“Just a damn rip-off”: the Coen brothers film indebted to “one of the great American moviemakers”
Once artists achieve true greatness over a period of time, it can be hard to remember that they too were once just getting started, blown away by the standards set by those before them and only praying they might get close to them, which was certainly the case for one of the finest director duos in cinema history, the Coen brothers.
The quality displayed by Joel and Ethan over a more than 40-year period is nothing short of staggering; even their lesser-known films have been lauded by critics, and when they are at their best, with classics like No Country for Old Men or 1996’s Fargo, they really have few peers who can even get close.
Even their debut, 1984’s Blood Simple, stands as one of their most impressive achievements, a mix of humour and blood-spilling that combines the arrogance of first-time filmmakers with the style of 1940s noir forefathers, with a dash of Evil Dead’s Sam Raimi thrown in.
As the brothers progressed through the rest of the ‘80s and ‘90s, they honed their approach, with 1987’s crime comedy Raising Arizona starring Nicolas Cage deliberately going in a completely different direction from their first outing, but featuring actors like Frances McDormand, to whom they would come back again and again.
Their follow-up film was Miller’s Crossing, starring Gabriel Byrne, which cropped up when the brothers sat down with the late author Cormac McCarthy for Time magazine to discuss films back in 2007, just as the three men had combined their talents for No Country for Old Men. It was a movie that would reignite their fame in Hollywood and beyond, serving as a platform for McCarthy’s The Road to become a bestseller and for the Coens to have their biggest hit to date, with the film being nominated for eight Academy Awards and winning four.
The trio spoke about influences and the best American movies, with the author outlining Terrence Malick’s 1978 romance Days of Heaven as a favourite. “Yeah, well, he is great, Terry Malick. Really interesting…one of the great American moviemakers,” replied Joel Coen, to which McCarthy added, “But Miller’s Crossing is in that category. I don’t want to embarrass you, but that’s just a very, very fine movie”.
The elder Coen brother was having none of it, though, responding with, “Eh, it’s just a damn rip-off”. Although Miller’s Crossing suffered from being released in cinemas the same month as Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, the gangster film co-starring John Turturro, the former set in America in the 1920s prohibition-era has since gone on to become something of a cult favourite among movie fans.
It lost several million dollars on release, but critics raved about it, convinced it should have fared far better, and it starred future Coen brothers favourite, Steve Buscemi, in a supporting role along with Albert Finney, the British actor who found fame in the kitchen-sink dramas of the late 1950s, pulling in several late career highlights in films like Big Fish, and Sidney Lumet’s final venture Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead with Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Lately, the Coens have been working independently, their last film together being the Netflix-backed western The Ballad of Buster Scruggs in 2018, with Ethan showing more activity in terms of directing lately, having made last year’s Honey Don’t with Margaret Qualley and Aubrey Plaza and Drive Away Dolls, again with Qualley the year before. Joel has only made 2021’s The Tragedy of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington, although that did prove to be a critical success, picking up three Oscar nominations.
