Meewella | Critic

According to P

Tag: Joel Coen

QuickView: Hail, Caesar! (2016)

“Here at Capitol Pictures, as you know, an army of technicians, actors, and top notch artistic people are working hard to bring to the screen the story of the Christ. It’s a swell story.”

Eddie Mannix

Even when the humour is broad, the sensibilities of Coen brothers movies tend to appeal to a niche audience. Hail, Caesar! is predominantly an excuse for the brothers to use 1950s Hollywood as a playground, producing their own homages to the era’s musicals, Westerns and epics, evoking humour less through parody than authenticity. With their frequent cinematographer Roger Deakins, creating Hail, Caesar! must have been a rewarding exploration of bygone filmmaking technique, and the film is most enjoyable when viewed as a series of loosely connected vignettes, like Channing Tatum tap dancing through a Gene Kelly number or George Clooney channeling Charlton Heston. There is little weight to the story woven through them, as studio head Eddie Mannix fixes problems that vary from the realistic (an studio star pregnant out of wedlock) to the absurd (an actor kidnapped by Communist writers), all while deciding whether he even wants to stay in the industry. Hail, Caesar! may not be particularly memorable but for those with at least a passing familiarity with 1950s cinema, there is much to appreciate, particularly if you also enjoy the Coens’ verbose and offbeat humour and their stellar ensemble casts they attract.

8/10

QuickView: The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

“Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.”

Macbeth

That Joel Coen’s first solo outing is a Shakespeare adaptation is something of a surprise, given that his brother and longtime collaborator chose to step away from movies in order to focus on theatre. Coen’s approach is anachronistic, retaining the original setting and dialogue, but adopting a visual style that evokes 1920s cinema, stark black and white with an almost square 1:1.19 aspect ratio from the end of the silent era, replete with rounded corners to the frame. The staging is similar with minimalist shallow-depth sets against smoky, eerily projected backdrops. This is a film that prizes atmospherics above all else, clearest perhaps from Katherine Hunter’s haunting performance as the prophesying witches, contorted in bird-like garb and movements. Denzel Washington delivers a thoughtfully low-key Macbeth, whilst Coen regular Frances McDormand is excellent in the early scenes as the instigating Lady Macbeth, but her role feels slightly sidelined in a script that compresses the play into under two hours. Brenden Gleeson stands out amongst a supporting cast which at times is overshadowed by Coen’s preoccupation with atmosphere. This is Shakespeare designed for a modern audience but not for mainstream appeal.

8/10

QuickView: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs poster

“They’re so easily taken when they are distracted, people are.”

Englishman

There is a level of sleight of hand in selling six short films as a feature length release when they are essentially unconnected beyond their Western setting. Eccentric characters in farcical situations are a Coen Brothers staple but brevity leaves them feeling more like caricatures from Tim Blake Nelson as the titular crooning gunslinger of the opening tale to Tom Waits’ gold prospector to James Franco’s ill-fated bank robber. The exception is the penultimate tale, The Gal Who Got Rattled, which stands out as the best segment by some margin — its greater length allows its key players to develop so that we actually come to care about the events that befall them. The otherworldly final tale, in which strangers converse during a journey in a station wagon (with longform dialogue reminiscent of Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight but with none of the tension), hints at intended depth behind these dark morality plays that is never properly conveyed. The Coens’ signature style — aided by several strong performances — is still enough to sell the collection, but it falls short of the mark.

7/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2023 Priyan Meewella

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