In Fargo, two lowly crooks dig the snow fiercely to hide the spoils, but it never crosses their stupid minds that in the wintry flat white landscape of Minnesota spreading out before them, they will never be able to find what the snow covers. It?s an unforgettable scene, just like many scenes or dialogues in the films of the brothers Joel and Ethan Coen. Think the incredible killing attempt in the gangster flick Miller?s Crossing even as a phonograph recording of John McCormack singing Danny Boy plays in the background, or the chilling games the mind plays in the eponymous Barton Fink, the writer with a block, or the ash-scattering scene in the cultish The Big Lebowski. But perhaps, some of their best scenes and dialogues are reserved for Fargo and their Oscar-winning dark thriller No Country for Old Men, which stays true to the original story by Cormac McCarthy.
In the bleak Texan landscape under the hot sun, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) comes upon a drug deal gone awry. He is poor, lives in a trailer with his wife, and wants to keep the $2 million he finds on the scene. Except that someone in the form of Pure Evil with the name of Anton Chigurh, played terrifyingly by Spanish actor Javier Bardem ? he also picked up an Oscar for the role ? doesn?t want Moss to have it. Ageing sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) is on Chigurh?s trail and apart from the twists and turns of the thriller-and-chase film, we also get more than a glimpse into the minds of the characters. There are many heart-stopping moments in No Country? when the hunted dodges the hunter.
It can be safely said that no two Coen films are alike. When they burst onto the film scene with Blood Simple in 1984, critics hailed them for their knowledge of genre, giving 1940s film noir a new spin. But three years later, they followed it up with Raising Arizona, a dark screwball comedy about a couple who abduct a child because they can?t have one of their own. In 1990 came the stylish, albeit stagey, gangster flick Miller?s Crossing where the opening shot is almost poetic ? Gabriel Byrne?s Black Fedora is blown away by the wind and it floats along the ground; in 1991 the Coens? satire on Hollywood Barton Fink excited critics. Their 1998 oddball comedy The Big Lebowski has reached such cult status that fans congregate every year to toast white Russians (the drink laidback, restful Jeff Bridges nurses throughout the film).
Yet there are a few staples that bind their oeuvre ? a unique landscape of thematic cinematography, tight editing, sometimes haunting music and a compulsive gender-bending tendency. Running through it all is the Coens? off-centre humour. Only three of their films The Hudsucker Proxy, The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty and to some extent O Brother Where Art Thou, despite a hit single and George Clooney, weren?t able to move either critics or audiences. But that doesn?t bother the Coens one bit. One couldn?t help notice the nonchalance with which both accepted their Oscars. It was as if they were happy to be given that glory, but wouldn?t have been devastated if they hadn?t been noticed. They seem to be happy playing in their ?part of the sandbox.?
What?s endearing ? and irritating to some ? is the fun they have had at the audience?s expense. On Oscar night, the Coen brothers may have picked up three Oscars ? best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay ? for the chilling No Country for Old Men, but one great opportunity was missed when these two fiercely independent filmmakers lost for best editing. They were nominated under pseudonym Roderick Jaynes, which they have been using for editing credits on and off, and the academy would have read that name had ?Jaynes? won. But Christopher Rouse won for ?The Bourne Ultimatum? and we will not know whether the Coen brothers would have stood up when ?Jaynes? was called. But one can forgive the brothers this indulgence ? they also audaciously used ?Jaynes? to write an introduction to a collection of screenplays of Barton Fink and Miller?s Crossing ? just because they have given the audience one terrific movie after another.