The one thing the Coen brothers will never do: “There is just nothing in it for us”
When looking at the work of the Coen brothers, some might struggle to draw parallels between each project due to the ever-changing and amorphic quality of their style, with the filmmaking duo evolving their creative trademarks through each project.
Whether it be the iconicity of The Big Lebowski and their take on the stoner comedy, the nightmarish surrealist realism of A Serious Man or their version of a western in No Country for Old Men, the directors have formed a body of work that feels chameleon-esque in how expertly they blend to the demands of different stories, adopting a completely opposite tone in each film.
While they have built a reputation on this very quality, it is not something the directors want to reflect on, sharing their disinterest in comparing their films and the qualities they might share.
However incomparable they might seem, there are many similarities between each film made by the Coen brothers. The directors adopt a somewhat nihilistic viewpoint that only differs in the way the characters react to/cope with this nihilism. In The Big Lebowski, Jeffrey remains unbothered and coolly indifferent to the comical number of mishaps that occur to him, coping with his circumstances through humour and detachment.
In A Serious Man, the main character’s plight is more serious and disruptive, but he cannot find peace in uncertainty and subsequently loses his mind through his constant worry over the unknowable calamities in his life. In Barton Fink, there is a general mood of cynicism and satire as the directors mock the film industry itself, with the writer being aware of his own irrelevance in the machine and becoming weighed down by the job at hand.
This nihilistic undertone is expressed through the characters and their reaction to their circumstances, which no less changes this cynical underlying perspective, either lightly mocking characters who fail to improve their circumstances through comedy or commiserating with those who attempt to do so.
While we can draw many parallels between their films, the directors are less keen to compare their work, preferring to leave each project in the past and not hold them against each other. When asked if there were any films of theirs that they felt were more similar than others, Ethan Coen said, “Boy, we don’t really compare them. There is just nothing in it for us. There is some pleasure in doing a movie and problem solving on a specific movie and getting a movie made, but once they are done we don’t look at them again, much less relate one to another”.
Many filmmakers take this approach when reflecting on their past work, choosing to focus on the now and what they are currently making instead of looking at how each one differs from the others. Despite the fact that some directors have bodies of work that almost seem to be in conversation with the others, with the likes of Joanna Hogg discussing the dialogue she interprets between each story, this method of reflection is not helpful to everyone, and the Coen brothers prefer to take each film as it comes.
