Raising Arizona

“Got a new Beau?”

“No, Hi. I sure don’t.”

One of the great things about comedies is that when you take risks it can easily get very wrong, but when you get it right, it’s a wonderful blessing to watch. Raising Arizona, the second feature films by the unstoppable Coen Brothers, walks a fine, thin line between getting right and wrong and largely succeeds. In fact, it’s probably as funny and entertaining as the Coens may ever get; the film has an inventiveness and a sense of heartwarming comedy that’s very hard to repeat. While it comfortably rests on the shoulders of some specific advantages, the film as a whole stands out as something else.

H.I. is a recidivist, unique for its hell-hole of hair and his mustacheness. Ed is a police officer who becomes his friend after she gets dumped by some stupid not-Cagey boyfriend. In the many mug shot sessions they share together, they fall in love, and decide to settle down and deal with their past. Raising Arizona is the story of how they get married and everything collapses when they find out that she is sterile and he’s bound to do something about it. To H.I. “Hi” (Nicolas Cage) and Edwina “Ed” McDunnough, having a child is the opportunity of their lives, a chance to get on with the world and create a engine to drive their relationship and their lives forward. In the most Bonnie and Clyde-like way possible, the couple decides to steal one of the Nathan Arizona quintuples, because, according to Ed, they have it too much, babywise.

As the story develops, in a series of misfires, misunderstandings and Southern accent magnificence, it could go downhill very easily. There’s everything a bad family movie can offer from babies and cartoonish villains to slapstick and spoiled, greedy couples. But nearly everything is put in the right places at the right time in a way that is simultaneously surprising and hilarious. Who would’ve thought that a movie could simply employ so many clichés altogether that manage to transcend that? And that it would hilariously precede The Shawshank Redemption?

Hell, it even foreshadows Nicolas Cage’s Ghost Rider 20 years in advance.

On the technical level, it has an unstoppable stylishness: from head to tail, Raising Arizona has a frenetic pace and a lovely atmosphere. It’s at times unfunny (especially when the jokes push themselves for too long), and even then it’s thoroughly watchable. And it’s all because of the Coen Brothers touch that has succeeded in offer a different vision of Americana, which never gets tired of inventing dreamlike sequences, employing offbeat soundtracks (note how Carter Burwell recycles Beethoven’s Ninth and many country tunes), and over-the-top performances that stand between satire and dead seriousness.

What suprises me the most, however, is how peculiar and how powerful the performances are. I could never see the Holly Hunter I watched in The Piano if not for her dark, mysterious eyes, nor I could see John Goodman and Nicolas Cage as they’re here, much younger and much more natural. There’s also a pre-Fargo Frances McDormand, who woud slowly solidify her professional link to the Coens’ oeuvre (she’s married to Joel). Nicolas Cage is in a strange, unusual acting style, much different from his modern efforts (even the good ones). Under the direction of the Coens, he’s natural, energetic in a normal way: he’s a character we can love and relate to. Holly Hunter is also great here, in a remarkably lovable performance as the Bonnie to her Clyde.

In the end, the film is about the simplicity of their lives, the appeal they have despite their nature and their wrongdoings: H.I. never uses a loaded weapon, Ed is a policeman who minds it, but doesn’t think of it as the bottom of the barrel, Gale is crooked, but becomes softer when the baby’s life is danger, and so it goes on. Hell, even the Lone Rider of the Apocalypse is likable. I’m speechless here.

Next Thursday: A bad Nicolas Cage movie.

Raising Arizona

Year: 1987

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, Trey Wilson, John Goodman, William Forsythe, Sam McMurray, Frances McDormand, Randall Tex Cobb

No Country for Old Men

“Oh, Sheriff, we just missed him! We gotta circulate this. On radio.”

“Alright. What do we circulate? Looking for a man who has recently drunk milk?”

On the surface (meaning regarding what a viewer would look for in the first place), No Country for Old Men is a thrilling cat-and-mouse game with no obvious winner or loser, a neo-western that manages to combine unpredictability with smoothness and stands out as one of the most powerful movies from the Coen Brothers. It’s about the unstoppable emergence of evil/violence in an unclear form, and an evil/violence that seems to be ahead of people who aren’t prepared to stand up to it and face it with equal terms. When the film ends on a mysterious, anti-climactic note, it reveals that it’s more than a good film with a central theme, some very good scenes and a closing system. It’s confidently a spider web of questions and answers, a film to talk about and go beyond first impressions. To me, its underlines stand well against those who criticize its surface, and vice-versa.

That is why there are so many interpretations of the film, and all of them seem to get closer and closer to the overall message of the film. I’m stunned, even confused from reading all of them: my initial idea was to address the film very briefly, but it seems I can’t do that. And it’s interesting that I can’t, because it proves that some films can truly inspire dedicated attention into them; these movies are results of years of studying, researching and improving on the art of storytelling (especially visual storytelling) and sharing information. To try to analytically encompass a film in a few paragraphs is like trying to do the same with a painting, a book or any true art form.

The film, like its characters, is not much of words, but of actions and reactions. And indeed it is: much of the film’s unique style and how it blends with the story relies with minimalism; primarily I believed it was a consequence of its setting (the wild, wild west) and a classic Coen Brothers touch, but there’s more to it. There’s practically no music, very little dialogue, long establishing shots and longer sequences that never rely on (or need) any verbal exposition. What’s already a very desolate landscape becomes even quieter and darker, and whichever interference to it by the Coen Brothers is less a stylistic touch than a warning. For instance, the coin toss scene, one dazzlingly perfect one, employs an ominous piece of music played very low, but still noticeable is one’s careful enough.

No Country for Old Men begins as mysteriously as it ends, with a voice-over from a man we don’t know that comes before images and ends before a story. The main cast, composed of three incredible characters, is introduced in low notes: their  names come much after the seemingly simplistic build-ups, the nature of their actions is always put into question and their morality is always too tricky to be pointed out firsthand. There’s a sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) whom we find out is the voice-over man named Ed Tom Bell. He seems to be always many steps behind the man he’s looking for, but he’s actually getting closer and closer without ever realizing so. Then there’s an ordinary  man named Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) who puts his hands in a big load of cash he considers safe to keep, before succeeding in and failing to realize it’s not and it never will be; And finally there’s the seemingly invincible killer, Anton Chigurh (Oscar-winning Javier Bardem), an ultraviolent psychopathic killer whose unpredictable skills and principles mirror his view of the world and places him as an outsider to his working field and slowly diving into it; he’s also the leading man looking after Moss’ cash.

This is the trio that keeps surprising us in truly remarkable ways and plays with their surroundings as well as they play with their audience. Like their film, they aren’t men of many words, but men of carefully arranged actions that are both many steps ahead of us and ultimately insufficient to their successes. The two countrymen, Moss and Bell, counterpoint each other in that one is getting deeper and deeper into trouble, when he apparently shouldn’t, and the other seems to be backing further and further away from his duties when he apparently should be doing the opposite. They are simpler than Chigurh, and Moss is easier to follow and to understand. Chigurh, on the other hand, is just as mythical and strange figure, and a marvelous portrayal of enemy violence against common, good people. As played by Javier Bardem, he’s a character with timely but outlandish looks, a non-regional accent and a lifestyle that’s neither traditionally urban nor traditionally rural. Personifying that image with such effortless grace and discreet power is what gave Bardem his array of awards.

His violence when seen from the outside actually looks kind of cool, like most violence (this is clear when Ed Tom mentions a piece of news about a series of killings and make comments on how offbeat and almost comic they are, to which his deputy answers with unwanted laughter), but from the inside, when we get to see the blood and the aftermath of the shootouts, it becomes haunting. This why critics have pointed out here and all throughout criticism history that the violence of movies should never be underestimated and taken for granted: we should not glorify Vic Vega, Alex DeLarge or Anton Chigurh for what they do (which screen violence, in fact, can be morally praised?) and how they do it. The film, as a result, gets decreasingly graphic in its violence, and offers more and more ellipses of Chigurh’s bloodbath. Speaking of the aftermaths, one seemingly recurring theme in the film is how violence acts as an outsider, a form of acting other than our own that invades our world and leaves indelible marks: note how Chigurh gets to effortlessly catch his opponents by surprise, coldly invade their spaces and finish his tasks.

But Chigurh isn’t perfect: even though, as Jim Emerson points out, he “sees himself, however, as destiny personified […], who does what must be done… because that’s what he does”, he’s fallible. So are Moss and Bell in their chases and escapes, which draw parallels among the three: fate is cast by and upon them, as the hunter becomes the hunted and the receiver becomes the giver. Whenever one of them appears on screen, we never get to see the other in full clarity: each one gets his own space and his only.

And finally there’s the theme title, “No Country for Old Men”, a pessimistic indicative that the world might be turning its back against its older generations and setting challenges that are ahead of itself. It’s interesting to notice that Chigurh leaves no traces in his killings (the story is set in the 1980’s before forensic science reached powerful grounds), but his tools date back to older customs; we think that he’s a Terminator-like figure that can’t be stopped, but in fact he’s building his strengths on things we know. Moreover, when his killings are discussed by Ed Tom and a fellow police officer, they both delve on how times are abruptly changing and becoming increasingly dangerous, but the most obvious evidence one of them finds is that kids have “green hair” and “bones in their faces”. Is the world around us changing too much, or are we inadvertently not prepared to follow it like most people do?

No Country for Old Men

Year: 2007

Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Cast: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Kelly Macdonald

Academy Awards: Best Picture; Best Director; Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem); Best Cinematography (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Sound Editing (nominated); Best Sound Mixing (nominated)

Cannes Film Festival: Palme d’Or (nominated)

This Week at The Hand Grenade’s Headquarters #4

And so it goes again, with a lot of movies to watch and a lot to write about. This weeks had some pretty good movies to follow The Hand Grenade’s first full year in action, and so there were some much delayed classic viewings and some great discoveries of recent films and underseen jewels. It had birds. It had rats. It had bombs, Jewish nuns, coconuts and peaches. Here they go!

Memories of Murder / Salinui chueok (Bong Joon-ho, 2003)

It seems unfair to give such a privilege to a single director considering how many movies I watch (this is my third Bong Joon-ho film in a month, following his great thrills The Host and Snowpiercer) but Memories of Murder is yet another evidence of the mastery of this Korean director and another promising evidence that he’s getting better and better. Bong, with his delightfully clumsy character, strangely entrancing images, calculated long shots and intense sense of suspense and action, has created a body of work that transcends genre and manages to offer depth and entertainment at equal levels.

Memories of Murder tells the fictionalized version of the story of three South Korean detectives (including Bong favorite Song Kang-ho) and their painful investigation of the first serial murders in the country, which happened in the late 80’s and early 90’s and barely left any traces. As with Snowpiercer, the film seems to stand out much more in its depiction the human enigmas than in the story’s conceptualization, meaning here that this film is much more about the victims and the police officers than about the investigation and the mystery themselves, which is actually a great thing if you notice it and stick to it well enough.

Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2013)

One of those strange “Surprise of the Year” films that you can’t quite sum up in words but know that, in time, it’ll take full form in your mind. Ida, Pawel Pawlikowski’s cold road movie, places its character 90% of the time near the edges of the screen, shoots them with a stark use of focus and a highly detailed black-and-white gracefulness, barely plays with sound and offers only a handful of camera movement amid its oppression of static camerawork. It’s so confidently minimalist and particular it also seems to boast it, but inside of its strangely beautiful structure lies a powerful film that fills the emptiness of its shots with great performances, and beautiful images. Ida, a young nun who’s about to take her vows, finds out about her unknown past through her aunt, who drives her into a quest for tying the loose ends of her background story; Ida’s inexperience and mysteriousness populates the screen and turns a simple road movie story of finding the truth about her family into an Ashes and Diamonds like reflection of 1960’s Poland. A strange film I’ll have to reward further viewings.

Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)

One of the great imperfects films, a quasi-masterpiece depressingly flawed but euphorically unforgettable thanks to an unbelievable chemistry between Joe Buck (pre-Baby Geniuses Jon Voight) and Enrico Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman in one of his greatest performances), two lost kids who find themselves in very similar positions when they first meet in New York (Rico is from the Bronx, Joe’s from Texas) and become friends. The friendship is timeless, but they both have small-town dreams and aspirations that lead them to the wrong place and the wrong time. But even more out of place is the great problem with the film, which is the man behind the camera: surrounding a beautiful story of friendship between two lost souls, there are strange, unnecessary “Schlesingerisms” (which also ruins the experience of watching his own Marathon Man), including flashbacks, flash-forwards, Freudian technobabble and arthouse exaggerations; none of them actually fit the story, and you’re locked inside a film that doesn’t decided whether it’s a conventional buddy movie or a psychological thriller. Nevertheless, it’s a must-see, because above all that Voight and Hoffman stand out in unspeakable greatness, and John Barry’s melancholy tune is a masterpiece of nostalgia.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

Dr. Strangelove is based on the deadly serious Cold War thriller Red Alert and depicts the frightening emergence of a intelligence failure that leads to a full-blown American attack to Russia sent by mistake, unaware that such an attack will trigger the doomsday machine, a device recently created by the Russians to blow all life on Earth away. The idea of a doomsday machine, in the context of the Cold War, was a very real threat, and the film does everything right in order to turn its story into a thriller: the sets have a noirish sense of doom, every important information is laid down and seriously delivered to the audience, and there’s always the underlining impression that something’s very wrong in how everything’s going. And that’s how you make one of the greatest and most dynamic comedies of all time.

Kubrick’s film lands on masterpiece ground here in each and every way, primarily because the seriousness of its characters is so convincing and absurd it’s almost deceitful. The situation they’re in, however, shake down that seriousness with powerful satire; for such an imminent threat, it’s sadly hilarious that in fact, no president, general or minister involved is quite prepared for it, and some of them are even unaware of the dimension of the problem. As a result, Dr. Strangelove is all about the failures between the ultimate doom: General Ripper’s machismo water fluoridation paranoia, Buck Turgidson’s almost innocent pride of his Air Force batallions, Merkin Muffleyand his incapacity to speak to a drunken Russian premier, and so forth. Everyone’s trying to be diplomatic and serious on the issue, but that never works out. And that itself works marvelously.

Man With a Movie Camera / Chelovek s kinoapparatom (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

Man With a Movie Camera is not a very conventional film; in fact, it remains fresh and radical after 85 long years and still challenges even those who uncover its many secrets. While Vertov films life in three Soviet cities in a “single day”, the film leaves itself open to interpretations and goes back, forth and sideways while making important statements about the process of living in the city and, surprisingly, the process of filming it. We see trains rushing, children laughing, and women having fun at the beach, and then we see the cameraman as he sets the camera and gets his work done. By breaking conventional narrative and keeping the viewers aware that they’re watching a film, he creates new forms of storytelling and documenting.

Dawn and sunset, birth and death, work and leisure, anger and peace, haste and tranquiity: through this groundbreaking documentary masterpiece, Dziga Vertov created one of the most influential and fascinating films ever made, a city symphony that didn’t kill narrative and “illusionist” filmmaking but cast a spell of breathtaking documentation and self-reflection. This sweet, gentle grandfather of Koyaanisqatsi was a revolution of filmmaking, wildly and vividly exploring the power of filmmaking, the role of the filmmaker as an adventurer and life in the city through then groundbreaking techniques like slow motion, fast motion, freeze frames, flash forwards, non-linear sequencing, split screens, Dutch angles and everything you can imagine present in a montage film. It still looks just as good and just as lively, and with my one and only score chosen for the film (2008’s Cinematic Orchestra jazzy score), I managed to see the masterpiece in it once again.

Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)

Back to the Future, like Zemeckis’ own Forrest Gump, is a film that’s become a wild, unstoppable classic to audiences all around the world, but is far from perfect under its thrilling, marvelous surface. Like most Zemeckis films, it’s a technical marvel to watch, and it has several moments that deservedly make it a classic and reach a strange gracefulness. It also shows that Zemeckis has a true passion for the medium, through its construction of the story and its traces of the directions who inspired him: the film feels like a blend of Frank Capra and Steven Spielberg in its view of the 1950’s, the racist cantina owner is named after the protagonist of Cassavetes’ Shadows and there’s a Kubrick reference right in the first shots.

But altogether the film collapses: it doesn’t have any energy at the human level, and it fails to make truer efforts to create stronger and more definite characters, which would be essential when you’re dealing with the story of a teenager who has to ensure its survival by saving the love of his parents in time to return to the future in an almost impossible scientific breakthrough. Its 1985 setting, in both ends of the story, is absolutely cartoonish in its stereotypical vision of nerds and cool guys, and the acting is terrible and predictable; the 1950’s setting is far better (which is good, since it’s the center of the film), but it also has a series of compromising issues.

First, Marty seems to be unable to deal with the fact that he’s gone back in time even after he becomes sure of that. Second, he’s also unable to avoid his own mother by saying something like “I have a girlfriend back where I come from”,  or “I’m interested in asking someone else to the dance”. Third, the Biff-George relationship, besides being too cliché, is also unlikely to have developed in such a way: we’re supposed to believe that they’re working to work at the exact same place and evolve into preposterous older versions of themselves (speaking of that, 3.5: the terrible old-age make-up) in the future, and we’re supposed to believe that in the parallel universe, George lets Biff consistently working for him and for his children after one punch in the face and a sugarcoated attempted rape of George’s own wife. Fourth, the story drives itself from one scene to the other like it was cut from any quieter moments, letting not true time for the viewer to absorb any of its good moments, even though the bad moments still resonate: it’s just as deceitfully fast-paced as any modern film. I’d go on to other points, but I’ve already used three paragraphs and it wouldn’t add much to everything.

The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)

Hitchcock’s The Birds introduced viewers to his late filmmaking period, marked by a quieter, more gentle and mostly different tone and different approach towards suspense. And although his pre-Psycho masterpieces are much more popular and critically acclaimed, The Birds is just as good, and even more terrifying than (blasphemy alert) Psycho; its predecessor is a better film and its jump scares are frightening, but there’s nothing quite like the quasi-apocalyptic doom of Hitchcock’s bird attacks. It has more than enough human depth, which takes a large fraction of the film’s length, and everything flips into a hell hole after it gets nasty halfway through the film, leading to one of the purest sensations of perdition and vulnerability ever put to film. There’s no pratical music other than the chirps of crows and gulls, the cast is all powerful – especially for Tippi Hedren’s mysterious performance -, the script is sharp and the effects are outdated but smoothly fit the film. There are a few things I question about the story – why Melanie Daniels decided to explore the house at night for herself, or why does the film reduce its human component so drastically after the first act -, but when I watch the film, I don’t actually care much about it. Pure gold.

Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007)

A rather offbeat entry in the Pixar artistic rampage, Ratatouille is delightfully detached from other recent classics from the company (both the superior and the lesser ones) by relying on a specifically selected theme and universe without making it almost entirely about the parallel universe it creates: it’s about rats and humans in the same way that Toy Story deals with toys and humans, The Incredibles deals with superheroes and humans and Finding Nemo deals with fish and humans, but there’s a unique, almost exclusive balance in this movie. And it’s just as sweet, technically inventive (Remy’s labyrinthine race to ground-level Paris is one great treat) and magically painted. It has some ordinary moments among its many great ones, and it’s still behind other Pixar great movies, but this is a runner-up among equals, and it has the unique advantage of having a scene that’s so nostalgic and homey (like most food should be) it gives you the opportunity of listening to Peter O’Toole being awesome, super-mega-evil and ultimately sweet.

Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979)

Life of Brian is, as any Monty Python product, obligatory viewing for any fan of British comedy: it’s biting, poignant, bold, and explosively silly. What’s most notorious about Life of Brian in comparison with the other three Monty Python features is that it actually cares about its production values, which are remarkably impressive here. Also, note how it manages to not insult faith and religion, but how people misinterpret it and use it as a tool for maneuvers, speculation and cultural persecution.

The General (Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, 1926)

The General isn’t as inventive as Sherlock Jr. and doesn’t offer a display of physical comedy as explosive as that of Steamboat Bill, Jr. or Our Hospitality, but has the best story, the most active leading lady and the greatest sense of thrill. This masterpiece about an engineer who loses both loves of his life – a girl and his train – to the Civil War is just as influential and thrilling action film as King Kong and stands out as an even superior pioneer in the genre. Like in any other Keaton film, the stunts are almost unbelievable, the comedy is naturally powerful and the train chases are the best train chases one could ever think of. After decades of film history, Keaton is still the only director who can rival Chaplin at comedy.

The Big Lebowski (The Coen Brothers, 1998)

Misunderstood by many, deeply loved by some, worshiped by a few, The Big Lebowski is a cult classic that permeates the mind with its absurd images and hilarious plot development. It’s a story about the lifestyle of Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski, an unemployed dude wandering through life (and bowling) who gets involved in the lousiest special mission story ever made. Lebowski, like many of the supporting characters, is a man stuck in the past, but while the others don’t realize that they’re the right men at the wrong time and that things have changed, The Dude seems to fit very well in his own simple, stationary world. Everyone else is the complete opposite of Lebowski: an ultrafeminist artist, a bankrupt millionaire, a group of German technopop nihilists a Vietnam veteran who never got out of it. The more complex things get for him, the harder and the more unwanted too.

The Big Lebowski is yet another masterpiece from the Coen Brothers, who have always been making great films without being truly acknowledged as great directors. It’s sharp, crazy, intricate and mysteriously surreal. It also has some pretty deep things to say, in a Dudeist way that can’t be ignored.

Inside Llewyn Davis

The Coen Brothers were always known for dividing audiences with their unusual pictures, which always bring something new to the table and win everyone’s attention with successful acidity, dark humor and depth. Inside Llewyn Davis deviates from the normal Coen Brothers movie, and ironically that’s what makes it the best example of their directing style. Perhaps because it’s their most serious work, many critics have deemed it as the best, but that’s for each one of us to find you. Many will disagree, many will strongly agree, as expected.

The figure of the anti-hero goes far in the great personification of Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a folk singer with such a strong personality he exceeds the looks of the grumpy singer and would be utterly unlikable if not admirable for being such a well built character. He’s never in tune with his close ones, he lives in a trip from couch to couch, he curses as if it were a gangster movie, and he mildly tries to make money – not success – after his partner commits suicide. Since there’s little connection between Llewyn Davis and the other characters, we see his journey mostly from a single perspective, with no specific end to it. This pessimistic perspective of the world of music, as it’s shown in the movie, is surprising enough that mentioning it isn’t a spoiler at all.

Inside Llewyn Davis, while depicting the unfortunate events of the title character as he tries to revive folk music and himself, carries along intriguing, interesting details, starting from the cast choices. We have Justin Timberlake, a rap/pop singer who deviated to other forms of art, as Jim, a friend of Llewyn’s whose background isn’t completely revealed, but who seems to live a better life, getting some records sold once in a while and living in a small apartment with Jean (Carey Mulligan, who also gives a great musical performance in Steve McQueen’s Shame), even though nothing’s perfectly settled. F. Murray Abraham, an Academy Award-winner for Amadeus, plays a different, impatient Salieri who evaluates Llewyn’s work in one of the most serious scenes in the movie. A mysterious cat, through its unknown name, follows the indifferent singer and reveals details of the story (as an orange cat, it reminds me of Cat from Breakfast at Tiffany’s).

Perhaps it’s for my hearing problems, but some of the best movies of last year seem to have given a new atmosphere to cinema as we know it, and several of them are works of art that require double or even multiple viewings so we can fairly appreciate them. This Coen Brothers movie is no different: with its stunning cinematography, aggressive characters, and dark subject, it shakes the brothers’ filmography and gets us to rethink the movie, especially because it’s starkly different from their other masterpieces.

Inside Llewyn Davis

Year: 2013

Director: Joel and Ethan Coen

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, F. Murray Abraham, Garrett Hedlund

Cannes Film Festival: Grand Prix; Palme d’Or (nominated)