There are some filmmakers who become synonymous with a certain genre – Hitchcock with thrillers, for instance, or John Ford with westerns. While they may appear to be marking the same territory again and again, their appreciation and affinity for their chosen genre, combined with their mastery of storytelling and technique, can deepen their explorations within it.
But then there are other filmmakers who will use a particular genre and its conventions as a vehicle for their own ideas about the world and the people in it, offering the audience a new perspective on both. The traditions of the film noir, the screwball comedy or the psychological drama can take on different, unexpected meanings when utilised in this fashion.
Since their 1984 debut feature Blood Simple, a neo-noir set “dead in the heart of Texas”, brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have been doing exactly that. There’s no pinning down the pair to one specific genre or approach; they’ve been maximalists in terms of tone and style (their second feature, the frantic crime comedy Raising Arizona, could fairly be described as a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon), but they’ve been equally accomplished in lowering their voice to work in a more lean and muted way.
Either way, the results are distinctive and deeply personal, to the point where it’s hard to describe the brothers’ output without coining a new phrase: ‘Coen-esque’.
After more than three decades of making movies together (Joel would direct, Ethan would produce, both would write, and they’d also edit together under the shared pseudonym ‘Roderick Jaynes’), the Coens have been taking a break from one another since their 2018 Netflix anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Joel has made one film since – The Tragedy of Macbeth, an Expressionist take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth with Denzel Washington in the lead, while Ethan has collaborated with wife Tricia Cooke on two wacky crime capers with a Sapphic spin, Drive-Away Dolls and Honey Don’t!
The general response to these individual Coen projects has been favourable to mixed, and there seems to be a desire by many a film fan that the brothers would reunite. That wish may be granted soon enough; doing the publicity circuit for the recently released Honey Don’t!, Ethan stated that he and Joel had written a screenplay for a horror movie 18 months ago and were making plans to get behind the camera to shoot it.
Until that day arrives, though, fans of the pair’s unique brand of filmmaking can take advantage of SBS On Demand’s Coen Brothers Collection (look for more titles arriving later in September), which presents a variety of genres in a variety of voices that nevertheless have an intelligence, an insight, a philosophy and a flair that unites them.
Barton Fink
After the Coens had played with the trappings of the film noir, the madcap comedy and the gangster movie in their first three films, there was a feeling among some critics that the brothers were very adept mimics capable of polished pastiche but little depth. Barton Fink follows its titular New York playwright, a self-serious social commentator played by John Turturro, as he descends into mania and madness when he’s lured to 1940s Hollywood by the promise of fame and fortune. It’s a film that showed the Coens could blend form and function to great effect, folding themes of artistic expression and commercial exploitation into a jet-black comedy. That “Barton Fink feeling”? It’s unease, but the best possible kind.
Barton Fink is streaming at SBS On Demand. It also airs 8.30pm Monday 15 September on SBS World Movies.
Stream free On Demand
Barton Fink
drama • 1991
drama • 1991
Hail, Caesar!
One has to wonder about the Coens’ experiences with the Hollywood system that led them to create something as excoriating about Tinseltown as Barton Fink. 25 years later, however, with a little commercial success, a lot of critical acclaim and a few Oscars to their name, Joel and Ethan came up with a take on the old-school way of moviemaking with Hail, Caesar!, a more light-hearted and light-on-its-feet story that still poked fun at the machinations of show business. Film studio ‘fixer’ Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) must keep his stable of A-list talent (including George Clooney as a star flirting with communism) from sullying the studio’s name with their ill-advised antics after hours, and a full-time job goes into overtime when scandal after scandal starts raising its head. A witty little gem from the Coens, featuring one of their most sparkling bits of business as urbane director Ralph Fiennes valiantly tries to get cowboy movie star Alden Ehrenreich in tune with the sophisticated comedy they’ve been forced to make together (“Would that it were so simple…”)
Hail, Caesar! is streaming at SBS On Demand. It also airs 8.30pm Tuesday 16 September on SBS World Movies.
Upcoming On Demand
Hail, Caesar!
comedy • 2016
comedy • 2016
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Back at the turn of the century, George Clooney was busy proving that he could make it in the movies after his breakthrough as the star of the hit TV medical drama ER. What better way to do so than playing the fool, and especially playing the fool for the Coens? In this very loose adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, Clooney’s chain-gang convict, a slickster convinced of his own intelligence and obsessed with his favourite brand of hair pomade (he’s a Dapper Dan man), stages a jailbreak with two fellow prisoners when he learns his wife is to remarry, and sets off on a, well, odyssey across Depression-era America. Sure, Christopher Nolan may have his Odyssey adaptation set to dominate cinemas next year, but Joel and Ethan got there first and reframed the story in a way unlike any other.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? is streaming at SBS On Demand. It also airs 8.30pm Wednesday 17 September on SBS World Movies.
Upcoming On Demand
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Comedy drama • 2000
Comedy drama • 2000
A Serious Man
The Coens are sometimes accused of being misanthropes, that they will put their characters through all manner of misfortune to emphasise that the universe is uncaring or indifferent… or even just for kicks, the sadists. I’m inclined to disagree. I think the humanism that can be found in many of their movies displays great faith in the capacity and capability of people to do good and indeed be good. Having said that, if you wanted to make a case for Joel and Ethan’s misanthropy, 2009’s A Serious Man is their take on the Biblical story of Job reframed through the trials and tribulations of a Jewish college professor in 1967 Minnesota as his personal and professional life suffers blow after blow. Bitterly funny, this film is thoughtful and deliberately provocative in a way that prompts reflection and debate.
A Serious Man is streaming at SBS On Demand. It also airs 8.30pm Thursday 18 September on SBS World Movies.
Stream free On Demand
A Serious Man
Comedy drama • 2009
Comedy drama • 2009
No Country for Old Men
The 1996 black comedy Fargo was a high point for the Coens. Nominated for seven Academy Awards, it won two: Best Original Screenplay for the brothers and Best Actress for Joel’s wife, the great Frances McDormand. The 10 years post-Fargo, however? Kind of a rollercoaster ride. Joel and Ethan were, as ever, marching to the sound of their own drums, but the crowds at the cinemas weren’t necessarily in step. By the time we got to films like The Ladykillers, a misbegotten remake of the classic Ealing comedy that pretty much everyone regards as the nadir of the Coens’ body of work, there were whispers that the best of the Coens was behind us. Then came their 2007 adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s bestselling novel No Country for Old Men. Taut, sharp, violent, mournful and meaningful, this stone-cold brilliant piece of work, a Best Picture Oscar winner in a year that included modern masterpieces like There Will Be Blood and Zodiac, didn’t so much serve as a comeback but as a potent reminder that the brothers should never be counted out. And in Javier Bardem’s coldly, impassively monstrous Chigurh, No Country for Old Men gave us a walking nightmare for the ages.
No Country for Old Men airs 8.30pm Friday 19 September on SBS World Movies and will be streaming at SBS On Demand for 30 days after it airs.
Upcoming On Demand
No Country for Old Men
Crime drama • thriller • 2007
Crime drama • thriller • 2007
The Man Who Wasn't There
The Coens are great with actors. Maybe they direct them well or maybe they’re extremely good at casting the right people, but there are some career-best performances studded throughout the Coen oeuvre. Billy Bob Thornton’s work in 2001’s noir-tinged curio The Man Who Wasn’t There is, for me at least, among the best performances of the 21st century. As taciturn small-town barber Ed Crane, who becomes enmeshed in infidelity, blackmail and murder in a story inspired by the novels of crime fiction legend James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice), Thornton isn’t showy but he is magnetic, his performance the very definition of ‘still waters run deep’.
The Man Who Wasn't There is streaming at SBS On Demand. It also airs 8.30pm Monday 22 September on SBS World Movies.
Stream free On Demand
The Man Who Wasn't There
Crime drama • 2001
Crime drama • 2001
The Big Lebowski
Have you ever seen a cult classic that seemed like it was tailor-made to be a cult classic? You know the type: it’s trying a little too hard to be quirky, offbeat or unusual. But the best cult movies, the true cult movies, assemble their acolytes over time. Shunned or misunderstood to begin with, it can take years of late-night screenings enhanced by goodness knows what before they catch on… but once they do, it seems like every second person is letting you know that that’s just, like, your opinion, man. When The Big Lebowski was released in 1998, a lot of folks saw it as an odd shaggy-dog story, a step backwards after the success of Fargo. Were the Coen brothers pushing back against their newfound credibility and respectability? Little did anyone know that this tale of a pot-addled, past-his-prime Los Angeles slacker (Jeff Bridges in what has become his signature role) stumbling through a strange criminal conspiracy would become maybe the brothers’ best-loved movie. If you’ve never seen it, don’t fear that you’re out of your element; just drop in to see what condition your condition is in.
The Big Lebowski is streaming at SBS On Demand. It also airs 8.30pm Thursday 25 September on SBS World Movies.
Stream free On Demand
The Big Lebowski
comedy • 1998
comedy • 1998
See more in the COEN BROTHERS COLLECTION at SBS On Demand, and in SBS World Movies' Coen Brothers focus, weeknights 15-26 September (see the Guide for movie and timing details), with other titles including Intolerable Cruelty and Grue Grit streaming at SBS On Demand for a limited time after they air on SBS World Movies.
