I saw a preview of the Coen Brothers film: A Serious Man last night. A serious film. While it's very funny, the film is also about some the very serious subject: what does it mean to be a serious man? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good,albeit flawed, people. Larry does his best to support his family: he has a good job he enjoys, children he loves, a community he is comfortable it; so why does it all go to hell? What did he do to deserve it? Did he do anything? The film presents these questions and we try to grapple with them along with Larry (a wonderful performance by Michael Stuhlbarg), but the Coens', in the end, have no answers to the questions. Just more questions.

sounds like the coens are hanging out in bergman territory.

Bergman with a sense of humor. A really wicked warped sense of humor.

I'll pass.

so bill, you saw a preview or an advance screenng....? sounds like the latter.

I saw this a couple nights ago, and it was amazing. I absolutely loved it and cannot stop thinking about it. Highly, highly recommended.

I usually skip every other Coen film. It seems like they alternate with very good and awful films lately. I know Tom doesn't like their films and over the last few years I see from Tom's viewpoint: (Tom, I don't intend to put words in your mouth), but they seem to make fun of the very characters they want you to empathize with. It's become very annoying. Even NO COUNTRY & FARGO have moments where the camera lingers, creating caricatures from ordinary people, and seems condescending towards not only the characters but the audience. From Bill's post (whom I repsect very much too) this may be quite different since they are writing about themselves. I'm interested...but I'll wait for the blu-ray release.
Which I do 99% of the time anyway:)

You know, Alex, I have to totally disagree with that sentiment to be honest. The Coen Brothers do paint most if not all of their characters in absurdity and cynicism, but in my opinion that only adds to the empathy that I personally have for them and that I'm sure the Coens themselves have for them as well. It's like when you only tease someone in a certain way if you really, really care about them and love them. The best kind of teasing, that playful revealing of a person's foibles and flaws... I really feel like that can only come about from the most empathetic and heartfelt place.

I think we are all, no matter how ordinary we are, caricatures in one way or another... and it takes a truly keen and acute eye to be able to see and reveal both avenues of the human soul, the quotidian and the extraordinary, the mundane and the absurd. This is why I love the Coens so much. I think there's a great well of compassion at the heart of their body of work--you just have to be really looking for it to truly get it, I think.

this so called teasing is at the heart of most satire. and the coens are nothing if not satirical.

Sure, it's meant to be funny but it seems cruel sometimes to me...like the hookers in FARGO or the Mobile Park Manager in NO COUNTRY. It's like making fun of somebody because of a lisp, or a birth defect: I don't consider that ironic or satirical. But the Sheriff in FARGO is my favorite character in all their films because McDermot (sp?) imbued her with real honest-to-goodness humanity. My partner is a female detective and is much like her: a loving wife, sharp sense of humor, gentle, but just don't mess with her at work.

But people like that do exist, so why not depict them? When I see characters like that in the Coens' (and other directors') films, I like them and feel for them as much as I might for any other character, simply because I recognize in them true, human characteristics. The fact that those characteristics might be regarded by some as "flaws" makes the viewing experience all the more empathetic for me. I love these people for their foibles, and I think the Coens do too.

All good points Adam! I enjoy many of their films (MILLER'S CROSSING is still my favorite) but my point is how their camera lingers upon these folks, just a bit too long so we get the punchline, who (to me) don't seem real but masks of real people. As in FARGO, making fun of their accents got old very quickly.
But film is representational and not "reality"...so I'm arguing against myself!

I think it depends. For me, there's a world of difference between the affectionate tone in RAISING ARIZONA, where Holly Hunter's heartbreaking and heartbroken mis-pronunciation of "fiance" is one of the joys of American Film Acting, simultaneously funny and moving, and the brutality of the depiction of those ignorant bovine wenches in the bar in FARGO nodding in unison going "yah, yah, yah." The Coens output has become characterized, for me, by the kind of chilly contempt for its characters that those two dumb chicks represent. There are exceptions, of course, I rather liked bits of HUDSUCKER PROXY.

I've no use for the Coens any more, and haven't had since ARIZONA. I recently sat through FARGO again hoping to get some idea of what others see in it, and found a sort of deepfreeze dress rehearsal of NO COUNTRY -- over-complicated criminal doings and a law person who just finds him/herself flummoxed by the awfulness of the people involved, and it left me as cold as that frozen lake. I put on O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU when it was on TCM the other night, and had to turn it off after 15 minutes -- GOD I hated it. I think I'll have to put FARGO, and most of the rest of the Coens' output (BLOOD SIMPLE and RAISING ARIZONA excepted), in the "NOT MY CUP OF TEA" file for good.

But Tom, the only brutality I'm seeing is in your own decision to describe those characters as "dumb chicks" and "ignorant bovine wenches"... in all the times I've watched (and loved) Fargo, not once have I viewed those characters in such a negative light... and not once have I felt led to do so by the film itself or its depictions of those two characters or any of the others. Are you sure that the Coens feel the same way about them as you seem to?

Personally, I don't see any reason to create some kind of distinction between Holly Hunter in Raising Arizona and any of the other "caricatures" that appear in the Coens' body of work... They all get the same kind of treatment as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps we all have our own biases that affect how we interpret some differently from others? I don't know.

At any rate, I'm always confused when someone says they find nothing to like in films like Fargo (which I think is superior to No Country, personally) and O Brother. I don't know. Maybe it's that, unlike many people I think, I don't necessarily view the Coens' films as some kind of "challenger" that I'm up against... I'm not sitting down just bracing myself against their particular brand of oddities and all-around darkness and cynicism. When I sit down to watch a Coen Bros. film, I tend to try to take all the characters at face value and appreciate them for what they are, no matter what their dialects may be.

I mean, ultimately, whose contempt is really being revealed by saying things like "those ignorant bovine wenches"? I don't think it's the filmmakers', that's for sure. I for one am consistently giddy with both pity and compassion for characters like that. No reason to feel contempt at all.

Hmmmm. Well, let's see.

I draw a distinction between Holly Hunter in RAISING ARIZONA and the IBWs in FARGO to illustrate the difference between what I see as a caricature with some human dimension and what I see as a caricature of no human dimension at all. I see a vast amount of difference between the two, and there's more to it than dialects. Evidently you don't. Looks like we disagree, Adam. It does happen round here.

I referred to the IBWs in FARGO as Ignorant Bovine Wenches because that was how I felt they were being portrayed by the Coens and the actresses, as Ignorant Bovine Wenches. I'm glad you are able to feel giddy with pity and compassion for them. I felt nothing but annoyance with them, and with much of the rest of the characters in the film. Only poor William H. Macy, trying so desperately to keep that smile frozen on his face as everything falls apart around him, struck any chord of compassion at all, compassion that has to be tempered based on what we know about the character.

Another example: there's a minor character in Hitchcock's SHADOW OF A DOUBT, who appears for just a few moments. She's a waitress in a divey bar/diner, and it becomes clear that she's pretty much going to be in that place for the rest of her life, and there's a good deal of sadness and pity and even just plain decent humanity in the way she is presented (in a Hitchcock film, no less). If I felt that the IBWs were being shown with even a tiny fraction of the care and humanity that Hitchcock brings to this sad piece of human wreckage, I can assure you that I'd not be referring to them as IBWs.

Fair enough, Tom. Maybe next time I watch I'll pay more conscious attention to the way the characters are presented... but I generally AM like that (i.e. giddy with pity and compassion) when I'm watching movies, so maybe I'm just unusually giddy or something... haha :P.

Good point about the waitress in SHADOW...I know the exact scene and it's an excellent counterpoint to the Coen's style.

I actually like the Coens, but I totally hear Tom on this one. I recently watched David Lean's SUMMERTIME, and the film has a few depictions of Americans -- specifically Midwesterners -- as philistines and goofs and rubes, or: Not Europeans. I couldn't shake the feeling that Lean was a bit of snob.

I still enjoy Fargo purely for the narrative.

well, it got some good reviews but it just didn't work for me. Ha Shem doesn't owe anyone any answers and apparently neither do the Coen Brothers. didn't really find it all that funny and unlike Tom especially and Alex less so, I generally really like these guys. had its moments,but too too deadpan for me.

Yeah, there's no such thing as too deadpan for me. I was cracking up throughout the whole thing. The humor was bleeding through the pores of the entire film, in my opinion.

i might get out to see it tonight. haven't seen a movie in a theater for a few weeks.

i must say i don't share this idea that the coens have all this contempt for their characters. i don't want to labor this point; everyone has done a fine job of expressing their opinions. but when i view a scene like the one in no country where javier bardem confronts the motel owner (or the gas station attendant, or the driver on the highway), i see a pretty accurate representation of texas culture. i see minor characters who are allowed to offer what i find to be unforgettable performances, and these moments remind me of moments in the big sleep where bogart is hunting down his leafs and has some golden moments with snippets of dialogue that also remain fixed in my memory.

far from feeling contempt for these characters, like adam, i find wonderful filmic moments that touch me and leave a lasting impression.

Well, yeah, Phillip. I don't think the Coens only supply folks like the IBWs in FARGO. There are scenes like the ones you mention in NO COUNTRY, or even Chet the bellboy in BARTON FINK, or even the guy in the car that Nicolas Cage hijacks in RAISING ARIZONA who delivers that immortal line: "Son, you got a panty on your haid." Likewise Tommy Lee Jones' sheriff in NO COUNTRY, etc. And I'd say that NO COUNTRY is remarkable for having fewer of the IBW-type vulgarities than most of their films since MILLER'S CROSSING.

I'm afraid I've made it seem like I dislike the Coens' films only because of a perceived "contempt" on their part for their characters. And while that's certainly a factor, it isn't necessarily the only problem. For all the comparative lack of contempt for the folks in NO COUNTRY (even that monstrous whining mother character lives in a way that the IBWs don't) I just didn't give a damn. And that's how I've felt about most of their films since MILLER'S CROSSING: a lot of sound and fury and stylistic flourishes, and they signify not a hell of a lot. I just remember thinking at the end of NO COUNTRY, "well well, the Coens seem shocked, SHOCKED to find that there is EVIL in the world. Where the hell have they been?"

Sorry to keep going on about this.

no worries, the coens keep making films, so apparently the dead horse is still standing up to a good flogging. i don't see a way for us to reslove this. we clearly have different opinions, and that's cool. as always, i appreciate the dialogue!

i do have a strange apprehension about this new film. i liked no country...a LOT, and when burn after reading came out i thought, wow they just whipped that out quickly after making what i thought was probably one of their best films. and my suspicions were well founded: i thought that film was a waste of time and did validate some of the considerations you have about their work: characters flimsily (is that actually a word?) drawn, and a lot of smoke and mirrors and hardly any substance.

No way or need to resolve it! If we all thought alike the world would be a very dull place.