CINEMA DES FRERES COEN by SMC Founder Craig Hammill

CINEMA DES FRERES COEN #4: Raising Arizona (1987, USA) The Coen Brothers always have a keen sense of cinema they play close to the vest. Fascinatingly (although in retrospect it now seems obvious), they cite MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR as one of the key influences on their hilarious second movie and first out and out comedy RAISING ARIZONA. Here a childless couple can't adopt (because the husband has a long criminal record and the wife can't conceive). They decide to steal one quintuplet baby (figuring the parents don't need that many kids) with unexpectedly wild consequences. The idea came from Frances McDormand's and husband (director) Joel Coen's real-life discovery they would need to adopt. Comedies are often shot in a very understandably standard way-mostly in medium shot and singles. This allows improvisation, physical comedy, editing to condense that improvising, etc without having to overly obsess about camera movement or complicated shots. Well, forget all that in a Coen Brothers' comedy. The camera here is constantly moving. And a centerpiece robbery sequence (of some diapers) and its aftermath is still one of the Coen Brothers' greatest sequences ever. What really makes ARIZONA one of the great 80's comedies and the indisputable adjudicator of the Coens' genius is their willingness to marry a loopy comedy tone with a kind of apocalyptic horror in the form of the bounty hunter hired to track them down and get back the baby. THE ROAD WARRIOR really did rub off on them because the last third of the movie almost feels like it's taking place in an apocalyptic wasteland. But then it comes full circle and delivers a surprisingly emotional and warm-hearted finish. It was here that the Coens said they would absolutely respect cinema but not genre purity. And we've all been the richer for their mongrel instincts.

CINEMA DES FRERES COEN #3: Barton Fink (1991, USA) Although the Coens are loosening up with interview access in their late middle age, they've never really been filmmakers to discuss what their movies MEAN. In this way, they are very similar to John Ford and David Lynch. This can be frustrating at first because movies like their 1991 BARTON FINK clearly are about something. But then you realize they are such smart moviemakers, they know the movie either speaks for itself or it doesn't. If you have to put an explanation plaque next to it, maybe you did something wrong. 1940's New York Playwright Barton Fink (a thinly veiled version of Clifford Odetts) goes out to Hollywood to write a wrestling picture. Fink prides himself on his love and understanding of the common man. But when he meets hotel neighbor Charlie Meadows (a never better except in LEBOWSKI John Goodman), a talkative traveling salesman, Fink ignores the reality of human nature right in front of him. Even for the adventurous Coen Brothers, BARTON FINK was (up to that point) their riskiest and most out there movie. Nothing will prepare you for the finale. For the first (but not the last) time, the Coen Brothers commit to something so expressionistic and phantasmagoric, you have to clean your jaw up off the floor when it's done. That may be another reason the Coens don't feel the need to explain things in interviews. They've left every ounce of filmmaking effort on the cinematic field. Their great movies, like Barton Fink, are some of the greatest American movies of the last 40 years.

CINEMA DES FRERES COEN #2: No Country for Old Men (2007). When the Coens are on the ropes with a misfire or two, they always seem to regroup with a crackling true crime tale. After HUDSUCKER PROXY, they made FARGO. And after INTOLERABLE CRUELTY and THE LADYKILLERS, they made NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, a brutal adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel. Three men are the center of the story. One man happens across a drug deal gone wrong out in the Texas wild and decides to take the briefcase full of money he finds near the dead bodies. One man is hired to track down and kill the thief. And a police officer has to track the both of them and witness the trail of carnage left in their wake. For the first time in a Coens' movie, the concerns turn to the transcendent. Javier Bardem's hired killer slowly becomes mythical, mystical, and clearly something other than fully human: some force of nature itself. Tommy Lee Jones' good hearted policeman can barely deal with the implications of the evil he's witnessing. If there is a transcendent force in the universe, it appears to be one of evil and destruction and entropy. And yet, it's not quite that simple. NO COUNTRY contains another masterclass Coen Brother sequence when the thief barely eludes the killer in a heart stopping hotel escape sequence. And the ending, though it comes directly out of McCarthy's book, is handled with surprising power and vulnerability by the Coens. One of their greatest.

CINEMA DES FRERES COEN #1: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) There's a whole subset of Coen Brothers' movies deeply focused on moral decisions (or the lack thereof) and the repercussions. MILLER'S CROSSING, FARGO, THE BIG LEBOWSKI, THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, A SERIOUS MAN, and INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS all essentially revolve around main characters and the knottiness of their moral and ethical decisions. It's not for nothing that Ethan Coen wrote his Princeton thesis paper on philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The darkly comic story of misanthropic Greenwich Village folk singer Llewyn Davis during one particularly grueling week in his life in 1961. The movie is a treasure trove of immediate pleasures-specifically watching the Coens and their team recreate the atmosphere, vibe, and interplay of early 60's Beatniks along with Oscar Isaacs revelatory leading turn. But the movie is also indescribably haunting. It's probably no accident that it's structured like a mobius strip. There's one moment in the movie (maybe two when I think about it) where you feel if Davis had just made a different decision, things might have turned out differently. But like life itself, we may never fully know one way or the other.

Craig Hammill is the founder of Secret Movie Club.