Now I've Seen Everything Dept.: The Coen Brothers, Part 3

 Part 3: Splits-ville (O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

 

The Coen Brothers have amassed an eclectic body of work across many genres and time periods to the point where they can't be pinned down as far as what a "typical" Coen Brothers movie would entail, other than an over-arching meditation of the vagaries of Fate, both good and bad.

But, even though they've achieved a cult status, numerous awards and anticipation for up-coming projects, The Coen Brothers, Ethan and Joel, have had a rough time dealing with the vagaries of studio financing, leading to their last joint project, the brilliant Western anthology, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, being financed by the Netflix streaming service, a less-than-ideal circumstance to artists intending their product for the big screen.

 

The year after Buster Scruggs, Joel announced he's be directing a new version of Shakespeare's "The Tragedy of MacBeth," while Ethan was working on projects for the theater. It was the first solo project since the two began collaborating in 1984.

The Tragedy of MacBeth (Joel Coen, 2021) Shakespeare's oft-filmed play about the corrupting powers of ambition, gets a black-and-white, academy-ratio, highly stylized treatment (not to far afield from Orson Welles' version (although Joel claims he had Carl Theodor Dryer in mind)—both emphasizing their studio-bound German expressionism) in this version, which doesn't try to transpose the story into another time and place, but keeps it to 16th century Inverness, albeit a highly theatrical one.

The acting is great throughout, with Brendan Gleeson, Alex Hassell, Stephen Root (!!), Moses Ingram, and Frances McDormand all breathing new life into the texts, bridging that Elizabethan gap of Shakespearean prose by the sheer force of performance. Denzel Washington does well (as well), bringing a maturity to the role rather than—as in some versions—as a walking personification of overweening ambition. It is only in his interpretation of the "Out, brief candle" speech that leaves a little something to be desired at that critical junction of the play. 

 

Up until then, Washington's Macbeth is a pragmatist, slightly world-weary and seems beaten down—he has just come from a war, after all. What is most interesting is that both Macbeths in this iteration are older, childless (so no chances of succession), and obviously have seen chances for advancement taken away from them in the past, and that, now, with this hope given thought by a supernatural origin, are almost desperate to take advantage of it, lest it pass from them one last time. Once he is king, and things start to fall apart, one would think there would be more shock, more realization that he might have been duped by the very forces that emboldened him. But, that's not there. Instead, it seems he's returned to the world-weariness at the beginning of the film—which is inconvenient as he still has much to fight. It feels false, and is missing a sense of bitter desperation that will carry him through the inevitable end.

 

it's a beautiful, often mystical film to watch and listen to. And it's always a welcome break to just take in Shakespeare to relieve oneself of the mundane nature of everyday-speak, and glory in the poetry and precision of his story-telling.

 

 

Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind (Ethan Coen, 2022) Approached by T-Bone Burnett during the COVID pandemic to make a Lewis documentary solely using archival footage, Ethan said it was "too compelling to turn down." He and his editor-wife Tricia Cooke needn't even leave their house to make the film, all the material already existing (and Lewis never being shy about talking to the press throughout his career), leaving the two to shape the material as they saw fit, letting Lewis tell the story (chronologically as it was happening) from his time at Sun Records, his incredible concerts—the film is scrupulous about showing complete songs—the hushed-up blacklist from the pop-charts for his private life ("She was 12 years old...13 the next day" he says of his third wife. "No regrets on my part, babe," he says to Jane Pauley in an interview) and moving to country music which seemed like a good fit as he was getting older (the film opens with a Lewis country performance on "The Ed Sullivan Show"). 

One is immediately struck by his inspired piano-playing, turning it into an orchestra, often the percussion section with a jazzy agitation. He was self-taught at the piano, influenced by a local jazz in what he calls "the colored section" of town, which he rhapsodically calls "like strolling through Heaven." And his singing is always theatrical, spontaneous, with the syncopated aside thrown in just to surprise. He seemed dangerous, but was always entertaining, taking it out on the piano.

 

Near the end of the film, Lewis is shown at one of his last sessions, January 2020, singing "Amazing Grace", looking frail, and sounding it on the first line, but slowly building power, while his trembling hands glide over a piano keyboard. Then, over a montage of his past, there is an elegant summation of words:

"Jerry Lee Lewis was born in Ferriday, Louisiana in 1935. He taught himself to play the piano. When he was twenty he and his father drove to Sun Records in Memphis. He told the studio engineer 'I'm a hit!' The engineer said 'They all say that, son.' He had rock & roll hits in the 50's, country hits in the 60's and 70's. He performed constantly." 

"He was married seven times, the first time at 16, the last time at 76. His third marriage was at the age of 22, to his 13-year-old cousin, Myra. He survived two of his wives. He survived two of his children. His son Steve Allen Lewis died at age 3. His son Jerry Lee Lewis, Jr. died at age 19." 

"In 2019, a stroke left him unable to play the piano. He taught himself—again—how to play."

"He survived all his musical peers. Gone are Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Little Richard...Charlie Rich, Fats Domino, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley."

"And then Jerry died."

"Jerry Lee Lewis passed away on October 22, 2022, at his home outside Memphis, not too far from Ferriday."

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival May 22, 2022. He even survived that.

Drive-Away Dolls (Ethan Coen, 2023) Ethan and Tricia Cooke had been working on a screenplay resembling this film since 1999, the original title being Henry James' Drive-Away Dykes—the distributor, Focus Features, thought that was a might obscure and a bit off-putting, and opted for safety.

 

It's a bit like an early Coen Brothers movie with a more anarchic tone—a road movie with serio-comic violence. It tells the tale of a Mutt-and-Jeff lesbian duo—uptight, repressed Marian (Geraldine Viswanathan) and free-spirit Jamie (Margaret Qualley)—who take a break from their normal lives and relationship break-ups and the up-coming turn of the millennium ("Y Not 2k?") to go birding in Tallahassee. That's the original idea, although Jamie inconveniently road-maps it out to visit every dyke bar en route. Then, there's the mode of transportation: they use a drive-away service, which gives them a car for a one-way trip as long as they deliver it to the destination on time. They do not know that the car is carrying something hidden in the trunk, something people have already died for, and that an inept crew of hit-men are desperately trying to find for their Very Important Client.

 

But, the thing is basically a comedy, so it's not like the dangerously nuclear "What's-It" from Kiss Me Deadly (and copied in other films), it's a kinder, gentler McGuffin, whose value is only in the eyes of those who covet it. And it's basically an excuse for Marian and Jamie to have an adventure and realize that what they desire might be the very thing that annoys them throughout the trip.

 

It's a good effort. And it sure tries hard (and the actors, which also include Beanie Feldstein and Matt Damon, give above and beyond, with Qualley and Viswanathan the stand-outs as the fast-talking and the dead-panning hub around which everyone revolves) but Drive-Away Dolls, even with its pedal to the metal, never quite achieves the anarchic spirit it so desperately wants to convey.