nedjelja, 11.12.2005.

The Coen brothers

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The career of these two film-urchins started in the beginning of the 80's with their movie «Blood simple». This movie will be only the first of many low-budget masterpieces, which will become a feature of this duo. During the initial period of their work, Coens were experimenting both with their screenplay fantasy and humour they often featured in their films. Dangerously at the brink of falling to the void of trash vulgarity, they always succeeded to jump over the hole and win the match, which was largely accepted both by critics and by audience. Slowly they emerged from the Western society telling stories of both cruelty and laugh in the system. When Raising Arizona came out in 1987 it was more then a movie with Cage, Hunter Wilson and Goodman in main roles. First- it was the script, which was interesting, combining straight-street humour typical for the age with die-hard aesthetic of the inner dramaturgical systems. Next was “Miller’s Crossing” which was truly a masterpiece, and maybe even Coen’s best film.
After some tries to seek for more developed dramaturgies and what could be called “script language”, Coens reached the peak of their careers with “Fargo” and “The Big Lebowski”. Jeff Bridges and John Goodman played a pair of whites living in suburbs, at the edge of the “post-capitalistic” culture. A strict critic of the practice of American life in this movie was somewhat shadowed by metaphorical language used in the process of directing, as well as the comical satire of American patriotism preformed by unrecognised war veterans. “The Naked Man” was Cohen’s script, and although that was felt in the movie, their approach to the aesthetic directing was missing since they weren’t the directors.
“O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “Intolerable Cruelty” were , as it appears, experiments with the style where the Coen brothers were checking how much “Coen” a movie can really be before it becomes too “Coen”. Yet, the stars who performed in these movies ( Clooney, Zeta-Jones, Jenkins and Thornton) were happy with their roles and were always ready to accept more requests from the two mentioned. Tom Hanks joined them in one of their latest films “The Ladykillers” where he used all of his talents to play mastermind criminal who is under influence of the local old female. In this typical Coen approach to the topic, nobody could get lost with humour and a direct link with other systems of dramaturgy. Their following movies are expected in the next few years, and we should expect more of their work to come. Playing with stereotypes but often challenging their deepness is typical for their screenplays, and tragic ends such as deaths or killings are often put in the bizzare contexts which are always charming just enough for audience to accept them.

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