The Moral Vision of the Coen Brothers

Matt Zoller Seitz, on No Country For Old Men:

Though they are habitually described as snotty formalists with nothing on their minds but cinematic gamesmanship, the Coens' body of work is one of the most sneakily moralistic in recent American cinema.

This is very smart, and very true. The Coen brothers have made their share of duds, but the people who accuse them of being winking, technically proficient nihilists have it exactly backward, I think. If you don't mind spoilers, read the whole thing.

Comments

I have to agree. The Coen brothers are obvious moralists. From the moral contrasts between rural values and psychopathic nihilism in Fargo to the heroics of the simple man in O Brother, Where Art Thou? (based on Homeric epic).

Pound for pound thou, they cannot compete morally or cinematically with one of the greatest directors (and moralist) of all time….Stanley Kubrick.

Eyes Wide Shut presents his critique of human sexualities struggle against sin in the contemporary world and praises the safe (if difficult) refuge of marriage.

The moralizing doesn’t stop there of coarse, with the familial elements and paternal understanding in Barry Lyndon, to the soliloquy on free will that was A Clockwork Orange. The list goes on.

Posted by Fitz | November 17, 2007 12:42 PM

Wow.

One of those film reviews that, in and of itself makes me not want to see the movie. Not for the actual shortcomings of the movie, but so as to not be a party to the pathic art of reviewing movies viewed from the inside of one's navel.

*sheesh*

Posted by Liam Colvin | November 17, 2007 6:05 PM

Much as I admire the Coen Brothers and enjoyed their "No Country for Old Men," beware the temptation to over-intellectualize the film. It's not worth trying to come up with high-minded rationalizations for why you think the film is cool. In this movie, the Coen Bros. have expertly worked out how to push certain buttons in the brains of males with 3-digit IQs.

In "No Country," the Coens have figured out how to bring the pleasures of a problem-solving first person shooter video game to the movie theatre. They've discovered that the paradoxical key to making a video game movie is to slow down the action, allowing the viewer to think along with the hero and villain. Not since the sniper scene that makes up the second half of Stanley Kubrick's Vietnam film "Full Metal Jacket" has a movie played fairer with the audience in detailing the physical puzzles confronting the characters. How, for example, could you best hide two cubic feet of $100 bills in your motel room? And how could your enemy find such well-concealed money?

Posted by Steve Sailer | November 18, 2007 12:24 AM

Weel, the book has the problem of doubling-down on McCarthy's tendencies to moralize, so I'm not sure how they could make this film in anyway that didn't seem moralistic and still remain relatively true to McCarthy's work.

Of course, perhaps they chose this book to make into a movie precisely because it's so moralistic?

Posted by keatssycamore | November 18, 2007 11:04 AM