Where is the X factor? Well, don't ask the Coens.

Rating: 6/10 (14 June 2010)

Why, I always ask myself after watching a Coen brothers film, can't I seem to warm to Ethan and Joel? After all, they make better films than many working in Hollywood, they are respected enough for the crème de la crème of Hollywood actors to appear in their work again and again, and they are capable of working successfully in different genres. Yet still I find them and their films just a tad irritating. It's partly, I think, because every time I think of them and their work, I have a mental image of the two of them writing their scripts and chortling away, patting themselves on the back and telling each other how great they are. Now, I'm certain that has never happened and that Joel and Ethan are as modest as a row of peas. And yet Getting away from sheer gut feeling and into more intellectually-based criticism, the Coens remind me of that phrase of 'art which conceals art' although that is not the phrase which would describe their work. Quite the contrary: it is their inability to find the secret of concealing their art which is, I think, why however good they have been so far, they have never so far been great. There is also a certain heartlessness about their work which I find unappealing. I first thought that after watching Fargo. Everyone said what a funny film it was. All I felt was how despicable it was to make the utterly inept William Macy character such a figure of fun. The man deserved our sympathy not our ridicule. Despite what he did, he was not essentially a bad man. The same is true of many of their other films: there is a certain lack of humanity in their work which is alienating, or rather which alienates this viewer. In Blood Simple, the first of their films I saw, none of the characters in the least bit attractive. (When I first saw Blood Simple, I thought it was superb. When I saw it again more than 20 years later, I thought it was well-made but mechanical and certainly not brilliant. When I first saw Miller's Crossing I thought it was great. When I saw it again, I admired it as a piece of film-making, but it didn't seem half as 'great' the second time around) I have not seen all of their films, but that word 'mechanical' sums up the Coen brothers' work rather well. In detail – the scriptwriting, the direction, the cinematography, the sound design – the Coens produce great work. But there is a certain mechanical quality to it all, so that all too often the sum of the parts exceeds the whole. So with Burn After Reading. Great, silly plot, great acting, great cinematography, quite a few laughs, but at the end of the day you find yourself admiring a well-made film rather than enjoying a great film. And oddly, in other hands I suspect Burn, which is essentially nothing but a screwball comedy, could have been great. Every member of the cast gives a good performance, and the film keeps you guessing as to how it will be resolved. Actually, nothing is resolved but in context that doesn't really matter. But something is lacking. I can't put my finger on it, but there is a definite lack of something. Perhaps the Coens might consider writing scripts and then letting others produce and direct. Unlikely, but it's worth considering.