"The Idiocy of This World"

Rating: 10/10 (27 February 2009)

With their droll, cynical humour, the Coen Brothers have made this triumphant satire on what in the script they call 'the idiocy of this world', which they clearly view as a Ship of Fools. John Malkovich in the latter part of the film screams at someone: 'You are one of the league of morons against whom I have been struggling all my life!' Every character in the film is a member of this League of Morons, and the film itself is an attack on the League of Morons who clearly run the world, especially its governmental so-called 'intelligence' services, which according to the Coen Brothers' view of things should be renamed the Idiocy Services. The only characters in the film who are not total morons from the beginning are John Malkovich and his wife Tilda Swinton. But Malkovich is progressively reduced through unbearable frustration to a state of total idiocy himself, and as Joel Cohen drily remarks in a bonus feature to the DVD: 'Malkovich has embraced his inner knucklehead'. ('Knucklehead', for those unfamiliar with American slang, means 'idiot' or 'fool'.) That leaves the cold and calculating Tilda Swinton as the only person in the film who is theoretically a non-moron, but she has herself been reduced to a parody of an intelligent person who, in order to cope with the welter of idiocy surrounding her, has entirely lost her humanity and become an engine of devouring and despairing egotism. Which leaves no one and nothing to admire, a view of the world apparently held by the Coen Brothers and graphically portrayed in their revolting and disgusting recent film 'No Country for Old Men' (for which see my unfavourable review). This new film, because it is a black comedy, is wholly admirable despite its unremitting cynicism, and it provides many hysterically funny situations and lines of dialogue. As usual with Coen Brothers films, it is brilliantly made, since they are a pair of dark geniuses who flicker eerily like a couple of coal fires glowing side by side in the half-light, chuckling impishly, perhaps devilishly, to themselves. All the actors are spectacularly brilliant. Brad Pitt as a stupid 'jock' with a head of solid bone is simply amazing. Frances McDormand really outdoes herself this time, portraying the insane logic of a total fool hurtling towards Â… in this case not doom but, ironically, what she wants. It is the others in her path who come to sticky ends. John Malkovich not only embraces his inner knucklehead but does a lot of brilliant acting as well, and leaves us feeling as frustrated as his character is, and ready to stalk along in our underpants too, holding a hatchet with intent to kill. Tilda Swinton is the Ice Queen of All Time, and we really don't want to meet her. George Clooney is a befuddled moron with a coarse beard which surely would have scraped Tilda's face off (?). They are all having a great time, and you can sense the teamwork at every turn and in every scene. Everybody is betraying everybody else, with glee and no conscience or even awareness of what conscience might be. As for the story, well, where does one begin? It almost defies explanation, because it is such a parade of idiocy from beginning to end, but we are rapt with attention and glued to the screen because it is all so amazing, and can people get any stupider than that? The answer is unhesitatingly 'Yes', they can get stupider than that, and even stupider, and the downwards spiral of total idiocy is so devastating that one wants to look away but cannot. What a compelling vision, this time of a side of hell which is hysterically funny, although it portends the doom of us all which a world run by fools will inevitably bring. Can't the Coen brothers do a remake of 'Polyanna' or 'Sound of Music' or something, to dispel their unremitting gloom?