Review of Coen Brothers Collection, The

Introduction

What a pre-Christmas movie treat!

This timely release contains four really great movies, though the exclusion of `Raising Arizona` and `Fargo` may raise an eyebrow or two. I`ve been feeling grumpy with the brothers Coen since they had the gall to try a typical Coen take on a UK classic, `The Ladykillers`. I was disappointed with the attempt (the original is faultless in my view) and disappointed with the movie too.

But let`s put all those squabbles behind us. This set is a great reminder of just how brilliant the dynamic duo can be (producer Ethan and director Joel, who write as a team). I received review copies of 3 of the 4 movies - Blood Simple, Barton Fink, and Hudsucker Proxy. I`ll refrain from commenting on the fourth, `The Big Lebowski`.

BLOOD SIMPLE

It can`t have been twenty years since this came out! I remember the critical excitement that this low budget slow-burner had on its original release as if it was yesterday. And it`s looking in great shape, which will be a relief for all those Coen brothers` fans who have had to suffer interminably bad VHS and DVD releases thus far.

This one just came out of left field at the time. Brilliantly penned and directed by the brothers Coen, even its painfully low budget didn`t stop them turning out a first-class thriller.

The movie kicks off in the pouring rain as the cameraman films the back of the heads of a moving cars two occupants, silhouetted against the night sky and occasionally highlighted by oncoming car headlamps. The conversation is intense and earnest, a little Lynch-like to start with. The trouble here is we`ve entered mid-plot and it takes a while to catch up…
Ray (Getz), a laidback bartender, begins an affair with Abby (McDormand), the wife of his intense Greek-American boss, Marty (Hedaya).

Marty, the Greek Bar-Boss, hires a sleazy overweight Texan Private dick to follow his unfaithful wife and he`s clearly destroyed when faced with photographic evidence of his wife`s continuing infidelities. Things get nasty and Marty decides to pay the sleazy PD to kill both his wife and her new lover, bar man Ray. All looks straightforward enough until we discover that evil sleaze ball PI Loren Visser (M. Emmet) has sinister plans of his own. But like all great plots - they don`t always go to plan! Cue much dramatic tension, plot twists and excitement in a movie that left me feeling like I`d been dragged through a hedge backwards. And then once more for good measure.

All the classic ingredients of a great thriller are present here. Lust? Check. Betrayal? Check. Murder? Check. Plot twists, snappy dialogue and a soupcon of dark, dark humour? All here.

The performances are all great too - believable yet memorably off-kilter, a reflection of an alternative small-town America.

BARTON FINK

John Turturro plays self-important writer Barton Fink in this Coen Brothers` classic. Set in 1940`s Hollywood, this black comedy is incisive, very dark and often hilarious.

Fink is a New York playwright who, after enjoying critical success with his first play in New York, is persuaded against his better judgement to go to Hollywood to write screenplays. Once there he gets his first commission - a screenplay to a low-budget `wrestling` movie.

Knowing little or nothing about how to pen a decent screenplay, it becomes clear that Fink also knows precious little about `wrestling movies` and he hits `writers block` before he`s even completed the first sentence.
Staying in a low-rent hotel, Finks neighbour Charlie (played superbly by John Goodman in possibly his finest ever performance) drops by. He`s a talkative insurance salesman who seems as `straight a Joe` as they come, but who clearly has a darker side.

He tries in vain to get a neighbourly rapport going with Bart but we soon discover that Bart just never listens. He`s too pre-occupied with the gravity of his own creative importance. As a consequence, he interrupts Charlie each and every time he says `Boy I could tell you a few stories…`. And still the words to his wrestling movie just won`t come.
Fink continues to visit his fast talking Jewish studio boss, but always without any written work and these visits provide much in the way of comic relief.
The tale twists and turns in nightmarish fashion, and with a shocking close to the movie too.

Hollywood is portrayed as a kind of living hell throughout - often almost literally. The word `six` is repeated three times when Bart takes the elevator to his room, the wallpaper peels and oozes whenever Charlie (the Devil?) enters the room - and the final scenes, with the ferocious flames at the films close must surely be metaphors for Barton`s living hell.

HUDSUCKER PROXY

It was popularly felt, at the time of this movie`s release, that part of its problem (at the box office) was its unusual title.

Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins) is an enthusiastic, if naive college graduate who resorts to accepting a job in the post room at Hudsucker Industries. Peculiarly, just as the clock hits 12 Noon, Hudsucker Industries Chairman leaps through a 50th floor window to his death.

Mussburger (Paul Newman), a scheming sidekick on the board of Hudsucker Industries decides that they need to reduce the value of stock at the successful company to enable the members to buy stock at a low price before they pull the company back to previously successful heights - earning a fortune in the process. So they hire Norville as chairman, who seems to have the potential to frighten the stockholders into selling.

Journalist Amy Archer (played magnificently by Jennifer Jason Leigh in here best ever performance) takes a job as Norville`s secretary to try and dig up some dirt on this new Chairman who has `appeared from nowhere`. Needless to say, she ends up falling for Norville`s simple but honest charms. In common with another classic American Jewish comedy, `The Producers`, all doesn`t go to plan. Who would have banked on imbecilic Norville inventing the Hula-Hoop, which pulls Hudsucker out of the nose-dive before the real board can cash-in?

So that`s the story. But it`s all presented in typically stylised, larger than life metaphor, where the giant cogs of the huge clock tower are literally the `wheels of industry` that must keep turning. The dialogue is delivered in a knowing theatrical deadpan that somehow works, and some of the scenes towards the end are almost dream-like in construction. In short, typical Coen brothers territory.

Video

BLOOD SIMPLE

Cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld worked on a further two Coen films before moving into the Director`s chair himself. This was incredibly the very first movie he`d shot. Every shot has a well-considered, storyboarded composition to it, and even the low-light pieces exude atmosphere and detail.

Despite its original low-budget, and the twenty years or so that has passed since its release, the picture quality is pretty clean, which according to the word on the street, is a vast improvement on an earlier release of this movie which was 4:3 and in a dreadful state.

BARTON FINK

1.66:1 anamorphic widescreen. I have a copy of this movie on VHS and despite the inherent weaknesses of the format, the print always looked in good shape. The edition here is even better. The film, in common with other Coen outings, is not a colourful one. There is an orangey-brown hue throughout the interior scenes and the only blasts of colour happen in the infrequent exteriors.

HUDSUCKER PROXY

This is a fine print and one that will allow you to enjoy the incredible attention to design detail here. Cinematographer Roger Deakins and production designer Dean Gassner have pulled out all the stops to give the movie an authentic period-look whilst allowing for some very clever contemporary special effects.

Audio

BLOOD SIMPLE

Sound designer Skip Lievsay and composer Carter Burwell did sterling work on the soundtrack to `Blood Simple` and have worked on every Coen Bros film since. The dark, atmospheric mix of orchestration and occasional solo piano, sound effects (like the skippety-skip and panting of the dog`s approach when the new lovers return to the `family home`) and indefinable brooding tensions created by god knows what contribute to the darkness of this brilliant movie. There`s a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack which works very nicely here.

BARTON FINK

Carter Burwell`s musical score is sheer magic and is a really critical ingredient to this atmospheric movie. There`s no 5.1 reworking here, which might have been fun, though the Dolby Stereo soundtrack is crisp and clear which is essential for a movie with so much in the way atmospheric sound effects (more sound design by Lievsay) and of course, the relentless dialogue.

HUDSUCKER PROXY

Once again, a nice Dolby Stereo reproduction that does justice to a meticulously created soundtrack.

Features

BLOOD SIMPLE

Hmmm. This is a weird one! There`s a full-length commentary track made by Ken Loring, Artistic Director at `Forever Young Film Restoration`. He claims that it`s based on his own `technical notes` and `extensive interviews with the film-makers`. He has a very over-the-top posh English `funny-guy` voice, and to begin with I found his humorous asides really irritating. What`s the point in including a yak-track that`s adding little to your understanding of the picture? So I turned it off.
But then, thanks to a forum on this wonderful site, another contributor let me know that this was scripted by the Coen`s and was deliberately a mickey-take of audio commentaries. So I`m like the guy who thought `The Office` was for real!
Listening through it, this does become apparent (the dog was an animatronic apparently!?) though the whole thing left me cold. Sadly - a funny recording that just wasn`t that funny. But then I was still smarting for not having got the joke sooner!

BARTON FINK

There are 8 deleted or `extended` scenes here. Unfortunately there`s no explanation as to why they were excluded and personally I didn`t feel they really added anything to the experience. Really quite superfluous. There`s also a click-through picture gallery with production stills. For those who are in love with this movie, apparently there`s a French 2-disc edition doing the rounds with over an hours worth of extra material, so it might be worth tracking that one down. For me, this Universal edition is just fine. It`s the finished movie that`s magic for me, not the rough notes or the production process.

HUDSUCKER PROXY

No special features.

Conclusion

Wow…what a brilliant quartet of movies. One that no self-respecting movie-fan will want to be without.

`Blood Simple` is quite simply a stunning debut from the wonderful Coen Brothers. `Blood Simple` scores high on all counts. Despite its very modest budget it looks great. It`s a really compelling narrative that puts it amongst the top-crop of classic screen thrillers, and the dialogue, cinematography and performances are all first-class.

`Barton Fink`, with its dark portrayal of Hollywood as a kind of living hell, pulls no punches with its critique of self-important creative writers too - and is simply brilliant on all counts.

`Hudsucker Proxy` as a critique of the hypocrisy of business, and yet a realisation of its importance to the fabric of life too, is also a brilliant piece of cinematography and sadly under-rated.

With `The Big Lebowski` thrown in for good measure I can`t think of any logical reason not to rush out and buy a copy of this set tomorrow.

Thoroughly recommended!