Advanced Studies:
Seeing all the Coens' work leading into the 21st century is a nice start, but they'll only get you so far into the one-two punch of 2000's O Brother, Where Art Thou? and 2001's The Man Who Wasn't There, two movies so loaded with allusions that only a thorough education in literature, pre- and post-war American cinema, and folk music history could unpack them. O Brother is better known for its soundtrack than as a movie, and not unreasonably: Producer T-Bone Burnett, given free reign to explore the obscure musical tributaries of the Depression-era South, with a few unearthed classics and a lot of new songs that lovingly mimic vintage bluegrass, country, and soul music. And the movie itself, cast off by some as the Coens at their most garish and grotesque, is hugely underrated, a loving homage to '30s Americana assembled from popular icons and artifacts, and told with the intoxicating energy of a Warner Brothers cartoon. It's fun to play the game of "Spot That Allusion"—in addition to a plot that follows The Odyssey and a title that references Sullivan's Travels, there are also nods to Clark Gable, Robert Johnson, Busby Berkeley, The Wizard Of Oz, and I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang—but look closely and the Coens are disarmingly sincere about their hero's salvation and his wild, perilous journey home.
As for The Man Who Wasn't There, it synthesizes a lot of themes familiar from Coen movies past (Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Fargo) and future (No Country For Old Men) while presenting them in a mature, subtle, hushed aesthetic that's unique within their oeuvre. And it all starts with Billy Bob Thornton's courageous minimalist turn as a barber who embarks on a typical Coen scheme gone wrong—here, a blackmail plot to raise seed money to get into the dry-cleaning business. Like William H. Macy in Fargo, the crime is tied both to a pitifully minor dream of financial solvency and the marital discord that's at the root of his miseries. The difference is that Thornton's character really does love his wife (played here by Frances McDormand), but lacks the capability to express it, which gives a tragic undercurrent to a noir that owes its plotting to James M. Cain (particularly The Postman Always Rings Twice) and its pervasive ennui to Jim Thompson.
Miscellany
Those looking to sample Coen obscurities, shorts, and side projects should probably start with 1985's Crimewave, which the brothers wrote for then-neophyte director Sam Raimi. Raimi has disowned the film due to its meddlesome producers, who kept him from using Bruce Campbell and fired his editor and composer during post-production, but there are plenty of embryonic elements that could come into play later on in both Raimi and the Coens' careers. For one, there's a penitentiary named Hudsucker—a name that would figure prominently in a later collaboration—but more generally, the wacky crime comedy, narrated by a patsy about to die on the electric chair, has a kinetic, cartoon-y quality that the filmmakers would refine in future efforts. (The less said about 1998's The Naked Man, a Michael Rapaport vehicle that Ethan Coen wrote for another director, the better.)
Recently, the Coens have gamely participated in a couple of short-film anthologies that show their facility for the form and stand up nicely against shorts by other international heavy-hitters, mostly for providing some comic relief. "Tuileries," their contribution to 2006's Paris Je T'aime, follows a American tourist Steve Buscemi's misadventures at the Paris subway stop, where he's pelted with spitballs and unwillingly intervenes in a lover's quarrel. The Coens, rightfully anticipating the project as a collection of love letters to the city, cleverly zag in the other direction.
A year later, for the Cannes' 60th anniversary anthology Chacun Son Cinéma (To Each His Own Cinema), the Coens turned out another irreverent short featuring Josh Brolin, in full No Country For Old Men cowboy get-up, stumbling into a two-screen arthouse and trying to decide whether to see the French classic The Rules Of The Game or the contemporary Turkish film Climates. (His message for the usher afterwards: "Tell him the dude in the hat enjoyed the hell out of Climates.")
Completists would also do well to check out Ethan Coen's 1999 short-story collection Gates Of Eden. Not surprisingly, the stories are vividly cinematic and feature Coen's talent for gracefully appropriating different styles, from old-fashioned gangster comedies to radio scripts to more sober pieces that reflect the author's Minnesota upbringing. Coen's ability to craft colorful dialogue was already well-established, but there's a difference between writing screenplays and writing prose, and he happily shows a facility for both.
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