Categorized ‘Coen’ – a treat of hybridized filmmaking.
“Nothing much makes sense. So, you might as well make whatever kind of movies you want.
And hope for the best.”- Ethan Coen
Joel and Ethan Coen have been writing, producing, and directing for over two decades. Critics have questioned their approach at movie making, calling it unconventional and a blur when it comes to categorizing. This paper will explore the Coen’s idiosyncratic movie hybridity as a first in their field, successfully blending genres like film noir, thriller, and screwball comedy into a tasty treat for audiences. The fact that they are brothers working seamlessly with each other to create feature length films that push the boundaries of what is genre specific is an industry first. Each can finish the others ideas without doubt and the films continually push the boundaries of what we culturally consider typical genre specific movies like thriller, romance, comedy, and noir.
Joel and Ethan Coen grew up in rural Minnesota, outside of the shadows of the Hollywood and New York sect. The majority of their influence came from a history of watching film versus classical training in its creation. They began working together in their teenage years when they picked up a Super 8 camera with a summers worth of lawn mowing salary and shot a film of a film, “the crystallization of what would become practically a modus operandi” (Empire, 2005). Formal training came a few years later as Joel studied film at New York University and Ethan studied philosophy at Princeton (Conard, 2008). It is easy to see the influence their education had on their adaptation and blending of film genre and the philosophically complex and yet quite ‘simple’ characters developed in their films. The simplicity and backwoods mentality of their characters is likely also drawn from their rural upbringing. The strength in their filmmaking comes from their ability to draw from classic Hollywood to create something new and different. Hoffman writes that their work is consistently in a kind of, “happy-go-lucky pastiche mode. . . almost always constructed of nods to, or winks at, other movies” (2001). Equally of note is their ability to delve deep into the motivations of the human animal in order to give the viewer a character both real and ridiculous, a strategy central to all Coen works.
Coen films can be classified in one of two categories; romance of the screwball comedy variety and crime films rooted heavily in film noir (Sickles, 2008). Though there is blending of many different genres and styles within each film, the correlation between their romantic films and screwball comedies of the 30’s and 40’s is undeniable. However this relationship is rarely recognized because audiences are unfamiliar with that era in film and critics rarely make reference except superficially. Due to its relatively obscure status, the screwball comedy seems new and fresh to moviegoers and they buy into the seeming ‘uniqueness’ of Coen films. Sickles reveals, “[the] Coens rely on past genre conventions to deviate from contemporary formulae. A closer analysis of their romantic comedies in particular reveals that the Coens actually might be the most traditional genre classicists working in film today” (2008). Their unique style of borrowing and blending from film genre makes them “as much imprisoned by old movies as inspired (Ansen, 1994). However, whether ‘imprisoned’ or not, it is the hybridization of genre that viewers buy into. Some of their least successful box office films, such as the Hudsucker Proxy – a blatant reproduction of a classic Hollywood screwball comedy, were the ones most obviously bastardized. It seems the films more subtly blended, with a contemporary spin, that give the viewer something to identify with even when the storyline is doused in the absurd, are the ones that show success. Fargo, one of their most critically and commercially successful films to date (Grant, 2006), is an example of the success of a more subtle blending. Sterritt characterizes Fargo as,
a “blend of hominess and exoticism,” a mixture of the foreign and the familiar He identifies a narrative, thematic, and aesthetic strategy built upon the twinning of elements at odds with each other, be they characters, moralities, or visual motifs, to the effect of both anchoring and destabilizing the film (2007).
This blending is what defines the Coens work and their filmmaking philosophy. They repeatedly gaff at those who seek to find deeper meaning in their work because they claim they work to make films that reach a wide audience, not that have some secret agenda. Luhr writes,
[the Coens] do not see themselves as avant-garde or experimental filmmakers and do not want to make films for an elite audience. . . their interest lies in entertaining a wide audience, an objective that has required the Coens to adjust their vision to distribution realities (2004).
Ultimately the Coens seek to create films with broad entertainment value and that could be another reason they rely so heavily on the blending of classic Hollywood genres. In one instance it fulfills the desire to provide something for everyone, but by reintroducing the past to those unfamiliar it gives the illusion of a work that is fresh and different. In some ways the Coens have worked themselves into a corner of expectation for the unexpected by the audiences and that can be difficult when molding a film out of past conventions. However, being trapped ‘out of date’ so to speak, can open up a realm of creativity typically untapped as they try to ‘fit in’ to a cinematic world in which they don’t quite fit.
The Coens’ characters also seem quite trapped by their past and in many ways it is that entrapment that allows for an opening into creativity. For example in the Big Lebowski, Jeff ‘the Dude’ Lebowski is an update of the character Phillip Marlowe, the private eye from the 1939 novel The Big Sleep. Singer states, “nostalgia renders the Dude, like Philip Marlowe before him, ‘an outsider in the modern world’” (2008). In many ways this recurring character construct could be viewed as a representation of the Coens themselves; outsiders in the modern world of filmmaking, trapped by their own values and deep appreciation for the past.
The Coens repeatedly suggest, with facetiousness masking sincerity in the manner that has become one of their hallmarks, that The Big Lebowski revolves around the question of “What makes a man?” and that the Dude is “the man for his time n’place”–an unlikely representative of manhood and virtue who stands in stark contrast to, but cannot correct, the corrupted values of his era (Singer, 2008).
The same can be said of the Coens, that their work revolves around the question ‘What makes a film?’ and that they are the filmmakers for this ‘time n’place’. In this way their characters become an extension of themselves and it is the absurdity of their characters that has become one of the Coen film staples.
1-2 PARAGRAPH ON USE OF ACTORS
1-2 PARAGRAPH ON FILMMAKING TECHNIQUE/ Differentiation
PARAGRAPH ON LUMIERE BROS COMPARISON
The Lumiere Brothers were a means to an end for the Coen brothers who took Hollywood by storm as the first brothers to create feature length films that have been successful in interbreeding screwball comedies, romance comedies, westerns, gangster, and noir to create their own idiosyncratic vibe throughout all their films. In essence the Coens idiosyncratic movie hybridity has created something indefinable according to classic genre constructs. Their use of blending, focus on character foibility, use of a family of actors and styles has created something unique and all their own. In a way they have created a new construct of films categorized as the ‘Coen’ genre, with a loyal following that knows exactly what to expect. . . a treat.
Works Cited
Ansen, David. “A Blast of Hollywood Bile.” Newsweek (March 14, 1994): 72.
Brophy, Philip. “A Blast of Silence.” Film Comment (March/April 2008): 16.
Conard, Mark. “The Philosophy of the Coen Bros.” Philosophy of Popular Culture (Dec. 2008).
Empire Magazine “20 Greatest Directors of All Time (Reader Poll).” Empire. (July 2005).
Grant, Kirsten. “The Velvet Light Trap.” University of Texas Press Number 57. (Spring 2006).
Hoffman, Adina. “Cockeyed Caravan.” American Prospect 12.1. (2001): 36.
Johnson, Brent. Coenesque. (2009). 03 April 2009 http://www.coenbrothers.net/coens.html
Lafrance, J. D.. The movies of Joel and Ethan Coen. Youknow-forkids.com. (April 2004)
03 April 2009 <http://www.youknow-forkids.com/>.
Luhr, William, ed. The Coen Brothers’ “Fargo”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Sickels, Robert. “The Coen Brothers’ Screwy Romantic Comedies.” Journal of Popular Film and
Television. (2008): 114-122.
Singer, Marc. “’Trapped By Their Pasts’: Noir and Nostalgia in the Big Lebowski.” Post Script
Vol. 27. Issue 2 (Winter 2008).
Sterritt, David. Fargo in Context: the Middle of Nowhere? Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2003.
