The Coen Brothers Past, Present, and Future. By Simon Thompson.
In all areas of life, there is something that a great double act can provide that is both unknowable and magical at the same time. It’s an unknowable quality in the sense that no one has the exact science to explain what makes a great double act work, but when they’re together you can’t quite imagine one without the other. Snoopy and Woodstock, Calvin and Hobbes, Mulder and Scully, Batman and Robin – but a few examples of fictional double acts that have left an indelible mark on popular culture. In terms of people that actually exist, however, Joel and Ethan Cohen’s run together as a duo was something truly unique.
When you think of great directors throughout the history of cinema as a medium, with the exception of the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy, it’s often usually one name, Hitchcock, Fellini, Ozu, Scorsese, Wilder, Kubrick – it’s hard to imagine them having a sibling tagging along for the ride. This is where the Coens differ from the vast majority of the pantheon, as both have spent most of their acclaimed four decade careers together, fluctuating between screwball comedy one minute and pitch black crime dramas the next.
They’ve also managed to accomplish this all without killing one another, and coming from somebody who has a brother and could barely manage to build a Lego express train with him without a fight, let alone make No Country For Old Men, this is made all the more impressive.
But all good things sadly most come to an end, as Joel and Ethan Cohen haven’t made a movie together in seven years. This article will look at both the Coen’s rise to widespread recognition and their possible future.
Chapter One – Beginnings and Rise through the industry (1950s-1984)
Joel and Ethan Coen were born in 1954 and 1957 respectively, and grew up in suburban Minneapolis. Both their childhood home and Jewish heritage would inform much of their creative sensibilities and artistic inspiration. Joel and Ethan were drawn to cinema from an early age, with tastes as varied as the works of Federico Fellini, Doris Day comedies, and adventure films, which all aired on a local Minneapolis TV channel.
In the mid 1960s Joel scrambled enough money together from mowing his neighbours’ lawns to purchase a super 8 camera. The brothers’ instinct for parody and distinct sense of humour showed itself immediately, as with their super 8 camera they shot parodies of the adventure films that they grew up watching. After finishing high school Joel and Ethan attended separate colleges but reunited at the start of the 1980s, as Joel was finishing his undergraduate filmmaking program at New York University.
Joel would be the first to enter the film industry, working as a production assistant on various instructional/music videos. Joel discovered that he had a knack for editing, which put him in contact with a budding filmmaker by the name of Sam Raimi, who was working on a low budget horror film named The Evil Dead, bringing in Joel to edit it. Although igniting a firestorm of controversy from the usual suspects, The Evil Dead caused a sensation upon its release grossing over $20 million from a $375,000 budget and it turned Raimi from indie filmmaker to a cult sensation overnight.
Seeing the success of The Evil Dead made Joel realise that you could use the indie circuit as a platform and he began to work on an original script with Ethan titled Blood Simple (1984). The script featured a story as dark as a Scandinavian winter, set in West Texas, Blood Simple follows a bar owner Julian (played by Dan Hedaya), who suspects that his wife Abby (Frances McDormand) is cheating on him with another man Ray (John Getz). Julian hires a shady private detective (played to perfection by M. Emmet Walsh) to kill Ray and Abby.
Taking inspiration mainly from film noir and horror movies (the title itself is a reference to a famous quote from Dashiell Hammet’s novel Red Harvest) Blood Simple was a startlingly original and modestly budgeted crime drama which sent shockwaves through American cinema. On the independent circuit the Coens cleaned up winning the grand prize at Sundance, and receiving co best directors honours with Martin Scorsese at the 1st Independent Spirit Awards – not too shabby for a pair of recently graduated students.
What made Blood Simple stand out from other neo noir movies which were coming out at the time, such as Body Heat or Against All Odds, was the script’s injection of humour (albeit dark humour) into such a disturbing story, that immediately marked it out as being a lot more daring and original than its contemporaries. Barry Sonnenfield’s stunning cinematography of dark blues punctuated by flicks of neon and his use of shadow would be a look that multiple crime films in the years since its release would mimic.
Every actor in this film is perfectly cast in their respective roles, but it’s Frances McDormand (in her debut no less) that you find yourself drawn to, as the sense of fear and vulnerability she conveys as Abby sells the horror of the situation to the audience.
Critics immediately realised that Blood Simple was something special, with esteemed critics such as Janet Maslin hitting the nail on the head early in regards to their talent ; “ black humour, abundant originality and a brilliant visual style make Joel Coen’s Blood Simple a directorial debut of extraordinary promise. Mr. Coen, who co-wrote the film with his brother Ethan, works in a film noir style that in no way inhibits his wit, which turns out to be considerable.”
Blood Simple is an important film in the Coen’s career not just by virtue of being their debut, but because it’s their first collaboration with both musician Carter Burwell and actress Frances McDormand, who later became Joel Coen’s wife. Although not grossing all that much at the box office ( $2.7 million from a $1.7 million budget) Blood Simple put the Coens on the independent filmmaking map instantly, leaving people to wonder how they would follow up such a singular and interesting debut.
Chapter Two – The peak of their creative success (1987-2010)
It would have been safe and easy for the Coens to make another Blood Simple style film as a follow up, but to their eternal credit they decided to shift to a completely different tonal extreme with Raising Arizona (1987). Raising Arizona is a rapidly paced and extremely strange comedy about a policewoman, Ed (short for Edwina/played by Holly Hunter), who marries career criminal screw up H.I (Nicolas Cage). Ed badly wants to have a child, but discovers that she is infertile. As they are unable to adopt because of H.I’s criminal record, HI decides to kidnap one of the quintuplets of local businessman Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson). As soon as HI does this however, he is pursued by a ruthless bounty hunter (Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb) hired by Arizona to return his baby.
Raising Arizona is a gloriously bonkers screwball comedy which combines quick dialogue inspired by the Coen’s love of scriptwriter Preston Sturges and Southern Gothic writers such as William Faulkner and Flannery O Connor. Critics didn’t quite know what to make of Raising Arizona when it came out, failing to understand its humour and tone but in the years since it has come to be regarded as a beloved classic in the Coen’s filmography.
What makes Raising Arizona work is that in the midst of all the chaos and bizarre situations the characters find themselves in, the movie is at its core a love story. Without resorting to cheap schmaltz, the relationship between Cage and Hunter’s characters is genuinely sweet and believable (which feels strange to say about a kidnap based comedy involving small children) ,and one of the many reasons why audiences keep coming back to it.
Entering into the 1990s, the Coens kicked off the decade with Miller’s Crossing (1990) a sombre, densely plotted, operatic gangster film inspired by their love of Dashiell Hammett and the works of French filmmaker Jean Pierre Melville (particularly Le Doulos). Set in prohibition era America, Miller’s Crossing follows Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) an enforcer for the fearsome Irish crime lord Leo O’ Bannon (Albert Finney). When the mafia sanction a hit on Bernie a corrupt bookie (John Tuttoro), Leo refuses to allow the hit to go ahead as he is seeing Bernie’s sister Verna (Marcia Gay Harden).
As luck would have it, it turns out that Tom is also sleeping with Verna, and as a result is caught in the crosshairs in a dispute between the Irish and Italian mobs over liquor distribution.
Miller’s Crossing was, the first movie by the Coens that didn’t take place in a contemporary setting, but as they would demonstrate with their later period pieces, the level of detail they invoke in depicting the 1920s is staggering. Everything from the sets to the costumes, don’t feel at all anachronistic, which helps to fully immerse the audience into the murky world of prohibition.
In contrast to the bright colours of Raising Arizona, the Coens adopted a distinctive almost autumnal look for Miller’s Crossing ,reminiscent of Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America. This culminates in the famous sequence in the woods, that I won’t dare spoil because it’s one of the finest in the Coen’s filmography.
Although critically the film fared well, especially with Roger Ebert who awarded it 3 out of 4 stars, commercially Miller’s Crossing was a box office disaster grossing $5 million from a $10-14 million budget. This could be largely attributed to the fact that it was released at the same time as Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, and when compared to the raw kinetic speed of that movie, with its leisurely measured pace and bleak conclusion, Miller’s Crossing didn’t stand a chance of capturing the attention of the 18-24 demographic that the studio 20th Century Fox were marketing to.
Miller’s Crossing would be the first of many examples, that conventional Hollywood wisdom would cite as the Coens being critical darlings but box office poison. But given that their movies weren’t asking for blockbuster budgets and would gain critical praise, they were happy to keep green lighting them.
During production on Miller’s Crossing, the duo were suffering from a severe case of writer’s block and were bogged down in bringing it to completion. After taking a trip to New York to clear their minds, they worked on an original script they intended for John, Turturro, Barton Fink (1991).
Set in 1941, Barton Fink chronicles the ups and downs of its eponymous protagonist, a neurotic, Jewish, Clifford Odets – like playwright ( John Turturro) who moves from New York to Los Angeles after being hired by a studio for lucrative Hollywood scriptwriting gigs. Barton is a complete fish out of water in California, and suddenly develops a severe case of writer’s block as he struggles between writing the script the studio wants him to make, versus one that is intellectually and artistically true to him.
As his writing woes continue, Barton is brought into a strange series of events involving both his insurance salesman neighbour and fellow transplant Charlie (John Goodman), as well as Faulkneresque alcoholic writer WP Mayhew (John Mahoney) and his long suffering secretary Audrey (Judy Davis).
Barton Fink is a beguiling puzzle of a movie, encompassing a myriad of themes ranging from the debate between art vs commercialism, and the isolated relationship that intellectuals have with the rest of society, played out through Barton’s relationship with Charlie. Charlie represents the ‘common man’ that Barton so badly wants to reach with his work, but ironically takes very little interest in what Charlie actually has to say.
Encompassing multiple genres such as film noir, comedy, horror, and historical fiction, Barton Fink is one of the sterling masterpieces of the Coen’s filmography. Sadly, audiences didn’t take to its downbeat and ambiguous story at all, with the film only grossing $6.2 million from its $9 million budget. While Barton Fink had some prominent champions such as Vincent Canby and Rita Kempley, the vast majority of the critical establishment didn’t care for it at all, with John Simon of the National Review describing it as “asinine and insufferable”.
Barton Fink did result in another awards triumph for the Coens however, as it deservedly won a rare triple crown at Cannes, coming away with best director, best actor (for John Turturro), and the Palme d’Or. Barton Fink also marks the Coens’ first collaboration with cinematographer Roger Deakins who, as much as the duo themselves, is responsible for the public perception of how a Coen Brothers film looks.
The Coens had now gained a reputation with Hollywood insiders for being “ weird, off centre, and inaccessible” in the words of super producer Joel Silver. As much as Miller’s Crossing and Barton Fink helped to establish their lack of commercial clout, it would be The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) that solidified it. As badly as Miller’s Crossing and Barton Fink bombed they were made on small enough budgets for the damage to be negligible. The Hudsucker Proxy,on the other hand, had a sizeable amount of money dedicated to it, coming in at $25 million.
Unlike their previous work which featured future household names before they got big (Nicolas Cage, Frances McDormand, Holly Hunter, Gabriel Byrne etc) or character actors, The Hudsucker Proxy featured a bells and whistles all-star cast in the shape of Tim Robbins (who was a huge star at this point thanks to Jacob’s Ladder and The Player), bonafide Hollywood royalty in Paul Newman, and an ascendent Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Influenced by the duo’s love of screwball comedies by the likes of Wilder, Sturges, and Hawkes, The Hudsucker Proxy follows avaricious executive Sidney J Mussburger ( Paul Newman), who is trying to gain outright control of the business he works for via purchasing a majority share. Because the company is too successful, Mussburger realises that he needs to devalue the stock to be able to launch a full takeover. To tank the business, he convinces the rest of the board to appoint a hopelessly naïve new hire, Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), to the board.
His plan spectacularly backfires however, as Norville’s decisions make the company more successful than ever. To make matters worse for Mussburger, journalist Amy Archer (Jennifer Jason Leigh) starts investigating his various unethical business practices.
The Hudsucker Proxy combines a watertight script with a lavishly detailed 1950s period set design, which when paired with Roger Deakins’s cinematography, creates a mesmerising effect. Like Billy Wilder at his best, The Hudsucker Proxy is a deeply cynical, but very funny film that audiences and critics alike failed to take to because of its biting sense of humour.
While it has gained a noticeable cult following, regrettably it only grossed $11 million of its budget (not to mention marketing and distribution costs) back. Because of the poor box office showing, the Coens were now at an arm’s length distance from mainstream Hollywood, a position which would prove to be a blessing in disguise for their next movie, the crime drama Fargo (1996).
Fargo represents a return to both the tone and minimalist structure of Blood Simple. Set in the Coens’ native Minnesota, it tells the story of hapless car salesman Jerry Lundergaard (William H Macy). Jerry is deeply in debt and struggling to pay back his creditors, so he hires two kidnappers (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to take his wife Jean (Kristin Rudrud) hostage. Since Jean is from a wealthy family Jerry plans to collect the ransom money from her father to pay both his debts and the criminals that he hired.
Jerry’s plan immediately goes south however, when one of the kidnappers panics and fatally shoots a state trooper, putting the kidnappers and Jerry in the sights of Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) a canny policewoman who begins to connect Jerry to the shooting.
Anchored by pitch perfect performances from Frances McDormand and William H Macy, and a script which perfectly balances both drama and comedy, Fargo was a rare critical and commercial hit for the Coens grossing $60 million from a $7 million budget and earning rave critical reviews, with Siskel and Ebert declaring it the best film of 1996.
What makes Fargo work is how it manages to juggle such a depressing story with a kind of midwestern folksiness and decency that never becomes tonally dissonant. Deakins’s cinematography captures the ice cold beauty and stark nature of Minnesota beautifully, with the winter setting being the perfect backdrop for the plot.
In the years since 1996, Fargo’s standing has grown and grown, being selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 2006 and widely regarded as one of the finest American movies in any genre over the last three decades. In two years the Coens had gone from being relative pariahs to their most feted position since the 1980s, a staggering turn around to say the least.
The pair’s follow up to Fargo, The Big Lebowski (1998) was another foray into crime-comedy, albeit it with a very different approach and structure. Coming from the Coen’s wanting to lovingly send up the works of Raymond Chandler, The Big Lebowski is centred around Jeffrey Lebowski, aka The Dude (Jeff Bridges), a content middle aged stoner. The Dude’s sense of equilibrium is upended when a group of thugs break into his house and pee on his favourite rug.
Completely taken aback by the situation, The Dude discovers that his uninvited house guests got the wrong Jeffrey Lebowski. It turns out that the other Lebowski (David Huddelston) is a successful multi-millionaire, whose trophy wife Bunny (Tara Reid) has been kidnapped and is willing to offer The Dude a vast amount of money to act as a bagman to bring her back. The Dude enlists his two closest friends, an irascible Vietnam veteran Walter (John Goodman) and Donny (Steve Buscemi) to help him out.
Densely plotted and layered, The Big Lebowski is the perfect example of a comedy which proves you can have tight plotting, richly quotable dialogue and a large cast of quirkily endearing characters all at the same time. Although it divided critical opinion a little more than Fargo did, it has gained an outsized cult status since the late 90s thanks to its eccentric characters and script.
Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, and Steve Buscemi are all fantastic in their roles, but short of Some Like It Hot this has one of the best supporting cast of characters a comedy has ever had, with the likes of John Turturro, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Julianne Moore being indispensable to its appeal.
As twisted as the plot gets at times, there is a sizeable sense of heart which underpins it and goes a long way to explain its endearing staying power. The Big Lebowski is the kind of movie where you can watch it to either marvel at its plot structure, catch the hidden jokes you missed the first time, or to simply laugh yourself silly, which is a rare set of characteristics for a story to embody.
Entering into the new millennium the Coens were at their creative apex, but following two films as good as Fargo and The Big Lebowski would prove to be a tall order for most directors. The Coens realised that going back to a historical setting in contrast to the contemporary settings of their last two movies would be a new creative challenge. To branch out even further they decided to make their next film O Brother, Where Art Thou ? (2000) ,a musical.
A combination of both Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels and Homer’s The Odyssey set in 1930s Mississippi,O, Brother Where Art Thou details the journey of three escaped prisoners ( George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson) and the colourful characters that they meet on their travels.
George Clooney, who at this point wasn’t seen as someone with a real talent for comedy, shines in the starring role as Ulysses Everet McGill (a pun on Homer’s Odysseus) providing both timing and charisma in droves. The real stars of the show, however, are the soundtrack (a mixture of Carter Burwell’s original work and various blues, folk, and country music) and Roger Deakins’s sepia toned cinematography, a look he adopted to capture the smoky rural surroundings of the movie’s Mississippi setting.
While not as structurally tight as Fargo or Barton Fink, there is still plenty of fun to be had With O, Brother, Where Art Thou? – with it being a great introductory movie to the Coen’s work and sensibilities for newcomers who might not be able to stomach some of their other movies.
Critically well received, financially successful, and nominated for numerous awards, O, Brother Where Art Thou? showed that the Coens still had plenty of engaging stories to tell.
Their next project, The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) represented a return to noir, albeit with a twist. Although their previous works such as Blood Simple, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski all took elements from noir (protagonist in way over their head in a web of deception, shady villains, a femme fatale etc) The Man Who Wasn’t There harked back to the sub genre’s roots in the 1940s-1950s with the movie being shot in black and white and employing an extensive use of voiceover.
Set in 1940s small town California, The Man Who Wasn’t There is the story of Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), a barber who suspects his wife Doris (Frances McDormand) to be cheating on him with her boss Big Dave Brewster (James Gandolfini). Ed’s quiet small town existence is upended when a mysterious businessman (John Polito) turns up to Ed’s workplace and offers him a chance to join a scheme of his in exchange for $10,000 upfront. Wanting a fresh start in life, Ed decides to blackmail Big Dave for the money.
The Man Who Wasn’t There is simultaneously alove letter to the novels of Hammett, Chandler, Cain, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock ( particularly Shadow Of A Doubt) but incorporating 1930s-1940s science fiction at the same time. Roger Deakins’ black and white palette faithfully recreates the look of films such as The Asphalt Jungle and Out Of The Past,playing with light and shadow just as effectively as those classic golden age noir films did.
While The Man Who Wasn’t There was critically successful, being nominated for or winning various festival prizes and being declared by esteemed critics such as Phillip French to be the best movie of 2001, its peculiar sensibilities and tone made it hard to sell to mass audiences. Which is a shame, because The Man Who Wasn’t There can easily stand toe to toe with The Big Lebowski or Barton Fink as some of the duo’s most interesting work.
Unlike the previous times where the Coens had suffered disappointing box office and would just continue to direct stories on their own terms, something happened with their next two films that felt as if they had finally bowed down to the pressures of Hollywood homogenisation.
Intolerable Cruelty (2003) was a breezy romantic comedy starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta Jones, about a steely divorce lawyer (played by Clooney) who finds himself in love with Zeta Jones’s character, a conniving gold digger. Although there a few of the Coen’s stylistic quirks on display here and there, Intolerable Cruelty felt like a case of the duo finally selling out (the best way I could describe it is imagine if Preston Sturges made a Hallmark channel romance but put in one or two of his trademark lines), with its more conventional style and subject matter grossing $120 million. As bland and forgettable as Intolerable Cruelty was however, it would be a masterpiece compared to their subsequent movie, a remake of Alexander Mackendrick’s classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers.
Remaking a comedy as perfect as The Ladykillers is akin to handing Barratt Homes the job of redeveloping the Sistine Chapel. Casting Tom Hanks in the original Alec Guinness role, Hanks plays a college professor who brings together a group of thieves to rob a casino. When an elderly woman (Irma P Hall) begins to suspect what the group are up to, the gang decides to take her out of the picture.
Removing the original film from its post-war British context, as well as replacing its witty and subtle humour with bombastic mugging and slapstick was a recipe for disaster. While it had a decent box office showing with audiences, critics rightfully slated it for being inferior to the original in every department.
Post The Ladykillers the Coens were at something of a career crossroads and needed a project to show that they hadn’t lost their touch. Luckily producer Scott Rudin stepped in with the film rights to esteemed author Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men. While a previous attempt to adapt one of McCarthy’s books, All The Pretty Horses (2000) failed to capture the author’s unique spirit and tone, the Coens intelligently sensed that No Country For Old Men was a novel practically begging to be rendered on screen and took Rudin up on his offer.
Set in early 1980s Texas, No Country For Old Men is centred around Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a welder who steals a life changing amount of money amidst a pile of dead bodies while venturing out into the desert. It turns out however, that the money he found actually belongs to a Mexican drug cartel and is from a botched deal. To recover it the cartel have sent a chilling assassin named Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) across the border.
Llewelyn’s taking of the money puts him on a collision course with a veteran lawman named Ed Tom Bell, and a bounty hunter (Woody Harrelson) looking for both Llewelyn and the money.
No Country For Old Men is easily the bleakest film in the Coens’ career, an examination of nihilism, free will, violence, and in the case of Tommy Lee Jones’s character, the hopelessness of an ever changing world. Unlike Fargo or Blood Simple there is none of the Coen’s characteristic humour, by design, as they wanted to faithfully recreate the tone of McCarthy’s novel as much as they possibly could.
No Country For Old Men is a film that isn’t afraid to depict the worst excesses of violence – but Deakins’ cinematography and the Coens’ strict insistence on a diegetic soundscape draw you into its despondently murky world no matter how hard you try to look away. As great as Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin are in their respective roles, No Country For Old Men is unmistakably Bardem’s movie. Bardem’s portrayal of Chigurh and his complete disregard for the value of human life (symbolised by him using a cattle gun to kill his victims) is one of the most chilling characters you will come across in the history of cinema.
Even though it’s not a particularly dialogue heavy film, the spartan like southwestern setting and the performances of Brolin, Jones, and Bardem leave an unforgettable impact on you long after the credits are up.
Critically No Country For Old Men was immediately recognised as a masterpiece with critics praising its strong visual storytelling, the performances of the main cast, and its gripping narrative. After the mediocrity of Intolerable Cruelty and the dismal failure of The Ladykillers, No Country For Old Men showed that the Coens were far from a spent force.
As they had done in the 1980s when they went from Blood Simple to Raising Arizona, the Coens decided to change tack with the spy comedy Burn After Reading (2008), a star studded ensemble caper movie, calling it their “version of a Jason Bourne/Tony Scott kind of movie without the explosions”.
The memoirs of Osborne Cox (John Malkovich), a recently dismissed CIA agent, end up in the hands of two moronic personal trainers Chad and Linda ( Brad Pitt and Frances McDormand). The pair decide to blackmail Osborne so that Linda can pay for the plastic surgery that she has always wanted, as the two criminal masterminds mistakenly believe that Cox’s personal memoirs are highly classified government documents. Their terribly formed plan, of course, blows up in their faces as they are confronted by various parties, each with a specific individual reason for wanting Cox’s memoirs.
The controlled idiocy of Burn After Reading was the perfect palette cleanser for No Country For Old Men, with a cast of superstar A list actors relishing the opportunity to make complete tits of themselves. Although it structurally falls apart a bit in the second half, Burn After Reading is still an excellent comedy and the perfect thing to put on if you’re feeling miserable.
A year later the Coens produced A Serious Man (2009), one of the most thoughtful and autobiographical works in their career to date. Set in 1960s Minnesota, the film is centred around a Jewish university professor named Larry Gopnik (Michael Stulhbarg) whose personal and professional lives are crumbling around him. In contrast to the broader comedy of Burn After Reading and the white knuckle thrill ride of No Country For Old Men, A Serious Man is a slower character study that is still a richly rewarding experience.
A kind of suburban Job, Larry Gopnik is one of the Coens’ finer creations with Michael Stulhbarg giving a wonderful performance in the part. The detailed recreation of their 1960s childhood in Minnesota goes to show the extent of their sheer craftmanship, and its mature look at the nature of faith in a secular society is an example of their intelligence as writers.
Post A Simple Man, the Coens turned their attention to another adaptation of a great American novel, Charles Portis’s True Grit (2010). While the 1969 John Ford version is widely regarded as a masterpiece, the Coens wanted to produce an adaptation more faithful to Portis’s original book. It is the story of an alcoholic old lawman Rooster Cogburn ( Jeff Bridges), being hired by a teenage farmer’s daughter Hattie ( Haliee Steinfeld) to apprehend the outlaw (Josh Brolin) who killed her father.
Although the Coens had incorporated elements of westerns into previous projects such as Blood Simple and No Country For Old Men, True Grit was their first full attempt to put their spin on the genre. While nowhere near as dark as Portis’s original novel, the Coens still retain his unique sense of characterisation, which when combined with the on screen dynamic between Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld, who at just 14 years old isn’t at all overawed acting alongside a star of Bridges’s calibre.
True Grit continued a streak of acclaim that the Coens had been enjoying since No Country For Old Men,being nominated for multiple Oscars and a constant fixture on critic’s best of the year lists. The calamitous misstep of The Lady Killers just six years before seemed like a lifetime ago.
Chapter Three – The End of The Partnership ( 2013-2018)
The Coen’s last three films together, Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Hail Ceasar (2016), and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) all represented returns to familiar thematic territory, with Inside Llewyn Davis especially being considered a late career gem by devotees of their work. In the years since The Ballad of Buster Scruggs however, Joel and Ethan Coen have seemingly gone their separate ways.
Now that they are solo filmmakers you can see the surreal comedy side of their double act in Ethan’s films such as Honey Don’t and Drive Along Dolls and the methodical story structure side in Joel’s lone solo outing, The Tragedy Of Macbeth. The problem is that Joel’s work lacks the warmth that Ethan provided, and by the same token Ethan’s work lacks Joel’s gifts for story structure and tone. This is why when the two of them are together you get The Hudsucker Proxy and when they’re apart you get Honey Don’t !.
As for the reason they haven’t made anything together in over half a decade, the brothers have blamed the circumstances of the 2020 Covid pandemic, with each of them publicly stating that no falling out has taken place. Like all great double acts one simply isn’t quite as good without the other, and the mixed reactions to their solo work, lacking what made their 1987-2010 peak so special is proof of that.
Although the Coens themselves are rumoured to be working on a return to joint efforts, their legacy is so entrenched that they could never make anything else together ever again and still comfortably posses one of the most interesting and varied filmographies in recent Hollywood history.
