The spiritual sequel to ‘Raising Arizona’ the Coen brothers didn’t realise they’d made
The Coen brothers have found an interesting way to bring their careers full circle.
There’s a compelling argument to be made that the Coen brothers are not only a pair of the greatest filmmakers of all time, but the best distinctly American directors to ever live. Over the course of 18 films together, Joel and Ethan Coen have examined all different time periods, perspectives, social movements, and cultural touchstones in American history, and are responsible for crafting characters and dialogues that are completely timeless.
While the two films that Ethan made with his wife, Tricia Cooke, are not very good, everything he’s made with his brother is pretty much unassailable; even The Ladykillers and Intolerable Cruelty, the two films they made that have the worst reputations, are much better than they are given credit for.
Choosing the best Coen brothers film is an impossible task, as it comes down to the subjective opinion of individual fans, but the directors did receive the highest industry honour of a ‘Best Picture’ Oscar for their adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, a novel considered to be a contemporary classic of American literature.
The film also won the Coens ‘Best Director’ and ‘Best Adapted’ screenplay, and Javier Bardem’s terrifying performance as Anton Chigurh netted him the Oscar for ‘Best Supporting Actor’, all fo which was mighty impressive given that 2007 was one of the best contemporary years for cinema, and other ‘Best Picture’ nominees that year were acclaimed titles like There Will Be Blood, Atonement, Michael Clayton, and Juno.
Well known for telling original stories, No Country for Old Men was unique for the Coens because they chose to make a film based on a book, even if it was one considered a masterpiece, but even more surprising are the comparisons the film drew, with Ethan even referring to it as “Raising Arizona without the laughs”.
Their debut film, Blood Simple, had shown what they could do with a low-budget neo-noir story, but Raising Arizona featured the quirky humour, colourful characters, and a strangely hopeful tone that would become critical to their style. Although the film is a slapstick comedy and No Country for Old Men is a neo-western thriller, they are both madcap manhunt films about the search for a prized MacGuffin; it’s just that Raising Arizona is about a kidnapped infant, and the latter is about a duffel of cash.
Another compelling parallel between the two is that they both end with their protagonists dreaming; in Raising Arizona, Nicolas Cage’s character dreams about the family life that might await him, whereas No Country for Old Men concludes with a scene in which the sheriff, played by Tommy Lee Jones, confesses to being awakened from a dream of his own.
They are dark counterparts to one another that show how easily the Coens are able to toggle between optimism and pessimism, and although they may not have ever picked up on it initially, they found a way to thematically link two of their best films.
