997 Kundun, 1996 Fargo, 1995 Dead Man Walking, 2002 Minority Report, 2002 Bad Company, 2000 Chocolat, 1994 , 1994 The Hudsucker Proxy, 2000 Dancer in the Dark, 1998 Armageddon, 1998 Mercury 1993 The Secret Garden, 1992 Thunderheart, 1991 Barton Fink, Rising, 1998 The Big Lebowski, 1997 The Lost World: Jurassic 1991 Homicide, 1990 Air America, 1988 Pascali's Island, 1987 Park, 1996 Fargo, and 1990 Awakenings. White Mischief, 1986 Sid and Nancy, 1984 Nineteen Eighty- Four, 1983 Another Time, Another Place, 1980 Van Morrison in Frances McDormand ... Marge Gunderson Ireland (Documentary), 1980 Blue Suede Shoes (Documentary), (b. Frances Louise McDormand, June 23, 1957 in , 1977 Marquis de Sade's Justine, and 1975 Mothers Own Illinois) won the 1997 Academy Award for Best Actress in a (Documentary short). Leading Role for Fargo (1996). She has appeared in 60 films and television shows, some of which are 2014 “Olive William H. Macy ... Jerry Lundegaard Kitteridge” (TV Mini-Series), 2012 Promised Land, 2012 (b. William Hall Macy Jr., March 13, 1950 in Miami, Florida) Moonrise Kingdom, 2011 Transformers: Dark of the Moon, has appeared in 132 films and television shows, among them 2008 Burn After Reading, 2005 North Country, 2002 City by the 2011-2015 Shameless (TV Series, 55 episodes), 2014 Two-Bit Sea, 2002 Laurel Canyon, 2001 The Man Who Wasn't There, Waltz, 2013 Trust Me, 2012 The Sessions, 2010 Dirty Girl, 2000 Almost Famous, 2000 Wonder Boys, 1998 Madeline, 1997 1994-2009 ER (TV Series, 31 episodes), 2007 Wild Hogs, 2006 Paradise Road, 1996 Lone Star, 1996 Primal Fear, 1996 Fargo, Everyone's Hero, 2006 Inland Empire, 2005 Thank You for 1995 Beyond Rangoon, 1994 Bleeding Hearts, 1993 Short Cuts, Smoking, 2004 In Enemy Hands, 2003 Seabiscuit, 2003 The 1991 The Butcher's Wife, 1991 Barton Fink, 1990 Miller's Cooler, 2001 Jurassic Park III, 2000 Panic, 1999 Magnolia, Crossing, 1988 Mississippi Burning, 1987 Raising Arizona, 1998 A Civil Action, 1997 Wag the Dog, 1997 Boogie Nights, 1985 “Hunter” (TV Series), and 1984 Blood Simple. 1997 Air Force One, 1996 Ghosts of Mississippi, 1996 Fargo, 1996 “Andersonville” (TV Movie), 1995 Mr. Holland's Opus, 1995 Murder in the First, 1994 Oleanna, 1994 The Client, 1994 Being Human, 1993 Searching for Bobby Fischer, 1990-1992 “Law & Order” (TV Series), 1991 Shadows and Fog, 1991 Homicide, 1987 House of Games, 1987 Radio Days, 1983 WarGames, and 1980 Somewhere in Time.

Steve Buscemi ... Carl Showalter (b. Steven Vincent Buscemi, December 13, 1957 in Brooklyn, , New York) appeared in 130 films and television shows, some of which are 2010-2014 Boardwalk Empire (TV Series, 56 episodes), 2014 The Cobbler, 2013 Grown Ups 2, 2013 The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, 2007- 2013 “30 Rock” (TV Series, 6 episodes), 2012 On the Road, 2010 Grown Ups, 2009 Saint John of Las Vegas, 2006 Charlotte's Web, 2004-2006 “The Sopranos” (TV Series, 14 episodes), 2005 The Island, 2003 Coffee and Cigarettes, 2001 Joel & Ethan Coen, from The St James Film Directors Monsters, Inc., 2001 Ghost World, 2000 Animal Factory, 1998 Encyclopedia. Ed. Andrew Sarris. Visible Ink, NY, 1998. Armageddon, 1998 The Big Lebowski, 1997 Con Air, 1996 Entry by R. Barton Palmer Escape from L.A., 1996 Kansas City, 1996 , 1996 Fargo, 1995 Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, 1995 Although Joel Coen had worked as an assistant film editor on “Homicide: Life on the Street” (TV Series), 1994 Airheads, commercial projects and had made valuable contacts within the 1994 , 1994 The Hudsucker Proxy, 1993 Twenty industry (particularly director ), he and his brother Bucks, 1992 , 1991 Billy Bathgate, 1991 Barton Ethan decided to produce their first feature film independently, Fink, 1990 Miller's Crossing, 1990 King of New York, 1989 raising $750,000 to shoot their jointly written script for Blood Mystery Train, 1987 Heart, 1986 No Picnic, and 1985 The Way Simple, a neo-noir thriller with a Dashiell Hammett title and a It Is. He also has 13 film and TV series directing credits, and 10 script full of homages to Jim Thompson. Though Joel received producer credits. screen credit for direction, and Ethan for the script, this distinction is somewhat artificial both here and in their Peter Stormare ... Gaear Grimsrud subsequent productions. Joel and Ethan cowrite their scripts and (b. Peter Ingvar Storm, August 27, 1953 in Arbrå, Gävleborgs meticulously prepare storyboards in a collaborative effort län, Sweden) has appeared in 150 films and television shows, unusual for the American cinema (the closest analogy perhaps among them 2015 Dark Summer, 2014 Bang Bang Baby, 2014 comes from abroad with the British team of Powell and 22 Jump Street, 2013 Heatstroke, 2013 The Zero Theorem, 2013 Pressburger). The Last Stand, 2012 Lockout, 2010 Henry's Crime, 2010 Blood Simple was hardly the first film the Coen Undocumented, 2010 Corridor, 2009 “Entourage” (TV Series), brothers made together. Addicted to TV and movies at an early 2009 The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, 2009 The Killing age, they spent a good deal of their childhood writing films and Room, 2008 Witless Protection, 2008 Orgies and the Meaning then shooting them on a Super-8 camera. Movie brats in the Coen—FARGO—3

Spielberg tradition, Ethan and Joel desired commercial success romantic tradition of the gangster film most tellingly but were determined to retain control over what they produced. exemplified by The Godfather (1972). The central character, a Hence their initial desire to make an rather “good guy” high up in the organization, confusingly seems more than continue working in an industry where Joel was already a victim of his poor circumstances than a force to be reckoned beginning to be established. with. The plot is otherwise dependent upon unbelievable A hit with many on the art film/independent circuit but characters and unlikely twists and turns. Some elements of also a commercial success in art houses and cable release, Blood parody are present, but are not well integrated into the film’s Simple was the perfect choice to structure, indicating that the achieve this aim. Here was a film Coens were uncertain about that succeeded because of its how to proceed, whether to individual, even quircky vision. make a gangster film or send Using the conventions up the conventions of the popular with American audiences genre. for half a century, the Coens offer The other films share a clear narrative, solidly two- a different representational dimensional characters, and the regime, a magical realism that requisite amount of riveting violent does not demand spectacle (including one scene that versimilitude or logical pictures a dying man buried alive closure, but has the virtue— and another featuring close-ups of for the Coens-of permitting a white-gloved hand suddenly more stylization, more impaled by a knife. Blood Simple, moments of pure cinema. however, is by no means an ordinary thriller. The plot turns Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy offer postmodern expertly and unexpectedly on a number of dramatic ironies (no versions of the traditional Hollywood madcap comedy; in both character knows what the spectator does and even the spectator films, a series of zany adventures climax in romantic happiness is sometimes taken by surprise). Unlike hardboiled narratives à for the male and female leads. Raising Arizona concerns the la Raymond Chandler, the narrative delights in its Aristotelian ultimately unsuccessful attempt of a zany and childless couple neatness, in its depiction of experiences that make perfect sense, to kidnap a baby; The Hudsucker Proxy sends up, in mock climaxing in a poetic justice that the main character and Capra-corn style, he triumph of the virtuous, if obtuse, hero over narrator, a venal private detective, finds humorous even as it the evil system that attempts to use him for its own purposes. destroys him. Thematically, the Coens offer a compelling Barton Fink, in contrast, is a darker story, heavily indebted to analysis of mauvaise foi in the Sartrean vein as they develop German Expressionism (an influence to be noted as well in the characters doomed by bad intentions or a failure to trust and elaborately artificial sets and unnaturalistic acting of The communicate (an existentialist theme that results perhaps from Hudsucker Proxy). The film’s main character is a thirties the fact that Ethan majored in philosophy at Princeton). Blood stereotype, a left-wing Jewish playwright committed to Simple’s most notable feature, however, is an expressive representing the miseries of what he calls “the common man.” stylization of both sound and image that creates an experiential Hired away from Broadway by a Hollywood studio, he embarks correlative for the viewer of the characters’ confusion and unwittingly on a penitential journey that lays bare the forces of disorientation. These effects are achieved by a Wellesian the id both in the apparently common man he meets (a salesman repertoire of tricks (wide-angle lenses, tracking set-ups, unusual who is actually a serial killer) and in himself (abandoning his framings, an artfully selected score of popular music, etc.). The writing responsibility, he finds himself at film’s end at the beach film genre naturalizes the stylization to some degree, but Blood with the beautiful woman whose picture he first saw in a Simple exudes a riotous self-consciousness, a delight in the calendar). creation of an exciting cinema that offers moments of pure All three of these films abound in bravura stylizations. visceral or visual pleasure. A man dives out of a skyscraper window and the camera traces Though some critics thought Blood Simple a kind of the stages of his fall (Hudsucker); a baby’s meanderings across pointless film-school exercise, audiences were impressed—as the floor are captured by a camera literally at floor level (an were the major studios who competed for releasing rights to the elaborate mirror shot in Arizona); wallpaper peels off a hotel brothers’ next project. The Coens’ subsequent films have all room wall revealing something warm and gooey like human been made with substantial commercial backing, but these films flesh underneath (Barton Fink); exaggerated sounds—a continue to be independent in the sense that none fits into the mosquito’s flight, a noisy bed, a whirling fan—perfectly express routine categories of contemporary Hollywood production. In the main character’s self-absorption and anxiety (Barton Fink fact, the art cinema tradition of the seventies has been kept alive again). by the Coens and the few other mavericks (e.g. Quentin With Fargo, their 1996 release, the Tarantino) who have emerged to prominence. return to the crime drama. Set primarily in Minnesota, the film The least successful of these films—Miller’s follows an immensely likable and very pregnant sheriff (played Crossing—is the most traditional. A “realistic” drama (though by Frances McDormand, Joel Coen’s wife) as she pursues a the scenes of violence are highly stylized) with a well-developed couple of dimwitted and cold-blooded kidnappers. A macabre plot line, this saga of Prohibition-era mobsters, like Scorsese’s thriller veined with moments of comedy, Fargo features the Goodfellas (released the year before), aims to debunk the Coen—FARGO—4

Coen brothers’ trademark cinematic flair (though the landscape discarded by the Coens; if anything it is being amped up. But mutes this somewhat) and intelligent narrative focus. what might be called ‘ironic effects’—verbal irony, dramatic The Coens appear to have abandoned for good the irony and intertextual irony that brings in other works of art in stylized realism and Aristotelian order to tease them—are not the only narrative that made Blood Simple effects that the Coens achieve. If there such a success. But in an era that has might be new horizons to be glimpsed witnessed the commercial success of beyond the postmodern, in which cartoonish anti-naturalism (Dick neither the old ‘naively’ realistic Tracy, the Batman films), their narratives, the experimental modernist concern with striking visual and techniques nor the postmodern aural effects may provide the basis recycling jobs reign supreme, the for a long career, though difficult Coens seem like important precursors. films like Barton Fink despite critical acclaim, will never gain a Paul Coughlin: “Joel and Ethan wide audience. Coen” (Senses of Cinema 26, May 2003 The Big Lebowski. J.M. Tyree & Ben Walters. BFI Palgrave The Coens are clever directors who Macmillan. London, 2007. know too much about movies and too little about real life. The Coen picture —Emanuel Levy, Cinema of Outsiders A delight in unexpected collage has always been deeply embedded in the The adolescent experiences of the Coens’ films….This penchant for young Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, absurd juxtaposition applies not just forced indoors by frigid Minnesota to aspects of individual movies, but winters, provides a remarkably to the Coens’ entire career. Formally crystalline metaphor for their later film speaking, theirs is an unusual varied work. It is easy to imagine the brothers oeuvre for film-makers of such critical stature, with works peering out their living-room window to witness the very ranging across periods, locations, styles and genres from 1940s particular and precise ethnographic detail which would find Hollywood to contemporary Texas, quasi-realism to the brink of careful representation in their best received film, Fargo (1996), the surreal, to gangland politics. They do like then turning to their television-set to observe a crime stories of one kind or another. Consistencies can also be comedy or farce and discovering moments, found in their idiosyncratic approach to character, dialogue and characters, narratives and themes which would find illustration certain considerations of technique, such as the predilection for in their most mannered and artificial work, The Hudsucker wide-angle lenses and other recurring pet motifs identified by Proxy (1993). The Coens have been drawn to two seemingly William Preston Robertson. But ‘the Coen picture’ is a irresolvable modes of expression: ethnographic regionalism and considerably harder beast to taxonomies than, say, ‘the artificial fabrication. It is between these two extremes that the Hitchcock picture’ or ‘the Sirk picture’. You never know what’s remainder of their films can be mapped. around the corner. The Coen modus operandi of serial homage bears comparison with that of Billy Wilder. As Many of the films of the Coen brothers are specific to particular notes, Wilder would speak of his ‘Lubitsch film’, his ‘Hitchcock regions and communities—Blood Simple (1983) owes much of film’ and so forth, of trying something ‘in a manner he its character to its Texas setting, Raising Arizona (1987) paints a admired’. Wilder, with his chameleon-like adaptability and his very particular picture of the inhabitants of the American South- style of many styles, was clearly a Coen precursor…. West, The Big Lebowski (1998) gains much of its absurdist …These mortals may be fools, but they actually love comedy from its depiction of the very absurd each other. This makes them—and arguably the Coens—very community and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) relies on different from the characters in and film-makers of the typical the meticulous recreation of Depression-era Mississippi. Yet, camp postmodern mode, which generally ends in cynicism and the Coen brothers are just as assured in depicting artificial showy surface-effects rather than affirming life and ultimately worlds with antecedents in popular culture. Miller’s Crossing choosing real feelings. (1990), which spins a vast intrigue in an unnamed town, secures If there is a larger claim to be made about the much of its conception from Dashiell Hammett’s novels, The importance of the Coens as film-makers, it involves the Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) owes its physical and thematic dimension of their films, of which The Big Lebowski is probably construction more to the universe of film noir than its the finest example. All of the characteristic postmodern tricks Californian location, and The Hudsucker Proxy is a patchwork are on display—the subversive mockery of narrative, the assembly of Capra settings, Sturges characters and Screwball method of inhabiting a genre to expose its artificiality, the Comedy tropes. Barton Fink (1991) might be described as satirical thrust of its allusions to the classics, its disbelief in the occupying a midpoint position in such an analytical survey of old structures, tropes and systems—but they are not the ultimate Joel and Ethan Coen’s films. Barton Fink is set in the ‘real’ purpose of the film. Irony, that slipperiest of all terms is not world of Hollywood—an exquisite conception of an authentic Coen—FARGO—5 world of pure make-believe, “a society where myth has blurred creative talents—cinematographers, actors, editors—involved in with reality.” the production of their films. What becomes apparent in the brothers’ approach to movie-making is a desire to control their Blood Simple films completely.

Ironically, it has been these twin aspects of Joel and Ethan Despite working across a vast array of generic categories and Coen’s work—particularised communities and artificial utilising different thematic approaches it is possible to discern constructions—which has provided the most potent ammunition many recurrent motifs and continuing interests in their films. for critics. The Coens’ detailed reconstruction of identifiable Joel and Ethan Coen’s striking ability to compose brilliant communities, with all their quirks and eccentricities, has led dialogue for their characters is perhaps the most distinguished many critics to accuse them of adopting a lofty superiority to aspect of their work. The dominant critical approach taken with their characters. Yet, when they construct a world with no regard to Fargo focused on the attention paid to capturing the resemblance to reality they are specific dialect of the charged with avoiding moral or Minnesota community. Peter ethical expression. Nearly 20 Körte argues that the attention years since they made their debut given to maintaining an with the independently financed authentic language-scheme is Blood Simple, the Coen brothers less a simple affectation or cute remain in critical limbo— device and more an “expression considered to be neither serious of a very specific experience artists nor commercial achievers. and mentality,” supporting the notion that the Coens’ Joel and Ethan Coen were born in ethnographic project is Minnesota to academic parents. legitimate. The brothers were raised in a typical middle-American, middle- In their postmodern films, such class Jewish household. Their childhood was largely as The Hudsucker Proxy and Barton Fink, ethnocentric detail is unremarkable and aside from the production of a few super-8 rejected and replaced by allusions to popular culture. This ties in home movies, a future in filmmaking seemed unlikely (Ethan’s with the Coen brothers’ rampant application of pre-existing book of short stories entitled Gates Of Eden contains pseudo- source material in new and ironic ways. It is this element, biographical, though ‘fictional’, narratives of the Coens’ common in many of their films, which lends weight to the upbringing). Joel proceeded to New York University where, in charge that their films are empty of new ideas or moral lieu of anything better, he enrolled in a film course. Ethan, on positions. Todd McCarthy argues, with respect to The the other hand, ventured to Princeton; choosing Philosophy as Hudsucker Proxy, that “rehashes of old movies, no matter how his major, he composed a thesis on Wittgenstein. Joel’s film inspired, are almost by definition synthetic, and the fact is that school experience would assist him in landing a number of nearly all the characters are constructs rather than human beings editing jobs on small budget films, providing him with exposure with who the viewer can connect.” Yet, when the Coens to film production practices. With this grounding the brothers construct ‘human beings’ they are often accused of adopting a were motivated to make their own film. With the help of mocking tone to them. Devin McKinney suggests Fargo is “a investors from the local Minnesota business community the fatuous piece of nonsense, a tall cool drink of witless Coens set about making their first feature length film—Blood condescension” and Emanuel Levy claims that the Coens “have Simple. always treated their characters with contempt, ruthlessly manipulating and loathing their foolishness.” The fascination The Hudsucker Proxy with language, the application of postmodern techniques, attention to regionalism and charges of arrogant superiority are Joel and Ethan wrote, directed and produced the film, a working the most common themes upon which the work of the Coen regime they have maintained thus far in their career. They also brothers is appraised. edit most of their movies using the single pseudonym Roderick Jaynes. Though nominally Joel directs and Ethan produces, their Blood Simple duties are said to be shared. Whilst working with the Coens on The Hudsucker Proxy, claimed he had “never had Joel and Ethan Coen have worked within the realms of various two directors…[and]…never worked with two guys who had genres, adopting appropriate methods of realisation to reflect equal creative authority who didn’t squabble.” That the Coen these representational frameworks. The dialogue in their films is brothers don’t ‘squabble’ reflects the total control they maintain a prominent factor in the organisation and maintenance of these over their vision from script to screen. Anecdotal reports generic constructions and in the fulfilment of specific stylistic suggest that actors who skip words (even seemingly strategies. The Hudsucker Proxy‘s synthetic visual design is insignificant dialogue) in line readings are politely requested to mirrored by its stylised dialogue, the criminal milieu of Miller’s repeat the exercise with complete accuracy. The films of the Crossing is characterised by memorably rich gangster jargon, Coen brothers are also rigorously story-boarded, ensuring the while Fargo‘s attention to visual realism operates concurrently visual conception is affirmed and preserved by the many other with the application of an appropriate regional dialect. Barry Coen—FARGO—6

Sonnenfield—the director of photography on Raising Arizona— capture the specific culture of Minnesota. The Coens have suggests that the script has greatest priority to the Coens, acquired a reputation for a certain kind of ethnographic arguing that words and structure are more important than any expression through the critical exploration of particular cultures. visual concerns. Language operates as a cue to the themes and Mottram maintains that these film locations are never arbitrarily characters in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. That they chosen but rather the settings “speak on behalf of the characters; construct dialogue of wonderful inarticulacy, such as the Dude’s ironically, people who, more often than not, are inextricably () scrambled speeches in The Big Lebowski and linked to their homeland”, noting that the “heat of Texas in Carl’s (Steve Buscemi) consistent malapropism in Fargo, is not Blood Simple is symbolic of the moral inferno that the merely a joke at the expense of characters find themselves in.” their characters but rather the The use of Texas as a setting for critical interrogation of Blood Simple coincides with the communication breakdown. The style and concerns of the film’s premise of Blood Simple chief inspiration, James M. Cain. evolves upon the protagonists’ Joyce Carol Oates proposes the inability to communicate moral environment of Cain’s effectively, their private novels is such that: discourses breeding distrust and confusion that ultimately leads …one understands how barren, to the tragic consequences at the how stripped and bizarre this film’s conclusion. James Western landscape has become. It Mottram observes that the “four is as if the world extends no main protagonists, although farther than the radius of one’s existing in a unified physical desire…To be successful, such world, inhabit a separate mental narrowly-conceived art must blot and emotional space that causes repeated misinterpretations.” out what landscape it cannot cover; hence the blurred With Fargo and The Big Lebowski the Coens have extended this surrealistic backgrounds of the successful Cain novels. philosophy of miscommunication to an ailment of society in which inarticulacy is an observable symptom. With Blood Simple Joel and Ethan Coen use Texas to develop a similarly surreal environment, of flat, featureless plains, endless Raising Arizona highways and stifling heat.

The language styles pursued by the characters in these films The Man Who Wasn’t There frequently betray repressed or unconscious desires that expose the value systems of modern cultures. Jeff Evans detects the The Coens’ most recent film, The Man Who Wasn’t There, irony inherent in the dialogue of Raising Arizona as stemming returns to James Cain as a touchstone, reinventing his fiction in part from a gulf that exists between the florid, loquacious and through the subversion of its generic and literary conventions. poetic speech of the characters and their sparse, homely and The Man Who Wasn’t There is set in traditional Cain country—a modest physical reality. H.I. (Nicolas Cage) at one point, Californian town named Santa Rosa. But the Coens are less describes his and Ed’s () motor-home existence in interested here in representing an authentic Californian the middle of the barren plains of the Arizona desert as “the community and more concerned with manufacturing a stylised salad days”. Raising Arizona is to some extent about a desire to film noir cosmos swathed in existentialist apathy and passivity. improve one’s position; H.I., a confirmed recidivist, wants to Miller’s Crossing is also set in an intensely rhetorical world, marry, work, build a home and start a family. He is after the every setting seems overly precise and affected, not so much a American dream of prosperity, and in dialogue he has found a step back in time, more like a return to familiar representations way to fabricate a chimera of success, having failed to achieve it from the past. Ethan Coen declared that in Miller’s Crossing in a material sense. The moral of the film will finally suggest “the city’s an anonymous one, the typical ‘corrupted town’ of that this material success is a charade, and that true happiness Hammett novels.” Fargo, on the other hand seems to carry with and prosperity comes from the modest pursuit of doing the right it a documentary authenticity. The film’s prologue—which thing. This emphasis on the absence of meaning in language is attests to the veracity of the depicted events—may be a red an earnest critique of aspects of America’s culture; of the views herring, but it does acknowledge the film’s agenda—the and values, prejudices and hegemonies in these societies. The maintenance of a coherent system of realism. The peculiar dialogue in the films of the Coen brothers offers insight into snow-capped setting and the equally exotic Scandinavian- dominant ideologies, endeavoring to examine how language inflected dialogue reinforces the particularly provincial nature of works to maintain certain standards and beliefs. the representation. Whereas Minnesota is integral to the design and conception of Fargo, Los Angeles is fundamental to The As “regional independents”, Joel and Ethan Coen have spread Big Lebowski. Josh Levine argues that the Coens populated The their film wings right across the extensive lands of the United Big Lebowski with types who could not exist anywhere else but States. Blood Simple and Raising Arizona document the South- “in the sunny land of complete informalness and surreal West, Barton Fink and The Big Lebowski are each set in Los juxtapositions.” The wandering-intrigue narrative of The Big Angeles and Fargo is perhaps the most prominent film ever to Lebowski is perfectly suited to experiencing the widely diverse Coen—FARGO—7 and divergent community of Los Angeles, a culture equally inspiration for the entire noir movement. The Coens have receptive to doped-out slackers, right-wing militants, German chosen to exclude all emotion from their protagonist, the nihilists, Malibu pornographers and a pederast named Jesus monotone Ed (Billy Bob Thornton), to make him as (John Turturro). dispassionate and detached as possible, prompting Graham Fuller to categorise the film “anti-noir”. Without the crucial Barton Fink is also set in Los Angeles but its specific placement elements of passion, desire and sexuality, The Man Who Wasn’t in the more particularised culture There undermines the very of Hollywood allows for a more genre that frames it. fantastic conception. Joel and Ethan Coen’s interpretation of Barton Fink is less a subversion Hollywood in Barton Fink is less of generic conventions and a denotative representation and more an ironic reexamination more a symbolic interpretation. of history. It is both a critique The Coens place the eponymous of the Hollywood system then hero Barton (John Turturro) in a and now, and a reworking of living hell when he sells his the myth of the leftist artist in creative soul to a motion picture the 1930s. It seems, with studio. Barton Fink contains a Barton Fink, the Coens secure stimulating mix of accepted great enjoyment in debunking history, anecdotal and apocryphal the typical celebration of the elements and pure fiction. A common man by exposing the similar methodology is adopted egotistical motives that trump for O Brother, Where Art Thou? which offers a technically altruistic intention. The Coens subvert the myth of the suffering precise and culturally astute recreation of 1930s deep-south playwright with their depiction of Barton Fink as a pompous America but frames the narrative using Homer’s No Country for and self-absorbed author who is out of touch with the very Old Men. The mixture of historical detail with an archetypal people he claims to write for, and about. The Coen brothers fiction narrative is a postmodern paradigm. Yet, neither of these have sought to rework and reevaluate the past by engaging with films come close to The Hudsucker Proxy for re-imagining the history in a hyper-critical way. The self-conscious manner of the past. With The Hudsucker Proxy the Coens eschew all Coen brothers’ films always foregrounds both history’s and resemblance to reality to produce a remarkably artificial world fiction’s textuality. that owes almost all of its inspiration to old movies. The Hudsucker Proxy Blood Simple In the films of the Coen brothers the process of story-telling is The films of Joel and Ethan Coen are not merely constructed often laid open to exposition and demonstration. Barton Fink is from the pieces of other films and references are not drawn a Hollywood film set in Hollywood, the hub of American story- solely from the domain of cinema history. The Coens seek to telling. The Hudsucker Proxy is a defiantly referential film that work with well known source material, extracting the essence of overtly exposes its textual design; the film’s narrator, an initial an author’s approach and re-deploying this style within a indication of the text’s narrativity, stops the film midstream and different and original environment. With Blood Simple the directly addresses the audience. O Brother, Where Art Thou? Coens endeavor to re-contextualise the basic elements of the foregrounds the narrative framework of its trajectory in the James Cain novel. Blood Simple owes a notable debt to the style opening credits when the brothers cite No Country for Old Men of James Cain, but also to film noir, neo-noir, the tenets of as the film’s basis. With Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy and independent film in the 1980s, the crime genre and the O Brother, Where Art Thou? the Coen brothers are highly self- eccentricities of Texas culture. The Coen brothers’ films conscious in the manner of their storytelling. Their narrative negotiate the issue of fidelity by furnishing adaptations that tools, particularly in The Hudsucker Proxy, are often deftly self- reject a linear relationship to one model or source text. Miller’s reflexive. To insist on exposing the devices of construction Crossing is based loosely on two Dashiell Hammett novels, The immediately cues the viewer to the construction of all texts. Glass Key and Red Harvest, and it also engages in a more Linda Hutcheon identifies a mode of “metacinema” in which the general sense with Hammett’s style and themes. The Big formation process of subjectivity and narrativity has become a Lebowski is perhaps more ambitious as the Coens, influenced by staple. And it would appear that the Coen brothers’ films befit Raymond Chandler, fashion a story around the world of a doped such a classification. Their use of distancing narrational modes out loser and social-league ten-pin bowling. With The Man Who such as voice-over exposition in Raising Arizona and The Man Wasn’t There, Joel and Ethan Coen return to James M. Cain. Who Wasn’t There, the direct address prologue in Blood Simple But once again the relationship to their inspiration remains and The Big Lebowski, and the rigid application of generic paradoxical. The Man Who Wasn’t There is concerned with convention in Miller’s Crossing are all elements which transgressing many of film noir‘s most important conventions, foreground the construction processes involved. summarily problematising its connection to James Cain, a chief Coen—FARGO—8

The films of the Coen brothers display an acute awareness of Mid-West region’s people was condescending and exploitative. history and its inscription in the texts of the past and the present. Talk-radio audiences in Minnesota complained that the film Joel and Ethan Coen do not employ pastiche to resolve a dearth ridiculed them and their culture, and McKinney suggested that of ideas, they actively examine the texts they draw from as a not only was the dialogue inaccurate in its representation of the means to building a bridge to the past. The Coens deny the usual true regional dialect but the application of it by the Coens served mythical constructions, they do not invest in traditional merely to diminish the characters rather than particularise them. frameworks of representation, rather It is true that many of the they interrogate those frameworks to characters in their films are examine and expose how they foolish or ridiculous but construct meaning. With this process often this is indicative of the films of the Coen brothers are their disposition. Ethan diligent in their investigation of Coen declared in an history and its ideologies. Carolyn interview the objective of Russell argues that: representing Carl and Jerry (William H. Macy)—the the Coens make films that are highly nefarious ‘masterminds’ of self-conscious of their relationship to Fargo‘s abduction plan—as preexisting film forms. Their movies so inept: rely upon a base of knowledge, cultural and film historical, that is One of the reasons for presumed to be shared between making them simple- themselves and their viewers. minded was our desire to go against the Hollywood cliché of the bad guy as a super-professional who controls everything he Barton Fink does. In fact, in most cases criminals belong to the strata of society least equipped to face life, and that’s the reason they’re This assertion highlights the very important manner by which caught so often. In this sense too, our movie is closer to life than postmodern representations call upon the reader/viewer to the conventions of cinema and genre movies. complete the text. The role of memory, reception and intertextuality are crucial to the design in the Coen brothers’ The aspects of Fargo that undermine and rally against film films. By engaging the texts of the past the directors are able to convention and focus on characteristics more attuned to reality challenge and critique history through the agency of parody, give it a naturalistic identity. Emphasising a character’s irony and self-reflexivity. This confrontation with history’s ineptitude is inextricably linked to an expression of reality and textual construction enables an exploration and interpretation of need not be evident of a specific agenda to ridicule a community ideologies of the past. Despite all the criticism of their work— or a society. their films are merely about other films, their work smugly proposes the emptiness at the core of art, they hide behind style Joel and Ethan Coen are often censured for failing to commit to to avoid moral and ethical issues—the Coen brothers moral or ethical positions and chastised for constructing worlds nevertheless set up a connection to history through their pithy of artificiality. But the truth is, manifest in Levy’s pointed investigation into the texts that represent the past. With their condemnation (located at the beginning of this essay), the Coens keen approach to historical periods and texts of bygone eras, and are victims of a critical establishment which considers visual their reliance on irony and parody, the Coen brothers not only documentation—film and television—to be unworthy conveyers engage with history but they question and challenge the of the past. The Coen brothers do know too much about film, ideologies by which it is constructed. they know enough to recognise the conceits of its processes and to detect the values that such systems are designed to support. When the Coen brothers draw on their vast intertextual web of And they know enough to subvert and criticise these systems in references in order to inform their films, as is the case in The order to construct a valid and important engagement with the Hudsucker Proxy, they are often accused of elitism; of past, encapsulating very effective and substantial moral and alienating their audience by servicing only their own penchant ethical explorations. The Coen brothers’ wonderful ear for for in-jokes and obscure allusions. Yet, when they set their films dialogue, rigid attention to regional re-constructions, inventive in more realistic and genuine settings, as in Fargo, the brothers approach to the past, in addition to their professional skill and are then criticised for mocking their characters. Fargo endured a adroit technique has resulted in some of the most enjoyable (and barrage of criticism suggesting that the film’s portrayal of the critically worthy) contemporary films.

ONLY TWO MORE IN THE FALL 2014 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS Nov 25 Erik Skjoldbjaerg, INSOMNIA, 1997 Dec 2 Mike Nichols, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR, 2007 Coen—FARGO—9

SPRING 2015 PRELIMINARY SCREENING SCHEDULE Jan 27 Charlie Chaplin, The Gold Rush, 1925 Feb 3 , Bringing Up Baby, 1938 Feb 10 Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, ‘I Know Where I’m Going,’ 1945 Feb 17 Carol Reed, Odd Man Out, 1947 Feb 24 Budd Boetticher, Seven Men from Now, 1956 March 3 Roger Vadim, Barbarella, 1968 Mar 10 Bob Fosse, All That Jazz, 1979 Mar 24 George Miller, Mad Max, 1979 Mar 31 Karel Reisz, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, 1981 Apr 7 Gregory Nava, El Norte, 1983 Apr 14 , The Usual Suspects, 1995 Apr 21 Bela Tarr, Werkmeister Harmonies, 2000 Apr 28 Sylvain Chomet, The Triplets of Belleville, 2003 May 5 Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men, 2007

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