The Coen brothers, and movies

I once remarked to a friend that I thought the Coen brothers were getting away with something, though I didn't know what it was. Rewatching footage from the 2008 Academy Awards, in which No Country For Old Men won four Oscars and each brother personally took home three statues, it's hard to parse what they were thinking as they took the stage again and again. They appear almost ... indifferent. When they went up for Best Director, Ethan Coen said, "I don't have a lot to add to what I said earlier. Thank you." Then Joel added, "We're very thankful to all of you out there for letting us continue to play in our corner of the sandbox, so thank you very much." When they went up for Best Picture they didn't say anything, but watch their faces and the way they walk back to the mic, Oscars in hand. What do you make of that?

In recent years, the Coens have alternated between making silly, screwball movies that few seem to really like (Burn After Reading, Intolerable Cruelty) and flat-out, adjective-transcending masterpieces (Fargo, No Country For Old Men, A Serious Man). The bewildering thing is how equally effortless both kinds of movies seem to be for them.

One common factor to all their movies is their intelligence. This is beyond doubt. Look, for instance, at how the long string of murders in No Country is handled. The first, in the sheriff's office, is bloody, protracted, dirty. The next is still on-screen but tidy, a neat circle. Then only insinuations: a slowly widening pool of blood, the hosing down of a chicken truck. And finally only an exterior shot of a house, checking under the soles of boots. The Coens know that we only need to really see murder once, the first time, and that every successive instance is left more effectively to suggestion. The implementation of theory in practice is almost surgical.

I think No Country For Old Men is a perfect movie, which is not as much of a compliment as it may seem. It has such a finished polish and such total control over all its elements that it's hard to find cracks into which we can insinuate ourselves. Roger Ebert called it a miracle, and said it was as good as Fargo, and yet Fargo is listed under his Great Movies column and No Country is not. The film's perfection admits no uncertainty, no untestable depth, no confusion or naked, messy revelation. It is so good at what it does, but it's only three years later now and I think it's already been forgotten. It is so perfect and so closed that it doesn't need us.

And this is perhaps the danger of being smart in a world where smartness in movies is sadly so rare. People debated endlessly about the ending of No Country, just as many are now debating about A Serious Man. These movies engage us intellectually, as movies should. They don't make things easy for us, they don't explain everything; they are economical. All of this is good. But I wonder: is our enthusiasm for a filmmaking duo that is consistently intelligent, that is audacious and original, that seems to exist outside the film Establishment even as it is showered with golden trophies from it, is this enthusiasm (which is understandable and, like, it's good to feel enthusiasm for intelligence in mainstream movies for once) obscuring a lack of something at the heart of the Coens' screwball comedies and serious masterpieces both? A lack, perhaps, of what Armond White called the "humane." A lack of the feeling of struggle behind the creation of these movies; we might even say a lack of risk.

Joel and Ethan Coen are currently contemplating or involved in a number of projects, which include a remake of a 1969 western, a movie called Hail Caesar which stars "George Clooney as a matinee idol making a biblical epic," an adaptation of The Yiddish Policeman's Union, another comedy with George Clooney, and a Cold War comedy called 62 Skidoo. I'm trying not to be pessimistic, but these all seem to be vehicles that play to the Coens' already recognized strengths: intelligence, irony, mischievousness, virtuosity - and emotional distance.

It is not my place to tell the Coens what to do. They can do whatever they like. I wonder what they think when people say of A Serious Man that it is "the Coen brothers' most personal film," or that it is autobiographical, or about their childhood. To me, it doesn't play like a personal film, or a film about experience. It's an intellectual treatment of those experiences and the questions they raise, but it is not the thing itself. Somewhere underneath A Serious Man is another film waiting to be made, and the Coens, those brilliant roguish boys, owe it to us and to themselves to find it.

Update: I just came across Anthony Lane's review of No Country in the New Yorker, here. He says much the same, and then some. It's very good.