The Moral of the Coen Brothers (possible spoilers)

Cafe Society
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In this thread, GuanoLad had this to say about The Big Lebowski:

And apart from the obvious, “Well, that’s just your opinion, man,” I don’t have much to say in response.

But it got me wondering: how much longer can I put off getting back to work? And, do any of the Coen Brothers’ movies have a moral or message to them? How can we find out? Using science, that’s how!

Blood Simple
Nope, not really. The characters are all pretty much rock-stupid, and don’t change much throughout.

Raising Arizona
Kind of, maybe? Hi and Ed find out that there’s more to “family” than just their planned idea of it.

Miller’s Crossing
Nope. Tommy starts the story convinced that he can always stay in control and one step of the situation, and he ends the story thinking the same thing.

Barton Fink
Yes. Barton learns that his idealism about life, love, and art, was naive and misguided. Not a positive message, but it’s there.

The Hudsucker Proxy
No. Unless the message is “Jennifer Jason Leigh sucks.”

Fargo
Yes! Not the characters themselves, but the movie definitely has a message: the “simple life” isn’t that bad, after all. People who think that the whole point of the movie was making fun of the characters for their funny accents and naivete, apprently missed the whole point of the ending.

The Big Lebowski
No, man. The Dude doesn’t learn. The Dude abides.

The Man Who Wasn’t There
None that I could see. Maybe, “You’ve got to watch out for the quiet ones.”

O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Not really. Everett does calm down his con-artist ways by the end, but the movie actually shows him having a crisis of faith and then dismissing it.

Intolerable Cruelty
Yes. But it’s a pretty insipid “love conquers all” message.

The Ladykillers
Haven’t seen it yet.

Anybody can agree or disagree; that’s what the thread’s for. What does it all mean? I think they’re (almost) all some of the best movies ever made; how is that possible when none of your characters have “arcs”? Are they all just character studies?

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I guess you could argue that Coen Brothers movies preach the value of being a law abiding citizen. In Coen films, people who come up with complicated criminal schemes always seem to end up getting killed or imprisoned.

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I certainly disagree about O Brother. I think the moral message there is very straightforward. It’s about religion and the salvation of the good man (McGill).

Even after

the damn floods the valley and he’s saved from the devil himself he’s dismissive of the divine intervention when he sees the cow on the cotton house go by he’s clearly struck with it.

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Maybe the whole idea is to mirror real life, where most people don’t learn their lesson anyway.

Habitual criminals will be habitual criminals, after all. Life is just life.

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I directly address this very question in my review of O Brother.

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This is fun, because I rented Intolerable Cruelty the other day and came away with the sensation that the movie was void of anything but smoke and mirrors. I even considered starting a thread about the Coen Bros. movies, but it’s been a busy week, and I didn’t get around to it.

I remember when Raising Arizona first came out. All my liberal arts friends raved and raved about it. We were of course a lot younger then, still sporting goatees, wearing black turtlenecks and smoking Gaulois, so we gobbled up anything that seemed artsy-fartsy. However, I remember back then that I thought it was a fun ride, but didn’t add upp to anything.

When I thought about starting a thread, I was going to make a case that all their movies are pastiches or homage to other movies, so thanks Cervaise for proving my point and saying it a lot better than I can.
Intolerable Cruelty is of course their screwball comedy, The man who wasn’t there is film noire, Hudsucker Proxy could be seen as a Horatio Alger story. Miller’s Crossing is their Godfather or gangster movie, Barton Fink is another voyage into film noire, Fargo is their gritty modern crime story, as inspired (maybe) by Hill Street Blues, Lebowski and mistaken identy crossed with average joe on collision course with amoral bigwigs.
Most of their mvoies are period pieces and have a distinct lack of strong female leads, apart from McDormand in Fargo.

In short, it’s not art, it’s just clever entertainment, on par with Royal Tennenbaums.

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Someone really needs to tell me why it’s a “bad” thing that The Dude “didn’t learn anything” in Lebowski. What was there to learn? That rich people are fucked up? That nihilist poseurs are pussies? That druidistic artsy chicks just wanna conceive?

The whole point of Lebowski is to find comfort with self. The Dude is a man without much of a life, but he’s happy with it. It’s only when his existence crosses paths with a complicated existence does he find trouble. Contentment, and the need for it, was the point.

Anyone that missed it obviously needs to drink more White Russians. Say… mind if I do a J?

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The Ladykillers had a moral, in that all the would-be crooks end up dying, either by each other’s hands or the mysterious interventions of God/fate, and the nice old lady ends up with the money, which she plans on donating to Bob Jones University

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I think there is a moral to the Coen brother’s movies. No matter how you twist and squirm you can never escape yourself. People who accept their lives and their small place in it are happy. People who try to deny their true selves, or grab for something they don’t deserve are miserable. The Dude is happy. Barton Fink, or Jerry Lundegaard, or many other characters are miserable and spread misery, because they don’t understand their place, they don’t understand themeselves. The Dude is a loser, but he knows he’s a loser and he can accept it. Jerry is a loser, but he can’t stand it, and so he comes up with the scheme that destroys him. Characters who understand themselves and accept themselves prosper. Characters who don’t are destroyed.

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Actually, this works really well.

  • Ed Crane in “The Man Who Wasn’t There” isn’t content with his life - “I never really thought of myself as a barber” - and is destroyed by his attempts to be someone he is not.

  • Everett in “O Brother” has lost everything because he went to prison for pretending to be something he was not (he was convicted for practising law without a license.) Throughout the film he suffers one setback after another while lying to his compatriots about what they’re seeking. He regains his family and his freedom by accepting who he is and praying only to see his family again.

  • The banal stupidity of Jerry Lundegaard and the catastrophic results of his idiotic plan are already explained; he is directly contrasted with Marge Gunderson (Who of course married ol’ Norm Son-of-a-Gunderson) who is happy because she is happy with what she is and where she is. The last scene in Fargo is instructive; Marge, happy to be home, even counsels her husband that it’s okay that he got the three-cent. Previously she lectured Grimsrud on the stupidity of killing for money when “it’s a beautiful day.”

  • The various idiots in “The Ladykillers” are all killed in their efforts to gain something they do not deserve. They are thwarted by a woman who is content in what she has and, when she gets to have all the money, doesn’t even want to keep it.

I think Lemur is on to something, and that this is in fact the recurring theme of most Coen films. Of course, it’s a pretty light, simple theme. Mostly the films are just supposed to be fun.

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Yep, y’all are right. The more you think about it, the more it ties their whole body of work together (which I doubt they ever even intended anyone to do). They’re about characters whose lives really aren’t all that bad, but things go wrong when they try to get caught up in a Bigger Story. To put that spin on the remaining movies:

Blood Simple: Dan Hedaya’s character starts the ball rolling by wanting revenge on his wife instead of just divorce, and the adulterer (I’m bad with names) keeps compounding the issue by trying to do what he thinks is “the right thing.”

Raising Arizona: Pretty obvious here; they had “the salad days,” but decided they wanted to have everything the Arizona family has.

Miller’s Crossing: The mob war happened because Johnny Caspar wanted to be in charge; Tommy just kept making the situation worse by insisting that he stay in control of every situation and play people off of each other. (I’d never realized until just now that Miller’s Crossing is kind of like the anti-Yojimbo. Tommy’s manipulations just make everything worse.)

The Hudsucker Proxy: The whole story is about a guy trying to move his way up through a company. I don’t remember much about it though; I still think this one is all style and no substance.

Barton Fink: Barton saw himself as An Artist, and refused to realize that he wasn’t staying true to his artistic integrity, but was in fact missing the whole point of the life of “the Common Man.”

I guess you could see it as being either a defeatist theme of never trying to go outside your station, or as a zen acceptance thing of being happy with who you are, depending on how charitable you are towards the Coen Brothers. I do think it’s a little ironic that when described this way, the movies are very populist and anti-pretense, when the biggest complaint usually leveled against the Coens are that their work is pretentious, “artsy,” and smug, cold and distant.

Well, I don’t think I could disagree with this any more if I tried. I think it’s simplistic and dismissive, judging the movies on how you’re supposed to react to them instead of judging them on their own merits.

And even if you dismiss the whole populist theory above, that still doesn’t mean that the movies are just “entertainment” and not “art.” Yes, the movies are homages to film genres (the Coen brothers say as much, frequently), but that doesn’t mean they lack innovation. And yes, the movies can be obtuse in their overall message, or even whether there is a message, but that doesn’t mean that they lack value.

And by the way, The Royal Tennenbaums is an outstanding movie. Character studies are every bit as valid as “art” than plot- or moral-driven movies.