The Idiotically Criminal Universe of the Brothers Coen (2015)

14 WLT JANUARY/ FEBRUARY 2015 STORYTELLING GENRES satisfy a psychological need in those who consume them; otherwise, they could not be genres. The traditional romance novel tells us that love is ideal, unyielding, and sexy. The stories provide an ideal its readers can aspire to, a refuge from the belches and forgotten anniversaries of real-life relationships. The Golden Age mystery proposes another ideal: a rational and orderly world in which murder will out and justice is served. It tells us that the universe is not an amoral hurly-burly, despite our nagging fear that it is. As various subgenres of crime writing evolved, the subgenres were perpetually redecorated with different characters, settings, and criminal schemes, providing a constantly evolving panoply of fictional crime that satisfies various needs at different times. Many of them are so dark in their implications that the original salve which soothed our fears has been replaced. Most crime novelists settle into a comfortable niche and, to a greater or lesser degree, repeat themselves to feed both their own inner needs or those of their bookbuying fans. Some try different styles and approaches under different pseudonyms: Donald Westlake writing as Richard Stark; Edith Pargeter writing as Ellis Peters. The Idiotically Criminal Universe of the Brothers Coen by J. Madison Davis crime & mystery above Nicolas Cage as dim-witted petty criminal Herbert I. "Hi"McDunnough in the 1987 film, Raising Arizona. WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 15 photo : ap photo / carlo allegri Even then, we can often perceive insistent obsessions under the masks. Joel and Ethan Coen have centered almost all their films on crime, and their inventiveness has quickly created a list of films that includes several masterworks. Yet the Coen brothers, a brilliantly creative two-headed beast, have maintained a consistency in their work that one might describe as a bemused noir. Their main characters are usually lovable idiots who find themselves drawn into various criminal enterprises. Like most noir heroes, they have no way to escape their fates, but their unjustified faith in their own cleverness erodes the implications of tragedy that usually characterize noir vehicles. We are allowed to think these people are funny in order to avoid thinking we are not just as subject to similar weaknesses and random misfortunes. Their first film was inexpensive. Blood Simple (1985) is the story of a bar owner who hires a private detective to murder his adulterous wife and her boyfriend. Even this brief summary exposes the noir provenance of this tale. The title comes from Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest (1929) and describes a state of confusion brought on by violence. In the original release of Blood Simple, an explanation of the term appeared over black at the movie's beginning. Some years later, the brothers re-edited the film. Spouses arranging murder is reminiscent of novels like James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) and Double Indemnity (1936), but we also see the noir theme of people caught up in their own inflated misconceptions of themselves and underestimation of others, driven to act without really knowing why. Some films demonstrate brilliance in twisting a familiar form into a new shape. The Coens would go on to do that a lot. However , Blood Simple stays well within the genre but never seems derivative because of the convincing and clever way it presents this story. You quite often know when a thriller is supposed to deliver a surprise, but for it to truly surprise and yet to seem integrated to the traditional elements of the genre is an artistic accomplishment. The caper film, in which the main characters attempt to pull off some kind of "impossible" theft, is particularly suited to the Coen sense of humor. The Coens were involved in two remakes of British caper films, The Ladykillers (2004) and Gambit (2012), which were both considered flops. Criticized for being overly broad, The Ladykillers, starring Tom Hanks, was considered a poor adaptation of the original film (1955) starring Alec Guinness. Gambit was based on a 1966 movie starring Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine. Starring Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz, Gambit is broad as well, but in a 1960s wacky sort of way. An impecunious...