The Coen Brothers

Abstract

The Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, launched their career as independent filmmakers in 1984 with the debut of Blood Simple, a low-budget neo-noir. Since then, they have written and directed sixteen feature films in a variety of generic styles, including film noir, crime comedy, gangster movie, neo-western, and screwball comedy. The Coens are auteurs who consider themselves storytellers as much as filmmakers; their screenplays borrow heavily from or re-create the texts of venerable literary precursors, especially the pulp fiction of James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, and Raymond Chandler. From the beginning, journalistic commentators have been divided in their assessments of the Coens’ films. Despite widespread acclaim and praise for their filmmaking technique, popular movie reviewers have accused them of cynicism and misanthropy, criticizing their films for a lack of purpose or meaning and for a perceived lack of realism and authenticity. More tolerant of the hermeneutic ambiguity that characterizes Coen films, academic scholars have made various attempts to reassess the films more favorably. Although Coen movies have been widely reviewed by journalists from the start, scholarly publications on the Coens did not begin to appear with any regularity until after the commercial and critical success of Fargo in 1996. Since then, scholars from a wide range of disciplines have published increasing numbers of books, anthologies, and journal articles addressing the Coens’ innovative use of genre and pastiche, their treatment of philosophical and religious themes, and the incongruous mixing of humor and violence that has become a Coen trademark. The large fan cult that emerged in response to The Big Lebowski stimulated heightened academic interest; more research has been published on Lebowski than any other Coen film to date. Likewise, their award-winning adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men has received increased scholarly attention.