Does the world really need a Coen brothers reunion?
Recently, I watched a pair of movies that I hoped would scratch the itch I like to call “Coenesque.” The Coen brothers boast one of the most singular filmographies in cinema history, and their particular brand of off-kilter, funny-yet-not-funny capers, comedies, and thrillers have rarely failed to delight me. So, it was with cautious optimism that I sat down to watch Shane Atkinson’s LaRoy, Texas and Francis Galluppi’s The Last Stop in Yuma County, both of which seemed firmly in Fargo-ish territory from their trailers.
Unfortunately, I emerged from these viewings feeling the same way I do every time I watch something “Coenesque.” Neither film was bad – in fact, I thought Yuma County was pretty excellent – but there is simply something about the Coens’ style that can’t be replicated. It can seem on the surface like all the elements are there, and you can even cast some actors known for their roles in other Coen movies, but there will always be something that doesn’t quite click.
The Coens often make movies that are deadly serious and super silly at the same time (Fargo), although sometimes they make predominantly serious movies (No Country For Old Men) or primarily funny (Raising Arizona). Other directors have been able to mix these tones successfully over the years and have given audiences similarly quirky, offbeat characters to the Coens. However, I’d argue there’s still something special about a Coen movie that you can’t get anywhere else. Hell, even when one Coen makes a movie on its own that seems highly Coen-y, it’s not quite the same. Allow me to explain.
After the 2018 western The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, the Coen brothers did the unthinkable – they went their separate ways. Joel made The Tragedy of Macbeth with wife – and longtime collaborator – Frances McDormand and Denzel Washington in 2021, while Ethan teamed up with his own wife, Tricia Cooke, for 2024’s Drive-Away Dolls. Ethan and Cooke also have another movie entitled Honey, Don’t! lined up for 2025, which will be the second part of their “lesbian B-movie trilogy.”
In 2022, Ethan explained the breakup with his brother matter-of-factly when he admitted that, over time, it just became less fun to make movies together. “After 30 years, not that it’s no fun, but it’s more of a job than it had been,” he confessed. “Joel kind of felt the same way but not to the extent that I did. It’s an inevitable by-product of ageing.”
Naturally, because the Coens are two of the greatest filmmakers of the last half-century, fans and Hollywood insiders alike wanted to respect their wishes and let them forge their separate creative paths. After all, no one wants them to make movies together if their hearts aren’t in it. But then, in January 2024, a ray of hope came when Ethan revealed he and his brother had written a new film together. Even more intriguingly, he said it was a horror movie that fans of their first feature, Blood Simple, would love and that it “gets very bloody.”
There have been no official announcements or mention of this project since Ethan’s statement, but it was enough to make fans wonder about the positives and negatives of a Coen brothers reunion. At the core of the matter, does the world need the brothers to come back together? Well, in case it wasn’t obvious from the tenor of this article, my answer is, “Yes. A thousand times yes.”
Look, I’m all for artists getting to make the art they want to make. It’s been nice to see what the brothers have come up with in the last six years of being lone wolves. The problem, though, as I see it, is that the Coen brothers being separate entities is kind of a thing that should not be. Sure, Macbeth was very good, but would I rather have been watching a new movie from the brothers? Yes.
By contrast, Drive-Away Dolls seemed more like something the brothers would have concocted together, but it suffered from the same thing that afflicted LaRoy, Texas – it felt like someone else attempting to make a Coen brothers movie. It didn’t feel like 100% pure, unfiltered Coen, even though a Coen created it. Go figure.
From the movies they’ve chosen to make on their own, it would be easy to make a case that Joel is the serious Coen and Ethan is the wacky one. In this reading, the mashing of these two disparate sensibilities give their movies their secret sauce. I’d imagine this is probably too reductive a take, but I can’t help wondering if there is something special that can only come from the one-of-a-kind alchemy of them working side by side.
So, does the world need a Coen brothers reunion? Oh, you-betcha, yah.
