Identity

Rating: Null/10 (29 September 2002)

Spoilers herein.
The Coens shine into one of the bright zones in my film universe. They are intelligent and fun.
I believe that they first select some intellectual issue related to problems of narrative, here identity. Then they, independently, select a film style to exploit, here screwball through Busby (instead of the screwball through Capra of `Hudsucker'). Then they run wild with all sorts of cinematic devices, always cinematic narrative.
Of the Coen films I know, this is the most fantastic in terms of shifting realities. Hudsucker shifted often, but only into the `newspaper' mode of `It Happened One Night.' Here we have an arbitrary number of realities and levels, all unstructured which is the point. It is also a favorite because it has Julianne doing what she (and very few others) does best: playing a character who is acting. She gives us herself as the actress, the character as the actress (here an abstract painter) and the quite different character the character plays (the femnist family anchor). She's a gift that the Coens know how to use.
The narrative ground zero is supplied by the countertop Cowboy as chorus. The `play within' is the Berkeley dream sequence.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.