Ponders the Guardian’s Joe Queenan using the fact that the Coens are yet to make a tear-jerker as evidence that they are not fit to be so highly regarded. Once again a journalist bemoaning the fact that the Coens have gone from making a serious, Oscar-winning movie (No Country For Old Men) to a light, knock about comedy (Burn After Reading). Like that’s a bad thing! His comment that “the Coen brothers revert to being smart-alecks making films for snarky college students” is so boring, so well-trodden and so wrong that I almost stopped reading the article right there. And again the line about the Coen brothers “creative slump” is regurgitated, only this time, to fit the theme of his article, Queenan, has decided to make that slump a lot longer than the period in which the much maligned (unfairly, or at least overly harshly, in my opinion) Intolerable Cruelty (“a real horror”) and The Ladykillers (“a gabby, klutzy reworking of the 1955 British classic of the same name”). He extends it to include the period 1998-2006, a period in which he claims the Coen brothers “hit the skids”, conveniently beginning after most people’s favourite Coen movie, The Big Lebowski to the aforementioned serious, worthy movie, No Country For Old Men. This merely gives him the [false] evidence to back up his claims and overlooks two truly tremendous movie offerings in O Brother, Where Art Thou? ,which, in his esteemed opinion, has nothing to recommend it but (you guessed it) the multi-million selling, award winning soundtrack, and The Man Who Wasn’t There.
He also contends that- “Everything the Coen brothers do is clever, eye-opening, and stylish. That puts them in a class with Salvador Dalí. It doesn’t put them in a class with Rembrandt”. Suits me, I much prefer the work of the surrealist master over that of Rembrandt.
In my opinion it is Queenan’s article that is a “recycling – more like a regurgitation” displaying for all to see how easy it is to write from a grumpy stand point. Of course, much like this post, his article is merely one man’s opinion to which he is entitled, however wrong it may be.
October 6th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
You’re right on the money Paul… critics have really gotten weird and weirdly regurgitate each other when it comes to the Coens. I think what critics like these don’t realize is that they really have no personal connection to “a” movie or individual movies, but more or less are movie buffs who, in an effort to understand what it is that they’re seeing in less cut and dry movies, fall into applying arbitrary and, as you said, regurgitated points. Another such point is that the Coens are “cold” to their characters, or “have no heart.” Jonathan Rosenbaum from the Chicago Reader farts out that he finds that the Coens in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and generally, have no affection for or do not care for minor characters, and the whole critical world from so-called legitimates to internet fans spew out the same phrase without even really knowing what it means. These go-to phrases and the quickness with which they can be typed onto the internet are really leaving less and less time for people to do any thinking whatsoever about what they are seeing in a movie and saying about it.
And yeah, referring to Dali as some kind of “lesser” art than Rembrandt perfectly abstracts what kind of critical mind we’re dealing with. Dali is lesser art because it’s surreal, sometimes cartoonish, is humorous, or is less … i don’t what… “serious?” Dali can’t be as in depth as a Rembrandt? I prefer, or more accurately, actually react to Dali myself as well, I and don’t see what it is that makes this point and comparison valid to this critic.
You’re right… a very predictable, dull, and irritating piece of criticism.
Oh, and Blood Simple made my wife cry. It was a strange reaction, granted, but she wept and had to turn it off, though eventually finished and quite likes the movie. She just found the plight of the characters depressing. Coen movies actually make me emotional. If the very ending scene and lines of The Man Who Wasn’t There can’t be considered as something to choke up about in its immense beauty, then I don’t know what is. Sometimes Coen scenes can be so emotional, the viewer is beyond tears when wallowing in the tragedy. William H. Macy’s arrest scene in Fargo, a beautiful and emotional movie, comes to mind. That this guy divides respect for a filmmaker between categories of tear jerker or light movie is strange and bizarre. And silly. As if the emotional impact of a movie lies in whether they make some sappy death scene or something…..
Thanks for your thoughts.
–Joshua M Sparks
October 6th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Well said Joshua. I’m glad I’m not alone. When I was typing this up before all I could think was that what I was typing, as webmaster of a Coen website, was that anyone reading it would think I was blinkered and biased and so my point of view would be invalidated. However, I will happily admit when the Coens make a bad movie, I just don’t think they have yet. Sure people always point at Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers as the Coens’ “missteps” but when you had a run like they did from Blood Simple to The Man Who Wasn’t There- of course those two are going to pale in comparison. Had either of those movies been made by lesser writer/directors I am CERTAIN they would be held in higher regard. The poor old Coen brothers have set the bar too high for themselves.
Also, I have always shied away from writing opinion pieces on here and generally tried to stick to the facts but when I read this piece I couldn’t help myself. Queenan is one of those writers who tends to be grumpy about anything and everything. He’s the movie writer at the Guardian which I read semi-regularly so I am familiar with his words. Each week in the Guide (an entertainment supplement that comes with Saturday’s Guardian) there’s a column which, if memory serves, is written by Mr. Queenan and it’s basically an attempt at humour as an excuse to bemoan something going on in the movie industry. Usually along the lines of “wouldn’t the world be a better place if such a person stuck to doing such a thing”. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Literally ANYONE who can string a sentence together could pen such a missive each and every week- it wouldn’t even be hard.
Criticism is much, much, much harder to write when one is positive and enjoys about something. How many different ways are there to say, “I really liked it”, whereas writing something negative is a piece of piss.
Pah! I think I should stop there. Rant over… for now
Thanks for writing such a lengthy comment, Joshua.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
What a load of bullshit. I found the Dali/Rembrandt comment especially absurd and pseudo-intellectual, and I say that as a fan of both painters. Any idiot who would compare two utterly different artists just to make a boneheaded point about art he/she doesn’t care for doesn’t deserve to be writing for the Guardian.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
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